Utah Voucher Politics Update

Bob Bernick & Lee Davidson:

Utah's powerful Republican legislative leaders have quietly formed a political issue committee aimed at defeating a referendum on November's ballot that would repeal a private school tuition voucher law passed by the 2007 Legislature.
That is not the only quiet move in the voucher battle. Loopholes in Utah campaign law are also allowing some groups on both sides of the fight to hide exactly who is providing hundreds of thousands of dollars of their funding.

The state's voucher law would provide tuition payments of between $500 to $3,000 per child, based on parents' income, to private schools. An anti-voucher citizen referendum petition drive last spring was successful, and the question of whether to repeal the new law will be on the November ballot.

With anti-voucher sentiment winning in recent public opinion polls in Utah, the GOP legislative leaders decided to take action to "educate citizens" on what the voucher law would really do, said Jeff Hartley, who has been hired by the Informed Voter Project PIC to run the leaders' campaign.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 3, 2007 12:00 AM
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