The clash between supporters and opponents of a petition drive to repeal Nebraska’s newly signed law that offers tax credits for donations to scholarship funds for private and faith-based schools was inevitable.
It didn’t take long for Keep Kids First, the advocacy group in favor of the new law, to accuse Support Our Schools, the organization leading the petition drive, of intentionally deceiving voters about the law’s intent in order to get them to sign, or for Support Our Schools to counter with accusations of intimidation and harassment.
That public clash was triggered by incidents of a since-dismissed petition circulator who gave erroneous information to a voter outside an Omaha store and opponents blocking potential signees outside a Cornhusker State Games event. The conflicts can best be seen as continuing evidence of the controversy that has surrounded LB753 since it was introduced in the Legislature.
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Dubbed the Opportunity Scholarships Act, the law offers a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for individuals and entities who donate to scholarship funds intended to help students attend private and parochial schools. Individuals and businesses could not receive more than $100,000 in annual credits, while estates and trusts would be capped at $1 million per year.
Those credits are essentially providing public money — money that otherwise would have been taxed — for private and parochial schools, triggering opposition from teachers unions, school board leaders, education policy organizations and advocates of individuals with disabilities, who say the policy harms students, families and schools in multiple ways.
So those organizations launched the petition drive, just a week after Gov. Jim Pillen signed the law, and now have to gather just more than 60,000 signatures, at least 5% of Nebraska’s registered voters, by Aug. 30.
Enter Keep Kids First, a group led by a half-dozen state senators who supported the bill, which is urging voters to “decline to sign” and have churned up enough concern to prompt Lancaster County Election Commissioner Todd Wiltgen to release information on how to remove signatures from the petition.
Few in Lancaster County, or anywhere in the state, have had their signatures removed from the petitions, demonstrating that voters know what they are signing, either supporting the petition’s goal or wanting it to be on the ballot.
And it appears enough of those voters in enough counties will put their names on the petition so that the repeal will be on the 2024 ballot.
That is how it should be. The unprecedented organized decline-to-sign effort at the state level was, put simply, aimed at stopping the oft-used function of petitions as Nebraska’s “second house” of the Legislature, allowing the public to vote on controversial measures or issues on which the Legislature refuses to act.
If the Opportunity Scholarships Act is, indeed, the will of the people, putting it to a vote of the people is the best way to settle it. Why wouldn't both sides want that?
