Who's governing, and who's the governed?

It's been a long time I took civics in high school, but I'm confident I learned there that the role of lawmakers -- men and women elected by citizens in their community -- is to adopt laws that reflect the will of the people who elected them. I realize that in some parts of our country -- particularly in the nation's capital -- people live in circumstances where the ideology of politicians outweighs the will of their constituents. Though I remember from civics class that the Constitution was drafted specifically to protect the will of constituents from their lawmakers, I know there's a whole industry built up now to protect the will of lawmakers from their constituents.

But I didn't think that was the prevailing wisdom here. We hadn't fallen victim to the political industry like folks have back East.

Then I read articles like Paul Rolly's column in this morning's Trib and I wonder if we're not so far away from succumbing to it, too.

"Lawmakers stack the deck on vouchers" is the headline, and the first sentence tells the whole story. "About 20 lobbyists were summoned to a meeting Monday by legislative leaders who urged them to roll up their sleeves and help save the voucher law."

Isn't a ballot referendum supposed to be the voice of the people? In fact, isn't it the last chance the people have to have their say on a law, after the legislature has had its way? That's what the Constitution provides. So what's wrong with informing every Utahn man and woman of voting age what the referendum says, answer any questions they have, then let them vote on whether to keep this law or discard it?

I know the answer, and the answer goes a long way toward telling me how I should vote on the referendum. The answer is that informing Utahns and letting them decide is too great a risk to the will of our lawmakers. The people may choose to overturn a bill -- a bill, by the way, that passed the state House by only one vote. And it is no secret, as I've discovered in just a few weeks of researching on the internet, that a great many of our lawmakers have been paid -- in the form of campaign contributions -- to do the bidding of a few wealthy ideologues.

Mr. Rolly writes, "The meeting was held at the Utah Board of Realtors office and the lobbyists were put in the position of either committing to the pro-voucher campaign or rejecting a request from the very lawmakers they need to help pass their legislative agendas each year. The legislators hosting the meeting were House Speaker Greg Curtis, R-Sandy; House Majority Leader Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara; House Assistant Majority Whip Brad Dee, R-Ogden; Senate Majority Leader Curtis Bramble, R-Provo; and Senate Majority Assistant Whip Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse."

I was going to do this anyway, after getting the idea from Jeremy (http://www.themannings.org/soapbox/2007/08/28/the-money-behind-the-voucher-movement/#comments) earlier this week, but I hope to spend part of this weekend totaling up all of the campaign contributions given to these very lawmakers, one by one, and others by Parents for Choice in Education, and All Children Matter, and the nationwide network of pro-voucher donors.

So these state-paid lobbyists for PCE and ACM -- I'm talking about our elected representatives -- are rustling up an army of their own, not to inform voters and defend their right to vote on the voucher referendum, but instead to protect their masters' investment. And what are these newly-commandeered recruits to say? If they refuse, they risk getting doors slammed in their faces in Salt Lake City next winter. Mr. Rolly is right to call them a "captive audience." They're captive, all right: Detained and forced into labor by PCE and ACM.

"Those summoned to the meeting were asked to help defeat the November referendum that would repeal the voucher bill passed earlier this year. Most were lobbyists for business associations representing manufacturers, mining, homebuilders, small businesses, real estate agents, food retailers, trucking, the Chamber of Commerce, utilities and others," Mr. Rolly writes here (http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_6767098).

"The legislators explained to the captive audience that they were invited because their organizations were part of former Gov. Mike Leavitt's Business/Education Coalition, which issued a report in 2002 recommending various ways to improve education, including tuition tax credits for private schools. Because their groups had already endorsed the voucher concept, the legislators said, they need to step up and help defeat those who want to repeal the law that provides up to $3,000 toward private school tuition."

And what did Speaker Curtis and Sen. Bramble demand from their conscripts? Their money and their names, as if they were holding up an old stagecoach. A hundred years ago, it was called highway robbery. What is it called now?

And worse, this robbery is going to go on for a while, Mr. Rolly writes. "The lobbyists have been summoned to a follow-up breakfast meeting Thursday at the Board of Realtors to report on their fund-raising progress."

That's next Thursday morning. I think it's too bad it's a school morning, or Utah school kids taking civics would know exactly where to find their House and Senate leaders and ask them which is more important, heeding the will of constituents or protecting the million-dollar investment of ideologues from Michigan?

Is PCE the Utah chapter of ACM?

Last night, after deciding that I had as good an understanding as I could get of the Wisconsin case, I looked for a minute at the All Children Matter-WI's record at the Elections Board's website and it occurred to me that ACM had likely set up state committees in several of the places where it has been active. I spent another couple of hours googling to test the theory and came to a few interesting findings.

