By Paul Hammel
LINCOLN — Polling released Thursday by a Lincoln-based think tank, the OpenSky Policy Institute, indicated that 55% of respondents oppose a new state law that grants state tax credits for donations for private and parochial school scholarships.
The telephone/text message poll of 600 likely voters was done May 31 to June 1 by a Washington, D.C., polling firm, Lake Research Partners. The margin of error was plus or minus 4%.
The polling would be welcome news for those backing an effort to repeal Legislative Bill 753, the Opportunity Scholarships Act, via a voter referendum. They have long maintained that Nebraskans do not support diverting public funds to private schools.
The survey found that 47% of respondents strongly supported repeal of the law, which outpaced the 37% of respondents who expressed any level of support to retain the legislation.
OpenSky is among those supporting the repeal. The organization contributed nearly $55,000 in staff time to “Support Our Schools Nebraska,” a group led by the state teachers union which is gathering signatures for the referendum, according to the most recent state political spending report.
The law would allow donors to devote up to half of their state income tax payments to organizations that grant scholarships for students to attend private or parochial schools. LB 753 initially caps the yearly tax break at $25 million, but it could rise to $100 million a year if the funding is fully utilized.
Rebecca Firestone, executive director of OpenSky, said that shifting $25 million of current state revenues to private school scholarships will “make it harder to invest in expanding vocational and career training programs in public education and to address the teacher shortage.”
“Voters overwhelmingly said those should be the priorities for spending tax dollars for education in Nebraska, not creating these tax credits for private schools,” Firestone said in a press release.
Supporters of LB 753, which include Gov. Jim Pillen, have said it is unfair that lower income families do not have the same opportunity to send their kids to private schools as more wealthy families do.
They maintain that public school advocates are “short-sighted” in their complaints about losing funds in a year when state lawmakers approved a $300 million increase in public school funding and Pillen established a $1 billion “education future fund” for schools.
Firestone said that OpenSky, which studies state spending, has consistently opposed private school tax credit proposals such as LB 753.