Oklahoma taxpayers were sold a load of bull about parental choice tax credits

Yahoo

24-02-2025

There's a terrible stench that smells a lot like bull excrement emanating from the halls of our state Capitol right now, and Republicans are hoping that Oklahomans plug their nose and pretend their highly touted voucher-like program doesn't stink to high heaven.
Many are also likely hoping that their constituents will suffer from a convenient bout of amnesia when it comes to recalling the promises made — and not kept — in 2023 about their Parental Choice Tax Credit Act.
As it turns out, Oklahomans were sold a sham when legislators sought to convince us why our hard-earned tax dollars should be used to pay for children's private school educations even while their local public schools continue to struggle financially and academically.
Lawmakers swore until they were blue in the face that the program, which allows the Oklahoma Tax Commission to issue individuals checks ranging from $5,000 to $7,500, would expand school choice for low-income children who were trapped in failing schools.
To add guardrails to prohibit all 33,000 private school students from claiming the credit and busting our budget, lawmakers prudently capped expenditure at $150 million in 2024, $200 million in 2025 and $250 million in all subsequent years.
But I think we all probably knew in our gut exactly where this program was headed when lawmakers refused to implement income limits on who could qualify.
Yep, to probably nobody's great surprise, it turns out our legislators capitulated to their wealthy overlords and created a program that heavily benefits those who absolutely do not need government handouts.
Over 45% of the 'tax credits' awarded in the spring 2025 semester went to recipients in households that earned more than $150,000 a year, according to an analysis quietly published by the Oklahoma Tax Commission last month.
That same analysis revealed that we forked out $19.3 million to cover the spring private school costs for over 7,700 recipients whose households made over $250,000 a year.
In comparison, slightly more than 8,100 households whose parents made $75,000 or less received the tax credit, according to the records.
Just a little more than a quarter of the roughly 30,000 recipients came from that income bracket, despite half the workers in our state making less than $57,000 a year.
Meanwhile, at least one GOP legislator and Gov. Kevin Stitt, a millionaire whose own children attend private school, are pressuring lawmakers to expand access to the rich by removing the program's spending cap. (Lest you forget, Stitt made headlines in 2023 by announcing his family planned to apply for the government handout before backtracking amid public ridicule and questions about the ethics of creating a law that would grow his own checking account.)
But if that wasn't enough, earlier this month, The Tulsa World reported that the Oklahoma Tax Commission is trying to claw back $5 million in funding for 1,855 taxpayers whose children did not attend private schools for the entire year. It's not clear which income bracket those students fell into. The publication also reported that the Tax Commission says how much public funding is going to each school is a deep dark 'secret' because checks were made out to individual taxpayers.
It's absolutely unacceptable that lawmakers are not willing to be transparent about how our tax dollars are being spent and if we're getting a good return on our investment. At the very least we should all be allowed to see what entities we're subsidizing, though I'd also argue we deserve to know who exactly we're subsidizing. If a family receives this funding, there should be no expectation of privacy. After all, if businesses accept subsidies we all know how much they're receiving.
Why should this program be any different? I sure as heck want to know if my governor, legislators or influential donors – Republican or Democrat – are taking charity from the government.
Legislators would have you forget that they want to use public money to continue to subsidize the costs of a small subset of rich children whose parents have fled the public school system that 700,000 children rely on. The exodus further exacerbates the gap between the haves and have nots.
To further rub salt in the wound, many private schools used the new 'tax credit' to raise tuition. An Oklahoma Watch analysis found that about 12% of 171 participating private schools capped tuition rates near $7,500, the max a family can receive. Some schools raised tuition rates 100%.
Apparently our lawmakers are so humiliated by the failure of this program that they're hoping nobody will notice it because over the past month, I haven't seen a single legislator tout how great these outcomes are.
It was actually an Oklahoma Voice reader who brought the Tax Commission report to my attention.
Since our lawmakers are on a quest to cut wasteful spending, maybe this program is a place they could start.
After all, I'd rather use these funds to bolster the salaries of public school employees, increase the pay foster parents receive, fix our roads, or even give us all some temporary tax relief.
Instead we've chosen to invest in this exclusionary and secret program that has little accountability.
I guess it's yet another disappointing outcome in a state that always seems to manage to invest in the wrong thing.
Janelle Stecklein is editor of Oklahoma Voice. An award-winning journalist, Stecklein has been covering Oklahoma government and politics since moving to the state in 2014.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Lawmakers sold us a sham on parental choice tax credits |Opinion