MOScholars isn’t a hypothetical policy experiment anymore—it is a rapidly scaling alternative for families across our state. In just four years, student participation has gone from just over 1,300 students to nearly 6,500. The state treasurer’s office reported a massive surge in applications early this spring, indicating that even more families would like to participate in the program this fall.

It is likely that the number of scholarships will expand even further in the near future. Governor Kehoe recently announced that Missouri will opt into a new federal tax credit program, allowing any U.S. taxpayer to redirect up to $1,700 of their federal liability toward school choice initiatives in any participating state, including Missouri.

When we fund students rather than systems, we create an environment where every child has a path to success. The legislature’s decision to back the growing demand for MOScholars with a $60 million commitment shows that parental empowerment is no longer a fringe priority. Now, the focus must shift to ensuring this funding flows transparently, efficiently, and directly into the hands of the parents who know their children’s needs best.

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Why the high demand? In short, parents have diverse goals and students have diverse needs—it should be no surprise that the locally zoned public school isn’t the best fit for every student. MOScholars permits families to seek alternatives that better align with their children’s individual needs and family values.

Predictably, the MOScholars expansion has faced resistance, most notably from teachers’ unions. The largest teachers’ union in Missouri—the approximately 45,000-member Missouri National Education Association (MNEA)—attempted to delay the allocation of the funds in June. The attempt was unsuccessful, but the organization remains undeterred: A representative of the MNEA, attorney Loretta Haggard, acknowledged that while efforts to block the spending this year are effectively over, they will try again next year.

The union’s legal arguments against MOScholars are procedural, but the deeper concern is that MOScholars will divert revenue from public schools. Specifically, the fear is that enrollment-driven state funding for MOScholars students will not go to public schools. However, local funding will still be available, and of course, the public schools will no longer bear the cost of educating students who use MOScholars to exercise choice.

The outcome of this legal battle could set an important precedent for Missouri’s school choice landscape. Even with the $50 million MOScholars appropriation, the choice environment in Missouri is more restrictive than in many other states. Take Texas as an example—it passed legislation this year providing $1 billion in public funds for its own version of MOScholars.

Despite the MNEA’s predictable efforts to undo recent progress, our lawmakers should continue to push for school choice for more Missouri families.

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This is not a new concept for Missourians familiar with our similar state-level program, MOScholars.

How the Program Works

Each taxpayer can direct up to $1,700 of their federal tax liability to an SGO in any state rather than sending it to the IRS. While donor contributions are capped, there is no federal limit on the amount an eligible student may receive, or how many students are funded. SGOs determine funding allocation based on pre-set rules (evenly, tiered by income, etc.).

Participating SGOs must be federally recognized, legitimate nonprofits (not private foundations), and the governor or another state authority must approve the list of eligible SGOs. In Missouri, the State Treasurer’s Office approves organizations for MOScholars, so it may also have this role for the federal program as well.

State Participation

The federal program requires states to opt in to this new program. I expect Missouri will, but we have not declared our intent to participate at this point. The tax credit is slated to become available beginning in 2027.

If Missouri opts out, Missouri SGOs would not be eligible to receive or distribute federal funds. This means no Missouri students could benefit from the program. However, Missouri residents could still claim the federal credit by donating to an SGO in another participating state.

Participating in this program would complement MOScholars and bring even greater choice, flexibility, and opportunity to families around the state.

The post What the New Federal K-12 Tax Credit Program Could Mean for Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the April 23, 1960, editorial “Twin Principles,” the paper declared, “There cannot be any real question that payment of tax funds directly or indirectly to support private church schools would violate the principle of separation between church and state.”

Responding via a letter to the editor five days later, James Bick, the president of Citizens for Educational Freedom, noted the error in this claim. He wrote:

When tax-provided educational benefits are given to all children for the non-religious elements of their education there is no violation of the separation of Church and state principle. Aid is given to the parent and child. The parent has the freedom to expend his benefits at the school of his choice. This is the principle under which tuition grants were made under the “G.I. Bill.” The United States Supreme Court used the same principle in deciding the Everson vs. Board of Education Case (1947) concerning school bus transportation.

It took more than 40 years, but the U.S. Supreme Court used exactly the logic laid out by Bick when deciding the Ohio voucher case of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. There is no violation of the separation of church and state when parents are provided the opportunity to choose their children’s school, even if it is a religious school.

