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INDIANAPOLIS -- A new study released at the Statehouse Thursday claims school vouchers aren't beneficial to Indiana taxpayers and students. More than 30,000 Indiana students are enrolled in the School Choice voucher program that makes it possible for thousands of kids to attend private and charter schools.
"The study originated because Illinois has a one school-choice option which is an individual tax credit. As in other states, Illinois legislators received requests to consider expanding the use of school vouchers. Because Indiana is adjacent to a state with a large voucher program, Indiana is among several voucher programs studied by an independent firm," Becker said.
According to the report released by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, the study found "no compelling reason to subsidize Indiana school vouchers with public taxpayer dollars."
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RESEARCH THINK TANK REPORT CONCLUDES: NO COMPELLING POLICY REASON
TO SUBSIDIZE INDIANA SCHOOL VOUCHERS WITH PUBLIC TAXPAYER DOLLARS
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By Ralph Martire
Guest columnist
Whether it's the Beltway or Springfield, it seems increasingly difficult for elected officials to cross party lines and reach consensus on issues that really matter -- with one notable exception. Nearly everybody, liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between, supports holding public schools "accountable" for educating students. Unfortunately, broad consensus hasn't resulted in sound policy. Indeed, the accountability systems at both the federal and state levels are fundamentally flawed.
By now, most people are familiar with the largely discredited, high-stakes testing approach to accountability adopted under the federal "No Child Left Behind" legislation. Ostensibly to ensure all children -- irrespective of race, ethnicity or income level -- are learning, NCLB requires every school district in each state to demonstrate "adequate yearly progress" in student achievement on standardized tests. The glitch is, NCLB compares the performance of children currently in a specific grade to the performance of different students who were in that grade during the preceding year.
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A thankful Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel presented himself to bleary-eyed South Side commuters today, embodying the humble, sweater-wearing politician who told voters in television ads that sometimes he rubs people the wrong way.
Tough Choices
“We have a lot of work to go, and a lot of work to do going forward,” Emanuel told reporters at an early childhood learning center on the West Side. “But I do believe doing it together, we are going to get where we need to go as one, as a city, a lot faster.”
Softer Side
Even if voters like the mayor’s softer presentation, they may not appreciate his choices in the new term. The financial crisis means that Emanuel will have to work to raise taxes and cut spending, said Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based research group that tracks government spending.
“Whatever patience the re-elected mayor has will be severely tried by the fiscal challenges confronting both the city and the Chicago public-school system,” Martire said. “People, meaning voters and taxpayers, need to hear what they need to hear, not what they want to hear.”
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Low-income immigrants residents hope Rauner's cuts won't block their path to citizenship
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"The governor of Illinois came to the African American Contractors Association gala with a message: The state needs to expand economically, construction needs to be booming, jobs need to be created and Blacks need to be included in a growing economy................................In typical GOP fashion, Gov. Rauner is taking on labor unions and proposing budget cuts that are troubling. Robert Otter of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability said Gov. Rauner proposed $6.3 billion cuts as Illinois faces a budget deficit. “He has yet to present as governor any sort of revenue enhancement or revenue increases,” Mr. Otter said."
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UPDATE: On Thursday afternoon, Madigan announced a plan to tax personal income over $1 million at an extra 3 percent, bringing the effective rate for people earning more than $1 million to 8 percent. Individuals with income under $1 million would continue to pay the current rate of 5 percent,
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel's housing agency has been pulling hundreds of millions of dollars from a fund earmarked for its affordable housing program and using the money instead to boost its pension, purchase government debt and build up a staggering cash reserve.
The agency's massive cash reserves were first noticed by the Chicago Housing Initiative, a coalition of tenants. The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a Chicago-based watchdog group, later produced a report on the stockpile, leading to a spate of news coverage over the summer. But the fate of much of the money the housing agency has stashed away has so far gone unreported. Through a series of open records requests, the Chicago Housing Initiative and the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability obtained internal documents revealing that under Emanuel, the CHA has become as much an investment fund as a housing agency.
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"...Rauner is making this budget thing more difficult than it needs to be by opting to introduce a budget that ignores the revenue side of the ledger, instead relying entirely on questionable spending cuts to resolve the state's fiscal mess."
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As lawmakers and stakeholders await Gov. Bruce Rauner’s budget proposal next week, the Institute for Illinois' Fiscal Sustainability at the Civic Federation has released a five-year roadmap that it says will stabilize state finances and protect government services.
.......While the group’s plan calls for a rate hike, it wants to see the income tax drop on Jan. 1, 2018 to 4 percent for individuals and 5.6 percent for corporations. Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, says while income tax rates do need to be adjusted, it’s not sound policy to temporarily increase the rates and call for a rollback in three years.
“You’re implementing artificial changes in policy that aren’t based on anything economically driven – rather, they’re politically driven,” Martire said. “The problem with our revenue system isn’t temporary, it’s structural.”
Martire says a more sound approach is to adjust the rates to account for the gap between the revenue Illinois takes in and what it spends on services, like education and health care.