Q&A draws many questions on school choice bill, LB 753
Dist. 34 Sen. Loren Lippincott conducted his first legislative update in Aurora Friday, sharing insight on his and other priority bills as well as lessons learned during his first two months in office.
The Central City native shared frustration with the rate of progress in the “slow, sausage-making process” in Lincoln, where lawmakers hit the half-way point last week of this year’s 90-day session.
“Overall you have 102 priority bills, which are the only ones that are most likely going to see the light of day,” he explained to a group of approximately 25 constituents at the Poco Creek Clubhouse in Aurora. “Somebody figured out on the back of a napkin that at the pace we’re going right now we’ll probably only get to about 33 priority bills that will become law.”
Consequently, Speaker Sen. John Arch announced plans last week to schedule up to 29 night work sessions, which can run up until 11:59 p.m.
Lippincott blamed the slow rate of progress on a filibuster strategy being initiated by Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh (Dist. 6) and Megan Hunt (Dist. 8), whom he called “desperadoes trying to slow down the whole process” based on their opposition to a pro-life bill and a proposal that would prevent underage kids from having sex transition operations.
“Machaela and Megan don’t want those bills to see the light of day so they’re holding up the entire process to keep that from happening,” he said. “But they will fail. Machaela even said on the floor of the legislature that ‘Since you’re making life miserable for me, I’m going to make life miserable for everybody.’ So that’s kind of the background on all of that.”
School choice bill
The first-term senator fielded several questions in an hour-long presentation about his stance on LB 753, an opportunity scholarships tax credit proposal (often referred to as the school choice bill) which Lippincott personally prioritized, admitting that it is a complex piece of legislation.
“The argument that I hear a lot is, oh, you are taking my tax money away from public schools,” he began. “Well, no, we’re not. This bill is not doing that. We can get into the nuts and bolts on that but in essence it’s giving school choice, and just FYI, Nebraska and North Dakota are the only two states in America that do not have some vehicle of school choice in terms of the state supporting school choice. This bill puts us together with the other 48 states.”
Asked to offer more specifics on the bill since he authored a newspaper column which labeled public education in America as being in a sad state of affairs, Lippincott focused on how he believes this bill fits into Gov. Jim Pillen’s overall priorities.
He reported that the state’s budget is round $5.1 billion, with 38 percent of that earmarked for education, including $2.8 billion for the University of Nebraska. Approximately $600 million of that is funded by Nebraska taxpayers, with a typical $200,000 house costing its owner $2,300 in property taxes.
“That is a lot of money, so what Pillen and Company are doing is trying to shift more of that weight from local property taxes and shift it more to the state giving relief to bring property taxes down,” he explained. “Sen. Lou Ann Linahan (the bill’s sponsor), she’s pretty conservative, and she has put a lot of thought into this and like I said most states do have school choice, but not Nebraska or North Dakota.”
Lippincott then went on to dispel some of what he said are myths about LB 753, which he explained in last week’s newspaper column, noting for example that private schools welcome students with special needs, accept students who qualify for free and reduced lunches and typically score higher on standardized tests than students attending public schools.
“I could go on and on here with case summaries and all that business, but school choice, I look at it this way,” he said. “When you’ve got competition, you keep costs down and quality up. When you have a monopoly, costs are normally high and (as for) quality, think Amtrak. So public schools should not be afraid of this bill. I know that the teacher’s union says don’t take away our money, don’t take away our students. I think it’s an empty argument.
“I will say this also,” he continued. “Knocking on 6,000 doors during my campaign, by far, and I would say by a factor of 40 to 1, the number one concern that people had was what’s happening in schools. I always try to bring this out in all my speeches, that if all the schools in Nebraska and America were like Aurora, Central City, Fullerton and Northwest High School we’d have a wonderful thing. We really, truly do, and I’m not saying that here because I’m talking in Aurora. I believe it. I’ve met with all the superintendents of all these different schools and they’re squared-away people, but that’s not true for everywhere, so competition is a good thing. We should never be afraid of that. The only people who are afraid of that are people who offer an inferior product and I don’t believe that we have an inferior product here.”
That answer drew a quick response from Carrie Peterson of Aurora.
“I’ve had a daughter with special needs who attended a private school and a public school and I know that it is not the same,” she said. “In my experience in how they treated my daughter and the kind of services that were provided, they were not even. The public schools were better, absolutely, hands down. They are not equal. There were not the same regulations or stipulations and services (at private schools) that public schools provide.
“I’m also very concerned,” Peterson continued, “that once you place more advantages toward a family that can afford private school, you’re placing that much more disadvantage to the public school.”
“So in your case you would want to continue to have your child go to public school, correct?” Lippincott responded. “That’s your school choice.”
“But you’re supporting this other bill and you’re my representative,” she said.
Lippincott then offered to contact Peterson after the meeting to discuss the issue further.
Learning the ropes
On a final note, Lippincott said learning the ropes in the Nebraska Legislature is challenging, demanding a quick understanding of who you can trust, who you cannot and who you line up with, politically.
“There are 49 members in the legislature and we’re all family,” he said. “We all have relationships, so the important thing is when you have a relationship with somebody, if it’s a work relationship, your marriage or whatever it is, you keep your relationship intact. So if you’re talking about issues, don’t attack the person because you have to value the relationships above the issues. That’s important in marriages, it’s important in relationships and it’s certainly true in politics.”
Lippincott, who serves on the Appropriations Committee, said he’s learned during his first two months in Lincoln that the legislature uses a language all its own.
“It’s much more complicated really than I thought,” he shared. “It does take a while, and unlike the military and Delta Airlines, where you go through a training process and you normally have manuals saying this is what the job entails, they don’t have any of that here in this political realm, so it’s kind of feast or famine. You have to learn on your own and just learn through osmosis.”
During his presentation, Lippincott reviewed each of the bills he introduced, which include:
* LB 764 -- a bill designed to make Nebraska a “winner take all” state regarding electoral votes during presidential elections.
* LB 52 -- a bill offering tuition assistants to members of the Nebraska National Guard;
* LB 247 -- a bill direct the county treasurer, not the county clerk, to issue motor vehicle titles on vehicles seized by law enforcement when such vehicles are seized in relation to crimes involving drugs;
* LB 571 -- a bill that appropriates $750,000 from the General Fund each year to carry out the
provisions of the Water Well Standards and Contractors’ Practice Act;
* LB 610 -- a bill appropriating $10.2 million to the Department of Education for Program 158 for the purpose of funding career and technical education programs in secondary and post secondary;
* LB 600 -- a bill that amends the Economic Opportunity Program to include infrastructure improvements for first and second class cities, villages for redevelopment plans under Community Development law.