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New Hampshire vouchers = chaos?

That’s the word from one top New Hampshire bureaucrat:

Giving tax credits to businesses that help pay for private school vouchers would be “a recipe for chaos,” the state’s top tax official said yesterday.

“This can’t be administered,” Department of Revenue Administration Commissioner Phil Blatsos told the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday.

The bill, which passed in the Senate and got preliminary approval from the House, would allow businesses to reduce their state business taxes by the same sum they contribute to a special foundation that would provide the vouchers.

Aside from the fact that similar programs are administered in six states, why, precisely, can’t such a program work in New Hampshire? 

The state would cap the tax credits at $500,000, which raised the question of what happens to a business that donated to the foundation, then learned the tax credits were used up. Blatsos said the idea of first-come, first-serve wouldn’t work.

There are countless tax credit programs across the nation that are capped at a given amount.  And this guy says a $500k program wouldn’t work because…well, we don’t know why.  On that note, cut to the anti-school-choice Republican!

Others raised concerns about constitutionality, with Manchester Rep. Steve Vaillancourt calling the tax credits “a shell game,” to drain state revenue for religious schools.

But he’s been here before–specifically, when he helped defeat a voucher bill back in March. 

"It’s so blatantly unconstitutional that it should be done away with and put out of its misery once and for all," said Rep. Steve Vaillancourt, a Manchester Republican, who waved a copy of the state Constitution. He said the plan to direct the tuition money through parents would amount to "money laundering."

And by the way: if we’re reading this correctly, New Hampshire’s Department of Education received $137 million in state general fund revenue in 2005 (that’s part of $1 billion total for last year).  Assuming the $500,000 program is maxed out, it would take up a whopping .36% of the total budget.  Oh yeah, New Hampshire would lose its shirt on the deal.