ALEC tax task force led by tobacco lobbyist forms education subcommittee

We haven’t done much posting on ALEC in a while, but here’s a story we did a post on last year when the ALEC convention was in Kansas City.

“ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy task force, headed by Altria/Phillip Morris’ Amanda Klum and New Hampshire State Rep. Ken Weyler, is adding a Joint Education Finance Working Group at this week’s meeting.

“Why is a tax task force led by a cigarette lobbyist forming an education subcommittee? Perhaps to advance tuition “tax credit” policies to subsidize charter and religious schools, a scheme dubbed “neo-vouchers” by critics…

“ALEC’s Education task force has several tuition tax credit new vouchers on the books, and at this week’s meeting, it will consider adding an expanded

“Educational Choice Tax Credit Program Act” to the ALEC library. The bill would allow a 100% tax credit for the first five years of the program, which effectively means that both corporations and individuals can entirely reroute their tax dollars from public schools and services to private entities. The credit is then ratcheted down to 50% over the following five years. The bill specifies that even parents who are currently paying for private school tuition can receive funding through the program.”
[Kansas passed the ALEC corporate tax credit scholarship bill in April of 2014.]

Read more here: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/05/12463/corporate-interests-calling-shots-week-alecs-kansas-city-meeting

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