In a recent Post-Dispatch article, you’ll find another mistake. The reporters writing the article label the MoScholars program a “voucher.” Undoubtedly, they know this is the language used by those who stand against school choice. A voucher implies that the state is giving direct aid, in the form of a voucher, to pay for private school. This is not the way the MoScholars program works. It is supported by donations, and those making the donations are then eligible for a state tax credit. These donations provide education savings accounts to parents who may choose to use them at private schools—but parents can also use the money for a variety of other purposes, such as tutoring, online classes, or special education services, to name a few.

To find out more about the MoScholars program and how you can make a tax credit donation or apply for a scholarship, visit the Missouri State Treasurer’s website.

The post Wrong Then, Wrong Now—the Post-Dispatch and School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Visit treasurer.mo.gov for more information

The post How The Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program Works appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

These rules govern the types of scholarship organizations that can be created, the types of programs that are eligible to receive scholarship funds, including certified homeschool, and the final eligibility requirements for students who can apply for the scholarships. The only remaining hurdle is getting taxpayers to donate to the program.

The wheels of government don’t always move quickly, but at least in this case they have moved. Hopefully, by the fall, nearly 5,000 Missouri students will have Empowerment Scholarships Accounts. Missouri parents are finally getting more options for directing the education of their children without having to move.

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Both claims are lies.

I know they’re lies because I authored the proposal, and I know why I wrote it the way I did. At no point does the text of the MPBR reference—sneakily or otherwise—expanding Missouri’s educational choice options beyond its current boundaries. A simple call to our office or my personal cell, which staff at the Star have, would have further disabused the editorial writer of the notion. And if, as the editorial stipulates, people are angry about what is happening in their schools, this proposal intends to be a solution that reduces that anger by . . . solving those problems.

Problem solving! How quaint.

Indeed, finding solutions to public policy problems is central to the mission of the Show-Me Institute, and we pride ourselves on pursuing and advancing those solutions with facts and fair arguments. We believe our words speak for themselves and we invite feedback and criticism of those words, but our standing presumption is that our counterparts in the media and elsewhere have adopted a similar approach in their critiques—an approach that relies on facts and advances those facts through fair argument. The Star’s editorial board missed both of those marks here.

No one is hiding that the Show-Me Institute organizationally supports school choice. We do. But the MPBR is not a school choice proposal, nor is it a call to “subsidize private schools.” Affirming that parents have the right “to choose the existing educational option that works best for their children” is important because many parents and children who qualify for that choice under current law have been denied it in the past. It’s mind-boggling that the Star doesn’t know this.

The Star and I agree that “transparency shouldn’t be limited to public schools.” We’ve been working on mandating government transparency for cities, counties, school districts, local taxing districts, the state, and others for years—transparency ideas taken up not only by the Missouri Treasurer’s office three years ago but also by the legislature with HB 271 just months ago. That we’ve finally gotten to curriculum transparency is, if anything, late. The implication that schools are somehow being targeted in a vacuum for transparency is to have sleepwalked through the last half decade of Missouri policy and politics.

Like a parent might be, I’m not mad at the Star—I’m just disappointed. I assume that Star employees still know how to operate a phone or send electronic mail to ascertain and share facts. That they instead chose to share the false idea that the MPBR would subsidize private schools is disappointing.

After all, it wasn’t the Show-Me Institute trying to make angry people angrier.

The post The Kansas City Star Lies in “Parents’ Bill of Rights” Editorial appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The omnibus bill touches on other local government issues of interest to us, notably the manner and circumstances under which local governments can take away rights of association and commerce via pandemic “health orders” and lockdowns. Living in Chiefs Kingdom doesn’t make you Kansas City’s peasant, and the bill’s eminently reasonable restrictions on local governments’ ability to take draconian actions against Missouri residents were overdue. As with local checkbook transparency, the state has an obligation to ensure that local governments, which exist as a managerial convenience, are accountable for acts done in the state’s name. On health orders in particular, local governments far exceeded in the last year what the state should ever tolerate. Congratulations to Sen. Bob Onder for successfully attaching this limiting language to the bill and to Sen. Andrew Koenig, Rep. Jim Murphy, and others for adding fuel to the fire throughout the process.

House Bill 271 now moves on to the governor, who is expected to sign it. Congratulations to the legislators and advocates who achieved these objectives.

The post Excellent: Legislature Passes Bill Holding Local Governments Accountable appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In fact, checkbook transparency is an issue that multiple branches of Missouri government have consistently recognized since the rollout of the Institute’s Show-Me Checkbook projects. In 2018, the Missouri Treasurer’s office introduced the aptly named ”Show-Me Checkbook,” cataloguing state spending in a comprehensive way that, to that time, had only existed on the Show-Me Institute website. Meanwhile, the Missouri legislature introduced, and the House passed, legislation that would have required city governments in Missouri to report these checkbook records to the state for publication.

