Ample signatures collected for referendum to repeal private school funding law, organizers say

OMAHA, Neb. — Public school advocates say they have enough signatures to ask Nebraska voters in November to repeal a law that provides taxpayer money for private school tuition, marking the latest twist in a long-running fight with state lawmakers who have repeatedly opposed efforts to let voters weigh in on the public funding plan.

Organizers of Support Our Schools said they had gathered more than 86,000 signatures of registered voters — well over the nearly 62,000 needed by Wednesday's deadline. The group delivered dozens of boxes of the petitions to the Nebraska Secretary of State's office, which will check the validity of each over the coming weeks to see if there are enough to make the November ballot.

“The underestimated anger among voters about being denied their earlier chance to vote is palpable,” Cynthia Peterson with the League of Women Voters said at a news conference to announce the signature total. “Nebraskans deserve the opportunity to vote on school vouchers — yes or no.”

If the repeal measure is approved for the November ballot, organizers fully expect school choice supporters to file a lawsuit to try to thwart the referendum, said Tim Royers, incoming president of the state's teachers union, the Nebraska State Education Association, and a Support Our Schools organizer.

“We’re very confident that, should they choose to try and file a court challenge to get us off the ballot, we would successfully defeat that challenge,” Royers said.

It's the second time in a year public school advocates have had to carry out a signature-gathering effort to try to reverse a legislative measure to use public money for private school tuition. The first came last year, when Republicans who dominate the officially nonpartisan Nebraska Legislature passed a bill to allow corporations and individuals to divert millions of dollars they owe in state income taxes to nonprofit organizations. Those organizations would, in turn, award that money as private school tuition scholarships.

The private school scholarship program saw Nebraska follow several other red states — including Arkansas, Iowa and South Carolina — in enacting some form of private school choice, from vouchers to education savings account programs.

Before Nebraska's measure was even enacted last year, Support Our Schools began organizing a petition effort, collecting far more signatures than was needed to ask voters to repeal the law.

But rather than letting Nebraska voters decide, school choice supporters sought to thwart the petition process. Omaha Sen. Lou Ann Linehan, who introduced the private school funding bill, first called on Secretary of State Bob Evnen to reject the ballot measure, saying it violated the state constitution that places the power of taxation solely in the hands of the Legislature.

When that failed, Linehan successfully pushed a new bill to dump the tax credit funding system and simply fund private school scholarships directly from state coffers. More significantly, because Linehan's new bill repealed and replaced last year's law, it rendered last year's successful petition effort moot — perfecting what Linehan called an “end run” around the effort to have Nebraska voters decide whether public money can go to private schools.

That move is in line with a growing trend among Republican-dominated state legislatures to find ways to force through legislation they want, even when it's opposed by a majority of voters. A number of those efforts center on citizen-led petitions for law changes.

“They know that this is not popular with the public,” Royers said. “They know that every time vouchers have gone on the ballot in other states, it's been defeated.”

Supporters of school choice say it's needed for students and their families who are failed by low-performing public schools — particularly low-income families unable to afford private school tuition on their own. Opponents say private school funding programs end up being too costly for states to maintain and that they violate the Nebraska Constitution’s prohibition against appropriating public funds to nonpublic schools.

When Linehan's new direct funding of private school tuition passed this year, opponents again launched a petition effort to repeal it — but with less time and more obstacles than they had last year.

Royers noted that lawmakers waited until the last day of the session this year to pass the new private tuition funding bill. It then took days for Republican Gov. Jim Pillen to sign it into law and for Evnen — also a Republican — to approve the language for a new petition effort.

They also had to start before most public schools were out for the summer, leaving teachers unable to help with signature collection early in the process. Most difficult, Royers said, was having to explain to people who had signed the repeal petition last year why they had to sign again if they wanted voters to have a say.

Linehan said she expects the fight over school choice “will probably end up in court,” but that the decision to file a lawsuit to stop the ballot measure would likely be up to the Nebraska Attorney General's office.

The Nebraska Catholic Conference, a lobbying group representing Roman Catholic-run schools in the state that would receive most of the scholarship funds, hinted in an email to supporters that it also could take action, saying low-income children “remain at risk” if the scholarship bill is repealed.

“School choice champions and stakeholders in Nebraska are assessing the situation and planning how best to protect this important legislation,” Tom Venzor, the conference's director, said in the statement.

Even if Support Our Schools succeeds in getting the repeal question on the ballot, Linehan said she expects voters will reject it. That's because the scholarships are meant to help people — including foster children and military families — without the means to send their children to private school, she said.

“I don’t think if Nebraskans understood the situation, if they will vote to take those scholarships away from those kids,” she said.

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This story has been corrected to show that organizers needed to collect nearly 62,000 signatures, not roughly 86,500.