OH: Yet Another Voucher Bill

Ohio last year joined the club of states with a universal voucher program that requires taxpayers to subsidize private schools even if the student being used as a courier comes from a wealthy family. But that's not quite enough for one Buckeye legislator.

Gary Click serves as pastor of the Fremont Baptist Temple. In 2020, he won a tightly contested GOP primary and then won the House 88th District seat by shellacking his Democratic opponent. He campaigned on Trumpy MAGAtude. He's on his second term. And he's put his name on a ton of bills this year, including arming firefighters, executing condemned prisoners via nitrogen hypoxia, and a couple of anti-trans bills. 

One other thing to know about Click-- he got his degree (Bachelor of Religious Education) from Midwestern Baptist College, an independent Baptist college in Orion, Michigan. They use the King James Bible exclusively and "will not tolerate any other." Founded in 1953, MBC is not accredited by any recognized accreditation body. As it turns out, that may be relevant.

While Click has his name on plenty of bills, one that he's the primary sponsor for is HB 339, a bill intended to establish the nonchartered savings account program.

Nonchartered schools are nonpublic schools that "because of truly held religious beliefs, choose to not be chartered by the State of Ohio." No word on how the state weeds out schools that don't hold their religious beliefs truly.

The bill has its interesting features, like a requirement that a participating school must "maintain a physical location in the state at which each student has regular and direct contact with teachers." 

But mostly, it is a double-dip into choicer concepts. 

First, it is one more means of requiring taxpayers to subsidize religious schools that choose to exist outside the state's system. As Click himself explains, they aren't chartered because they don't want to comply with any government mandates. But government money? That's not so bad.  

The bill includes the now-standard Hands Off language that explicitly forbids the state from attempting to "regulate the curriculum, instructional methods, or other aspects of the school's educational program." We have seen this movie already in multiple states, where the private school reserves the right to discriminate on the basis of religion, gender orientation, or things they don't even bother to explain. This bill comes with a slightly narrower list of allowable expenses, but as Ohio itself has demonstrated, once you have a law in place, it's easy to expand it.

Second, Click is proposing an educational savings account, the type of neo-voucher that has been implemented in states like Arizona and Florida, that allows families to take taxpayer dollars and spend them on a variety of education and education-adjacent expenses, which can end up being theme park tickets and cosmetics and a host of other iffy things. Click has included a means of following up on reports of abuse, but who is going to report abuse of the voucher money? 

Click argues that parents who choose these nonchartered schools "continue two pay twice for education; once through taxation and a second time through tuition." Choice fans never seem to make the leap from that reasoning to the question of why non-parents should pay taxes at all, but of course that would crash the whole system, vouchers and all. Meanwhile, I'm not satisfied with the coverage I'm getting from my local police department, so I would like to hire private security and bill the taxpayers. Also, the local park isn't quite nice enough, so I'd like to join an exclusive club with beautiful grounds, and I will be billing the taxpayers for that as well, because after all, why should I have to pay for those things twice?