Idaho Democrats call to pause Parental Choice Tax Credit program funds
BOISE, Idaho (KIFI)– Idaho’s newly launched Parental Choice Tax Credit program drew heavy interest from families with over 3,300 applications submitted within the first few hours, but it is now facing scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers.
Background
The Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides a refundable tax credit of up to $5,000 per eligible child ($7,500 for children with qualifying disabilities) to help cover education expenses for students attending non-public schools. Families can use these funds for private school tuition, homeschooling expenses, curriculum costs, and other education-related expenses.
RELATED: Idaho Parents Rush to Apply for New Parental Choice Tax Credit Program
Idaho Democrats call for a pause on funds
"We're worried that the Idaho Tax Commission has not built in enough oversight (in) how that money is spent. We know of no auditor who's going to go check to make sure that the money is spent properly. No clawback provisions to make sure that the money, if it's misspent, fraudulently wasted, there's no clawback provision that will allow the state Tax Commission to get that money back, or at least nothing that's enforceable," District 29 Senator James Ruchti said, who helped draft the letter to the Idaho Tax Commission Chairman Jeff McCray.
When asked whether the request to pause funding was a response to a letter from Republican chairs of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee calling on the Department of Health and Welfare to freeze child care payments, Sen. James Ruchti said the same standard should apply to the Parental Choice tax credit program.
"If you're going to do it for payments made to child care centers based on something happening in one state, Minnesota, then why wouldn't we do that exact same thing for the voucher program when there's so much evidence that in voucher programs in other states, there is waste, fraud, and abuse, all over the place. And so we should do that here in Idaho and make sure we're spending our Idaho taxpayer money with some oversight," Ruchti said.
Ruchti also raised concerns about how the tax credit could affect public school funding, particularly in rural and aging school districts. He says the program prioritizes private and religious schools while longstanding infrastructure problems in public schools remain unaddressed.
"If you're in Idaho Falls and your kids attend a school where the ceiling tiles are falling down in the hallway or in the classroom, or you're in Salmon and your kids go to a school where the sewage is running underneath the cafeteria, you have a situation where the state of Idaho is going to send $50 million to private schools and religious schools, while your kids classroom still struggles with those issues. It's just not right. And it's going to get worse because we're going to start cutting K-12 budgets," Ruchti said.
