Thursday, May 27, 2010

Education... tax credit or not to tax credit

Several years ago when I was interning with a certain association at the SC State House I was made keenly aware of the lengths to which people will go to get a vote to go their way. I had initially decided to put off the stereotypes about politics - about 2 minutes into moinitoring my first committee meeting I was jarred back to reality. So a few years have passed and my naivite is well diminished. It is in this spirit that begin this blog, taking a hard look at the realities of state and local politics and considering issues that others only toss platitudes at. So lets jump right in and look at something that has been much abuzz in SC State politics over the past few years, education tax credits.

There are those who believe that SC schools truly are the worst in the country. Now not getting into issues of measuring the difficulty of tests as a defense, I say we look at this in terms of who gets what. First off, education tax credits are not in and of themselves a bad idea - but when applying them will in effect create legal barriers to something guaranteed in the state constitution, a (minimally adequate - don't get me started) education, then I have a problem. How would tax crdits do this? Glad you asked.

South Carolina, unlike its neighbors to the north and south have pockets of industry with a majority of the state still in rural or recently urban (by population density) areas. NC has an industrial triangle, Georgia's industrial centers, Savannah, Atlanta, etc. has spawned innovation networks throughout the state. In South Carolina, we have the Greenville area and the industry which radiates from that, although it does not expand much past Simpsonville; Columbia, which is a college and government town with a few key industries in the Northeast and Lexington but no major innovation corridors around it; and finally Charleston, which quite frankly speaks for itself. Why am I describing all this? Well the tax base and the educated population tends to follow the industry (and vice versa for my fellow Political Science/Public Policy nerds this is an extension of Tiebout) but there is nothing earth shattering in that statement. The problem is, this is where the tax base and subsequently the money for the best schools goes. A natural progression of this is that the private schools follow, creating a vacuum - and subsequently a market - in poor areas. A market? Really?

Well yes, but not one that these schools would normally move in to. So we have a situation where, if education tax credits are passed, people in areas with extant private schools stand to win big and those rural poor, who the proponents of tax credits claim to be so concerned about wind up with nothing... enter the real estate developers, many of whom are pumping many thousands of dollars into statewide races to get pro-tax credit legislators elected. I am sure many people are familiar with The State's and Post and Courier's limited coverage of Howard Rich. You see, tax credits will essentially create a market for these developers where there was none before. Meanwhile, the $1,000 dollars or so that the rural poor will get - which is not enough to pay for semester at most private schools are now in a situation where they not only can not afford this private school, but the funding for their current school is dramatically cut - this is the operational side of you caring conservatives' ideas on education. Now conjecture, and in deed I am writing a polemic here, but we can look to examples in Arizona and Utah to see how this has played out before. But I will leave that to your own endeavors to explore. More next time... and maybe not so long winded.

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