But could the Missouri Auditor’s Office get ahead of them all and deliver taxpayers a game-changing transparency win?

Strong municipal transparency laws are few and far-between around the country, but the Auditor’s Office could make the Show-Me State a leader on the issue by leveraging the office’s existing rule-making power. Section 105.145 of Missouri’s Revised Statutes states:

2. The governing body of each political subdivision in the state shall cause to be prepared an annual report of the financial transactions of the political subdivision in such summary form as the state auditor shall prescribe by rule, except that the annual report of political subdivisions whose cash receipts for the reporting period are ten thousand dollars or less shall only be required to contain the cash balance at the beginning of the reporting period, a summary of cash receipts, a summary of cash disbursements and the cash balance at the end of the reporting period. (Emphasis mine)

Put another way, the auditor has the ability to define what will be required of annual financial summary reports submitted by Missouri cities. That summary can, then, be required to include a host of financial information, including a listing of transactions undertaken by a city above a certain threshold; the public contact information of vendors with whom the city does business; revenues received and from what sources; and any other relevant information that would help the auditor do her job. The auditor’s office could then offer an alternative to filling out all of this information in the summary form she prescribes: to simply export the expenditure data from the city’s accounting software in a machine-readable format. Implementing this reform through existing reporting requirements reaffirms that there would be no additional cost to cities to transparently report their spending. With this reform, cities could go through the process of filling out the auditor’s form pursuant to the auditor’s requirements, or they could largely just submit the documents that would have gone into their financial summaries anyway. From there, publication of the checkbooks online by the auditor or other department would be a simple and inexpensive, if not costless, undertaking.

I have been impressed by the Auditor’s work on transparency issues in the past, and I think if her office pursued a project like this, it would serve as a model for transparency initiatives across the United States. Missourians deserve to know what their local governments are spending their money on, and it appears the Auditor’s Office may be able to deliver it to them.

The post Missouri Auditor’s Office Should Require Muni Checkbook Transparency appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Proponents of Missouri’s LIHTC program often cite the claim that there are an estimated 100,000 people on waiting lists for low-income housing as a rationale for reviving the program that was halted in 2017. I agree that affordable housing for low-income Missourians is important, but I disagree that the LIHTC is an effective way to address the problem. Missouri already receives over $160 million per year from the federal government for the same low-income housing projects.

The bottom line is that the program doesn’t work, and policymakers know it. Just last week, Missouri’s own state treasurer, who sits on the board responsible for issuing the low-income housing tax credits, criticized the program for being wasteful and inefficient. Missouri’s three previous state auditors have concluded that for each dollar of tax credit awarded, only a little more than $0.40 is spent on building affordable housing. The remainder goes to developers, investors, and government. It should go without saying that Missourians deserve a better investment of their tax dollars.

With so little of each state dollar going toward building more housing, it shouldn’t be surprising that the program doesn’t result in a significant increase in the amount of available affordable housing across the state. This result aligns with academic research on the federal program, which has illustrated why the structure of the LIHTC and surrounding regulations inflates building costs and results in poor returns on investment.

It is important to reiterate that the discussion in Jefferson City is only regarding whether Missouri should resume devoting funds on top of what the federal government already provides. Even without any new credits being authorized since 2017, as of last report, the state is potentially on the hook for around $1 billion in state low-income housing tax credits As lawmakers continue to struggle to balance the state’s budget each year as a result of the increasing cost of other spending priorities’ (education, Medicaid, public safety, etc.), shouldn’t all tax dollars go toward programs where they can be expected to stretch a little further?

Supporters offer a false choice when arguing that reauthorizing Missouri’s LIHTC program is the only way to address the state’s affordable housing needs. How could this be true when Missouri is one of only 15 states that even have programs matching the federal government’s LIHTC funds each year? Why don’t lawmakers look to the other 35 states to see how they address this issue?

The cost of restoring Missouri’s LIHTC program would be equivalent to $105 per month for each low-income individual currently on the waiting list. The value received by those individuals would be the equivalent to $44 per month. Deciding where to use taxpayer dollars is all about priorities; the question is whose priorities are more important: low-income Missourians in need of affordable housing or the developers who profit from that spending?

The post Restarting Missouri’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program Is Still a Bad Idea appeared first on Show-Me Institute.