Utah's powerful Republican legislative leaders have quietly formed a political issue committee aimed at defeating a referendum on November's ballot that would repeal a private school tuition voucher law passed by the 2007 Legislature.
That is not the only quiet move in the voucher battle. Loopholes in Utah campaign law are also allowing some groups on both sides of the fight to hide exactly who is providing hundreds of thousands of dollars of their funding.
The state's voucher law would provide tuition payments of between $500 to $3,000 per child, based on parents' income, to private schools. An anti-voucher citizen referendum petition drive last spring was successful, and the question of whether to repeal the new law will be on the November ballot.
With anti-voucher sentiment winning in recent public opinion polls in Utah, the GOP legislative leaders decided to take action to "educate citizens" on what the voucher law would really do, said Jeff Hartley, who has been hired by the Informed Voter Project PIC to run the leaders' campaign.
The legislative leaders' PIC persuaded pro-voucher businessman Patrick Byrne, president of Overstock.com, to donate $200,000 to fund its operations. So far, Byrne is the only donor to that PIC, but Hartley says it hopes to raise at least another $100,000 before the election.
Hartley, a former executive director of the Utah Republican Party, said more pledges have been made. Some of those pledges come from several dozen lobbyists whom the GOP leaders recently called together and asked for cash to oppose the referendum. Those lobbyists' organizations helped write a business-backed education reform plan, which included vouchers.
Hartley said the PIC was formed in August by Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem; Senate Majority Leader Curt Bramble, R-Provo; Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem; House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy; House Majority Leader Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara; and Reps. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George; and Greg Hughes, R-Draper. The leaders' PIC has nothing to do with a pro-voucher radio advertisement now being investigated by the attorney general's office for not properly registering with the state.
The leaders' PIC strategy is to identify likely voters in the November election, send them mailers and auto-dialed telephone calls asking them to attend a local town-hall meeting hosted by their pro-voucher GOP state senator and/or House members, said Hartley. Half a dozen meetings have already been held, and all 29 Senate districts will be targeted for at least one such affair.
"This is a grass-roots effort," said Hartley, who as the GOP state director has organized party mass meetings across the state before.
"This is not just a Republican effort. We want anyone and everyone to come and learn the facts about how vouchers will work. When they do, we believe they will support the voucher program" and vote against the referendum that would repeal vouchers, said Hartley.
"We felt that this debate should include (GOP) legislators who passed the law," added Hughes, who got to know Byrne after running a bill that would dedicate a certain percent of all education funding for classrooms, another one of the Overstock.com boss' pet projects.
"This is the only way we can reach out to our constituents, telling them why we passed this law, plead our case, and make the case for vouchers," said Hughes.
Big spending
A review by the newspaper of several voucher PICs found that more than $3 million has been spent, or soon will be, on the voucher referendum battle. (PICs report spending about $2.5 million so far, and at least another $500,000 donated by the National Education Association — a national teacher union — is being held by the Utah Education Association and should go into the battle soon.)
About half the total — $1.53 million — has come from the NEA, a pro-public education group that opposes vouchers. The voucher fight in Utah has become a national issue, with other states watching closely to see how it fares here, possibly to follow suit.
Other large donors in the battle include Byrne, who has given $290,000 this year to pro-voucher groups ($200,000 to the leaders' PIC, the rest to Parents For Choice in Education, the main pro-voucher group).
That means Byrne gave about 10 percent of all money put into the battle this year just by himself. In recent years, Byrne has been the largest individual donor in Utah politics. That likely did not hurt him when he persuaded the GOP-run Legislature, in a special session, to pass a special stock reform law that he sought a few years ago.
New York investor Thomas L. Kempner Jr. gave $50,000 to pro-voucher forces, about 2 percent of the total spent.
The UEA gave another $44,133 to fight vouchers (not counting money from the NEA for which it served as a conduit to the main anti-voucher group Utahns for Public Schools).
But exact sources for about $400,000 flowing into the race cannot be determined because some groups on both sides of the issue are taking advantage of loopholes in Utah election law.
For example, no disclosure has been made about who exactly gave about 77 percent of the money raised this year by Parents For Choice in Education PIC — $270,000 of $350,445, the newspaper found.
Parents for Choice in Education has formed four separate groups — a political action committee, a corporation and a foundation — to help raise and/or spend its money. Utah law requires the PIC and PAC to report donors, but not the corporation and foundation.
The PIC is doing most of the spending in the voucher battle. But most of the money going to it is from the corporation and foundation, which need not disclose donors. Thus, the original source of much of that money is unknown.
Leah Barker, spokeswoman for Parents For Choice in Education, said her group formed so many different entities "because different entities are allowed by the IRS code to do different things," such as lobbying, educating or spending on a referendum campaign.
Is it using those many groups to intentionally cloud who is funding activities? "Absolutely not," Barker said.
But Susan Kuziak, executive director of the UEA, said, "It concerns me that they (Parents For Choice in Education) are not more transparent." She said she would like to know more about where the group's money comes from "because they are on TV with an ad and have been on the radio all along."
Also, an anti-voucher PIC formed by Communities For Quality Education does not make clear from where its root funding is coming.
The CQE PIC reported spending $133,400 on the Utah voucher battle so far. But it reports raising no money at all — raising questions about who provided the money it says it spent. Its report says its cash balance as of Sept. 17 was a negative $133,400.
CQE spokesman Damien Filer said the parent organization is a nonprofit education advocacy group, and operations money from it went to fund its PIC.
A split Legislature
While GOP leaders in the Legislature formed a group to try to preserve vouchers, nine other members of the Legislature have instead given a total of $4,285 to the anti-voucher Utahns For Public Schools.
They include both Democrats and Republicans who voted against vouchers — Sens. Mike Dmitrich, D-Price, who gave $500; Ross Romero, D-Salt Lake, $500; Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake, $485; and Reps. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, $1,500; Jim Bird, R-West Jordan, $300; Kory Holdaway, R-Taylorsville, $300; Lou Shurtliff, D-Ogden, $300; Roz McGee, D-Salt Lake, $300; and Carol Spackman Moss, D-Holladay, $100.
Meanwhile, Hughes said the GOP leaders' town-hall meetings provide, along with a number of handouts, a 10-minute video put together by the Utah Taxpayers Association, a business-backed group that also supports vouchers.
"It is a fine (video), and if we can raise the money we may try to put that on cable TV," said Hughes. "But we can't compete with the millions of dollars the NEA is dumping into (commercial) TV ads now."
Hartley said he believes the UEA has sent people to some of his town-hall meetings to argue against vouchers. "It wouldn't be the first time that the UEA has infiltrated" GOP meetings. But Kuziak said while she wouldn't mind sending representatives to the pro-voucher meetings, she hasn't done so because she didn't know when and where they were.
Hughes points out that pro-voucher advocates have a real challenge this year, an off-election year. That's because only Utah's towns and cities have candidate elections. And with the very Democratic, and anti-voucher, Salt Lake City holding a mayor's race that will draw a big voter turnout, "the opposition has a built-in voting advantage," noted Hughes. "We're concentrating our (GOP leaders' town-hall meeting) efforts in Utah and Washington counties — which are very pro-voucher. We have to turn out the vote there" to defeat the referendum statewide, Hughes said.
Also of note, some state teachers' unions outside of Utah are also putting money into the anti-voucher fight. The Colorado Education Association donated $5,000, and the Wyoming Education Association donated $1,004.
E-mail: bbjr@desnews.com; lee@desnews.com