Does this statement sound familiar?

‘The voucher tax credit is bad public policy for public education and our taxpayers, diverting millions of dollars in taxpayer money with no accountability or oversight to religious and private schools.’

Sounds like the same thing Lefty talking heads out of NC Justice Center/Policy Watch have been saying lately? Sound like Something the State Superintendent has said – minus the ‘schools of terror‘ bit? Similar to the language used by those who brought the lawsuit against the Opportunity Scholarships?

Well it’s a quote from New Hampshire Governor, Maggie Hassan. I dropped part of the quote that came via an article at the Daily Caller. Here’s the full quote:

“The voucher tax credit is bad public policy for public education in New Hampshire and our taxpayers, diverting millions of dollars in taxpayer money with no accountability or oversight to religious and private schools,” Hassan said.

Hassan’s mad that she was unable to stop low-income parents from receiving tax credits in her state which will allow them to send their child to the school of their choice.

The New Hampshire Union Leader slammed New Hampshire Democrats for attempting to block the tax credits. I am sure reading this will give the editorial staff at the News and Observer hives. It’s short, so I’ve included all of the text below. Change a few words and this could be North Carolina, not New Hampshire:

Giving lower-income families the ability to send their children to better schools ought to be universally applauded policy.

Instead, it is being attacked.

In June, legislators passed a law that allows businesses to get state tax credits for a portion of their donations to educational scholarship funds.

The scholarships, which must average $2,500, would help families who are unsatisfied with their local public school pay the cost of tuition at a non-public school.

New Hampshire Democrats are attacking this achievement by saying that Republicans this year took money from public schools to give to private schools. That is terribly misleading, to put it charitably.

The average scholarship cost is, by law, less than what the state pays in per-pupil education aid. And the tax credit covers most, not all, of a company’s donation to the scholarship funds. So the state actually pays a lot less for each scholarship student than it does for each public school student.

The difference remains in the state’s coffers.

The law also caps the amount of money a local school district can lose from fleeing students at 1/4 of 1 percent of its budget, and it caps scholarship eligibility at 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

Clearly, the scholarships do not defund public schools.

They allow lower-income parents to use a portion of their allotted per-pupil education aid at a different school if the one to which their child is assigned is a bad fit. That is not anti-school or anti-education.

It is pro-child.

–New Hampshire Union Leader