As Edward Cardinal Egan was laid to rest Tuesday, I recalled working with him back in 2006 in advancing an education tax credit to assist families with children in parochial and independent schools.
We weren’t entirely successful, as Gov. George Pataki yielded to pressure from the Assembly and agreed to a much smaller tax credit for child care.
The next year, Gov. Eliot Spitzer reneged on his promise to advance a full education tax credit.
This year, the Legislature has another chance to assist those families who for personal reasons have opted out of the public-school system: the Education Investment Tax Credit.
Assemblyman Michael Cusick (D-SI), a key sponsor of the bill, says the tax credit will encourage private donations to aid all kinds of schools — public, parochial and private.
That aid could take the form of needs-based scholarships for parochial or private schools and expanding programs at needy public schools.
The Senate passed a tax-credit bill last year, but the Assembly wouldn’t go along. Yet 48 Democrats in the Assembly — that is, nearly half — clearly support the education-credit bill now, and it’s safe to say most Republicans do, too.
But those 48 Democrats are under intense pressure to drop their support — pressure from the state’s teachers unions and their allies.
Opponents have deliberately mischaracterized the tax credit as a private-school “voucher.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
A voucher is government money that goes directly to a parent who chooses to use it for his child’s public, parochial or private-school education.
Donations generated by the Education Investment Tax Credit, by contrast, would be divided equally between public-school needs and scholarships for private and parochial schools.
The funds would be distributed as grants to eligible education nonprofits to disburse.
Armed with misinformation, hundreds of NAACP members descended on Albany last week to tell lawmakers to oppose the tax credit.
Coincidentally (or maybe not), the United Federation of Teachers was also in town, rallying against Gov. Cuomo’s own education-reform proposals.
Exasperated tax-credit supporters, like Assemblyman Marcos Crespo (D-Bronx), had to explain to their local NAACP members that they’d been misinformed — bamboozled by the UFT, when black and Hispanic children clearly stand to gain the most from the tax credit.
It appears that the tax credit won’t be part of the Assembly’s budget resolution, but Cusick remains optimistic. “We give tax credits for everything else,” he notes, so “it’s important that we encourage people to make donations to education.”
Note that Speaker Carl Heastie, in preparing the Assembly budget resolution without the credit, did not say that the education credit is dead.
That seems a sign that the measure remains on the table for negotiations with Cuomo and the Senate.
Before becoming speaker, in fact, Heastie was himself a co-sponsor of the measure. (The speaker customarily sponsors no bills.)
During the next three weeks, the tax credit’s Assembly co-sponsors must rally behind Cusick and Crespo to build consensus and ensure that the tax credit makes it into the final state budget law.
Speaker Heastie recently told UFT members that he was pleased to join them “in calling for the support and investment our students need to succeed.’’
Well, Mr. Speaker, children at parochial schools in your district and beyond also deserve the support and investment they need to succeed — support the education tax credit would provide.
Heastie has the opportunity to achieve what Govs. Pataki and Spitzer and Speaker Sheldon Silver failed to do. He can provide a measure of education equity for New York’s children, whatever school they attend.
The Education Investment Tax Credit is a win-win for public-, parochial- and private-school students, parents and teachers.