Voucher Petition May Be Out of Hill’s Hands

By Bob Bernick Jr. Deseret Morning News

Utah GOP legislators are finding themselves in a political pickle — what to do with the private school voucher referendum?

Technically, the voucher petition may appear to be out of their hands.

Lawmakers passed the main voucher bill in the 2007 session, by just one vote in the House. And Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. signed it into law. Legislators set aside money to pay for the $500-to-$3,000 per child tax credits.

But the issue didn’t end there. Opponents of the new voucher system began gathering signatures and came up with more than 115,000 signees, only needing 92,000.

But as those signatures are now being reviewed by county clerks, it is clear that state legislators are not at all out of the debate. In fact, the relatively calm, statesmanlike debate in the House before the main voucher bill was passed could change considerably over the next few months.

I say the “main” voucher bill because, unfortunately for voucher opponents, there were two voucher bills passed in the 2007 Legislature.

And therein lies the rub.

While the first, main bill passed by just one vote in the House, a second bill — termed a cleanup and funding bill — passed later in the session by more than two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. A number of opponents of vouchers, including several Democrats, voted for the second, “cleanup” bill because it did provide some funding and did fix some concerns caused by the first bill. But those opponents wouldn’t have supported the second bill if they had realized the mess they were stepping into.

That second bill had in it much of the voucher law language of the first bill. And, since current referendum law says citizens cannot place on the ballot any bill that does indeed pass the Legislature by two-thirds vote, the second bill cannot be the subject of referendum petition — and so was not part of the petition now being certified.

So, GOP legislators could find themselves in the politically difficult position of seeing the Utah electorate overturning the basic idea of giving tax credits to families who send their children to private schools, but still have a voucher system operating here.

What do you do if citizens clearly reject one of your major new state initiatives — private school vouchers — but that initiative is still operating?

Do you repeal it?

Do you revote it, perhaps change it a bit? That’s a risk, because almost assuredly you would not get two-thirds votes in favor of the fix-it bill, and so would be subject to another citizen referendum.

Huntsman says that however the voucher referendum turns out — in favor or against the new private school tuition system — he and legislators should respect that vote.

Easy for him to say it — he can’t repeal a law by himself.

But how do you actually accomplish it?

Do you expect voucher-hardened conservative GOP legislators to say: OK, we made a mistake. The people really don’t want private school vouchers, so we’ll just repeal both voucher bills?

Don’t bet on that.

Pro-voucher legislators would be examining the referendum vote in their own individual districts, studying if their constituents actually did vote to repeal vouchers. And if it was even a close vote, they’d likely be saying that their constituents didn’t understand the issue, were swayed by inaccurate information by anti- voucher advocates, and blah, blah, blah.

At the heart of the dispute lies a few basic facts.

We are a republic — legislators are wise to point out — where we don’t make major political decisions ourselves; we elect representatives to make them for us.

And these representatives are quick to say they have more information than regular citizens and have a better feel for the complicated process of governing, and the masses can be easily misled by forceful rhetoric, catchy advertising or outright scare tactics.

In short, father knows best. And Big Daddy is the 104-member part- time Legislature.

Now, don’t jump too quickly — the referendum petitions must still be certified and a date set for the vote (a whole other debate), and citizens must reject the main voucher bill at the polls.

But don’t be too surprised if the voucher system is rejected at the ballot box only to continue in practice, in no small part because GOP legislators just don’t want to fight this battle again.

Deseret Morning News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com

(c) 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.