by David Safier
This promises to be interesting. A few days after D legislators held a news conference announcing the formation of a committee to take a closer look at tax credits and inviting Rs to join, a few Rs actually agreed. Why? There are all kinds of possible answers. Maybe they were actually a bit shocked by the Trib investigative articles and want to improve the tax credit legislation. Maybe they don't want the Ds to get all the credit for the reform. And maybe they want to do some damage control, since they know Ds have never taken kindly to the whole tax credit thing. It's probably a mixture of the three, but I'm giving most weight to the third possibility: damage control.
Republicans Rich Crandall, Steve Court and Doris Goodale are joining Democrats David Schapira (Chair), Tom Chabin (Vice Chair), Nancy Young Wright, Chad Campbell and Cloves Campbell.
Another interesting wrinkle.
"Obviously the Goldwater Institute feels strongly there are abuses taking place," he said.
Watch your backs, Dems. Inviting in G.I. is playing the "expert" card. ("We've written studies about tax credits and made recommendations for improvements years ago. Let me cite some figures for you. Are you aware that the average tax credit is $2,000, while we spend $10,000 to educate a child in the public schools? Tax credits are a bargain!") Get yourself some experts on your side as well. Remember, you hold all the cards here. Tuition tax credits are the Republicans' baby. They wrote and passed the toothless legislation without a means test and with few regulations on the credits or on the STOs that collect the money and dole out the scholarships. The mess is of their making. Your job is to clean house, not make nice.
