School Voucher Funding: The Circus is in Town

UPDATED BELOW

Last winter, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett proposed increasing state funding for new voucher students so that Milwaukee taxpayers would pay the same amount for those new voucher students as they do for MPS students.

At the time, the governor and Republican legislative leaders agreed with Barrett in principle, but said that the funding fix would need to wait until the 2007-2009 biennial budget.

Fast-forward to this winter, Governor Doyle included in his '07-'09 budget proposal the exact funding fix that Mayor Barrett asked for last year. However, now Mayor Barrett and other leaders in Milwaukee feel that plan doesn't go far enough and want the funding fix to apply to all voucher students, not just new ones, a decision that's helped to split the Dem position on the issue and create a space for the GOP to play it like a political fiddle.

Republicans on the JFC let out word that they were prepared to support the plan to have the fix apply to all voucher students, but they didn't want to actually make the motion during budget deliberations. Dem legislator Pedro Colon was expected to raise it, but he didn't because JFC co-chair Russ Decker (D-Weston) told him that doing so would cost Milwaukee other funding proposals.

As a result, the Doyle proposal made it through the JFC intact. However, some predictions are that Doyle's proposal may get axed in conference committee, possibly because outstate Dem legislators, like Decker, aren't too fond of the voucher program to start, while Republicans -- who do support the voucher program -- don't really care if Milwaukee residents need to pay more for it.

To be sure, while Republicans on the JFC pledged to support the more expensive (for the state, that is) proposal to fix the funding flaw for all voucher students, they also all voted against the less expensive proposal by Doyle to only have the fix apply to new voucher students.

Why? Well, in the end, Republicans are more than happy to feed a situation that has the Dems fighting amongst themselves to the point that the voucher funding comes out of the budget in the same form that it went into it: inequitably. And the Dems, apparently, are more than happy to go along with it.

Oh, and to top it all off, some expect that those other Milwaukee funding proposals -- the ones Colon was trying to protect in the JFC budget deliberations by not proposing the funding fix for all voucher students -- may get cut, anyway, in conference committee.

Too bad the Ringling Brothers already have the copyright on that "Greatest Show on Earth" line.

UPDATE: I received a note from Mayor Barrett's office today clarifying that the mayor's position always has been that fixing the funding flaw for new voucher students was a minimum fix.

This is a distinction worth noting because it suggests Barrett's position didn't change, exactly, but rather he viewed his proposal last winter as a start to correcting the funding flaw, which is a position backed by comments Barrett makes in this Journal Sentinel article.

That said, the effect of the situation is still the same -- the GOP is gladly exploiting a rift in the Dem position on fixing the funding flaw. It's just that the rift is more a result of proximity to Milwaukee than political shifting, as I made out in the post.

Clifford's Supporters Oppose School Choice?

SEE UPDATES BELOW

I was caught by a comment made in the Journal Sentinel this morning regarding the state Supreme Court race.

While the article in question claims it's unclear where either Linda Clifford or Annette Ziegler stand on the school voucher program, it states that a few things are clear, including the following: "Clifford's backers include many people and groups who oppose the school choice program. Ziegler's backers include many who favor the program."

Hmm. I remember following the school voucher debate pretty closely last January. And though it's been awhile, I only remember two groups -- WEAC and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association (MTEA) -- that opposed the voucher program.

While GOPers tried really hard to make the voucher debate a "for or against" issue on the program as a whole, the debate was really over how much the program would be expanded. Governor Doyle and most legislative Dems backed controlled growth along with instituting classroom accountability and many legislative Republicans supported removing the cap altogether without classroom accountability.

Looking at the list of supporters on Clifford's website along with the list of her campaign donors, I don't see WEAC or MTEA. And I couldn't find anything on either group's website about Linda Clifford or the state Supreme Court race in general.

It seems to me this JS article was making an assumption -- and, perhaps, an inaccurate one -- based upon the fact that Clifford is essentially the Dem candidate and Ziegler is essentially the GOP candidate. So you could really substitute any partisan issue with clear consitutional implications into that statement.

For instance, "Clifford's backers include many people and groups who support a woman's right to choose. Ziegler's backers include many who oppose a woman's right to choose."

Or, "Clifford's backers include many people and groups who oppose concealed carry. Ziegler's backers include many who favor concealed carry."

But, of course, the tricky part about using school vouchers is that neither party has proposed eliminating the voucher program; again, the debate was (and is) over the program's growth.

And, ultimately, all of statements listed above say very little about what either candidate would do as a state Supreme Court justice to impact any of the issues at hand. Although the JS article said its version of the statement was "clear," rather than providing clarity, it actually did nothing more than increase speculation, just as any version of that statement would.

Nevertheless, I emailed Alan Borsuk -- the lead author of the JS article -- this morning to see what he was basing the statement upon. I'll add an update when I hear back.

UPDATE: Borsuk responded by giving WEAC and the Milwaukee County Labor Council (MCLC) as two examples of voucher opponents who have endorsed Clifford.

Jay also notes in the comments that WEAC has endorsed Clifford, but I still can't seem to find the endorsement. It's not on WEAC's webstite or Clifford's website, and there's no listing of it at the Wheeler Report or WisPolitics dating back through the time that Clifford announced her candidacy at the beginning of January. And, as of February 5, WEAC had not given any money to the Clifford campaign. Perhaps it was just noted in a newsletter or memo sent only to teachers?

It doesn't appear the MCLC has formally endorsed Clifford, although its sister organization -- the Wisconsin AFL-CIO -- has done so and donated $5000 to Clifford's campaign. The MCLC, for its part, does have a couple of pieces on its website that go after Ziegler, which certainly could be construed as an implicit endorsement of Clifford.

However, that said, I couldn't find anything about the MCLC -- or, for that matter, the WI AFL-CIO -- being a vocal opponent of the school voucher program, let alone advocating for its elimination.

And, in the end, I still haven't seen any evidence that gets close to buttressing the argument that "Clifford's backers include many people and groups who oppose the school choice program." It seems, at the most, that the vast majority of Clifford's backers actually don't have a public position on the program at all.

LATE UPDATE: I just heard from another person that WEAC has recently endorsed Clifford and donated to her campaign. Whether this alone means "many people and groups" remains in question.

LATE LATE UPDATE: The latest campaign finance figures are out, and it appears I'm caught a bit with my foot in my mouth. If I would've seen this morning that WEAC subsidiaries have shelled out around $35,000 to Clifford's campaign in the last couple of weeks, I definitely would have kept my trap shut about the JS article line.

Although I still don't think the line is entirely fair or accurate -- the vast majority of Clifford's supporters are still not active voucher opponents -- the line got a whole lot more justifiable with the WEAC donations.

This is why I should stick to policy.