Nebraska lawmakers seek to solidify taxpayer-funded school choice before voters can decide it

Nebraska lawmakers are on track to pass a bill that would circumvent an upcoming ballot initiative in which voters could repeal a new state law that funds private school tuition with taxpayer money.

The bill from Omaha Sen. Lou Ann Linehan, the author of last year’s Opportunity Scholarships Act, advanced Tuesday from the first of three rounds of debate. It would change the way the private school scholarships, enacted last year, are funded.

The law passed last year by Nebraska’s officially nonpartisan Legislature did not appropriate taxpayer dollars directly to private school tuition. Instead, it allowed businesses and individuals to donate as much as $100,000 per year of their owed state income tax to nonprofit organizations that award private school tuition scholarships. Estates and trusts could donate as much as $1 million a year. That dollar-for-dollar tax credit is money that would otherwise go into the state’s general revenue fund.

The law triggered an immediate pushback from public school advocates who blasted the measure as a “school voucher scheme” that would hurt enrollment, and therefore funding, for public schools and would allow taxpayer dollars to go to private schools that are allowed under religious tenets to discriminate against LGBTQ+ students.

<bsp-list-loadmore data-module="" class=«PageListStandardB» data-gtm-region=«READ MORE» data-gtm-topic=«No Value» data-show-loadmore=«true» data-gtm-modulestyle=«List B»> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> READ MORE </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> Conservatives compelled by Trump are pushing Nebraska to adopt a winner-take-all election system </bsp-custom-headline> <bsp-custom-headline custom-headline=«div»> A Nebraska