The Nebraska Secretary of State’s Office says it’s to blame for an error that forced a restart of a petition drive to repeal LB 753, a newly-passed law giving big tax credits for donations to groups providing scholarships to attend private and parochial schools.
The problem was that the approved template for the Support Our Schools petition last week was mislabeled as an “initiative petition,” which would send a proposed new law to the voters, rather than a “referendum petition,” asking them to repeal a law.
The difference is huge. Backers of initiatives have a year to gather signatures while referendums have just 90 days. Some 61,000 signatures are needed to put repeal of the Opportunity Scholarship Act on the ballot and 120,000 to put it on hold until the vote.
They also need signatures from at least 5% of the registered voters in 38 of Nebraska 93 counties, a requirement designed to ensure any petition drive has at least some level of statewide support.
Support Our Schools had collected about 10,000 signatures when the error was discovered and state election officials, who provided a corrected petition Monday, say all the erroneous petitions signed before then will be honored.
Nebraska State Education Association President Jenni Benson, a sponsor of the drive, calls the problem just “a hiccup” because the corrected petitions are already being circulated. Although 60,000 valid signatures of registered voters are needed, Support Our Schools has a goal of 90,000 to provide a comfortable margin
The new law allows individual taxpayers to get dollar-for- dollar income tax credits up to half their taxes to a maximum of $100,000 for donations to organizations providing scholarships to attend private and parochial schools.
Opponents say it not only opens the door for state tax money to be used for private schools, it also gives the scholarship organizations a big edge on other charities.
A person owing $20,000 in taxes and donating $10,000 under the program would get a full $10,000 in tax relief. A similar $10,000 to a charity such as the Chadron Public School Foundation would get a tax credit of about $650.