Illinois Becomes First State To Roll Back School Voucher Program

For Forbes, more good news. Illinois is letting its private school subsidy program go away.

The Illinois House has adjourned until January 16, 2024 without passing an extension to the state’s voucher law, which starts expiring on January 1, 2024.

In 2017, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois had suffered a rough defeat of his budget; he then replaced much of his staff with personnel from the right wing think tank, Illinois Policy Institute. One of the first bills he signed after the shakeup was a tax credit scholarship program; pushed by Rauner, the GOP, and Bishop Blase Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago, the Invest In Kids Act allowed citizens and businesses to redirect the taxes they owed the state to instead go to support private schools.

Tax credit scholarships create the illusion that taxpayers are not footing the voucher bill. But the Invest In Kids tax credits created a hole in the budget as large as $75 million; taxpayers can either fill the gap by paying more, or accept cuts in services. Directly or indirectly, taxpayers pay the price for tax credit scholarships.

That’s why Kentucky’s supreme court rejected that states tax credit scholarship program. “The money at issue cannot be characterized as simply private funds,” the court wrote, “rather it represents the tax liability that the taxpayer would otherwise owe.”

Read the full piece here for a listing of just some of the discrimination that these tax dollars funded.