At the Virginia State Board of Elections website (http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/Campaign_Finance_Disclosure/View_Disclosure_Reports/CF_Reports_Report_Codes.asp?SUWVVal=CommitteeActiveView&RepYearVal=2006&tCNVal=&tCCVal=&tCSVal=&tCZVal=&tCOVal=&tCBDVal=&tCEDVal=&tCAFVal=&tCATVal=&tCCSOptVal=EqualTo&OffVal=&PtyVal=&CommVal=981246), I found a political action committee called "All Children Matter-Virginia," and you can search the records there to find who contributed to it and who received disbursements from it.

At the Arizona Secretary of State's website here (http://www.azsos.gov/scripts/cfs_committee.dll/CommitteeSearch), you can find "All Children Matter-Arizona," formed on August 21, 2006, with Greg Brock of Michigan listed as its chairman and Lisa Lisker of Virginia as its treasurer. In fact, the legal address for ACM-AZ isn't in Arizona at all; it's in Alexandria, Virginia. When I clicked through its filings for 2006, I found a $2,000 contribution made on September 14, 2006, by a "Doug Holmes." I don't know if it's the same Doug Holmes that is a co-founder of Parents for Choice in Education, but it's a strange coincidence if it isn't.

At the Florida Division of Elections website here (http://election.dos.state.fl.us/online/commsrch.asp), I found "All Children Matter-Florida" AND "All Children Matter-Virginia." Apparently both committees are registered to do business in Florida. (Does that mean ACM can double its contributions into that state?) ACM-FL's chairman, treasurer and registered agent are all one person, John Kirtley of Tampa. On Florida's website, though, ACM-VA's legal address is in Tallahassee, and its chairman, treasurer and registered agent are all the same person again, but this time it's Brecht Heuchan of Tallahassee. I looked at the committees' ledger pages for 2006 about counted up about $7 million in contributions to the two, but I also noticed that almost (if not) all of ACM-FL's contributions come directly from the ACM-VA entity located in Florida.

At the Indiana Elections Division website here (http://www.indianacampaignfinance.com/inpublic/Reporting/CommitteeDetail.aspx?FileNumber=5208), I found "All Children Matter-Indiana," whose chairman is John Mutz of Indianapolis but whose treasurer is attorney John Bopp of Bopp, Coleson and Bostrom of Terre Haute, who is also the attorney for the Milwaukee-based Alliance for Choice in Education.

At the Missouri Ethics Commission's website here (http://www.mec.mo.gov/Ethics/CampaignFinance/CFCommitteeInfo1.aspx?MECID=C041446&Year=2007), I found All Children Matter-Missouri, whose treasurer is Jean Paul Bradshaw of Kansas City.

At the Ohio Secretary of State's website here (http://www1.sos.state.oh.us/pls/portal/PORTAL_CF.CF_QRY_PAC_COVERPAGE1.show?p_arg_names=year&p_arg_values=2006&p_arg_names=report_type&p_arg_values=200&p_arg_names=report_key&p_arg_values=87673), I found "All Children Matter-Ohio," whose treasurer is listed as Lisa Lisker, the same person who is treasurer for ACM-AZ. This time, however, her address is listed in Columbus, Ohio.

And back at the Wisconsin State Elections Board's website here (http://elections.state.wi.us/financereport_pac_all.asp), I found "All Children Matter-WI," whose treasurer is listed as, again, Lisa Lisker. This time, however, the committee's legal address is Lisker's address in Alexandria, Virginia.

But after reading the articles I've collected the past couple of weeks, I was surprised not to find an "All Children Matter" committee in South Carolina, where ACM spent a lot of money in 2004, or in Texas, where complaints have been filed, or right here in Utah. It appears that in some states, ACM has chosen not to create a committee under its own name, but to create or fund a committee with a different name.

Is PCE our ACM-UT?

What does Wisconsin's case mean to us?

Still trying to get details of what All Children Matter of Michigan did in Wisconsin that landed them in legal trouble, and what is the status of that trouble, I have turned up what look like the attorneys' explanations of what the complaints are and what ACM's answers are.

It boils down to this: Several people and organizations accused ACM of engaging in "express advocacy" in a state Senate district in Wisconsin without every registering with the appropriate state authority and reporting their activities, which is required by Wisconsin law of groups that intend to conduct "express advocacy" political action. "Express advocacy," as they explain it, means sending mail or making telephone calls urging people to vote for or against a candidate. Here's the sticky point. I think I've interpreted the complaint correctly to say that ACM did register as a "nonresident political committee" with the secretary of state's office in Wisconsin, which appears necessary to do business in the state. But it never registered as a "political committee" with the state board of elections, which is necessary to conduct political activity in the state. Under Wisconsin law, there's a difference.

So, without filing the paperwork that would allow it to conduct "express advocacy" political activity, ACM "disseminated communications to electors of the 21st Senate District via direct mail advertisements in which it expressly advocates that voters defeat Democratic candidate John Lehman. [The] advertisement states the following: 'There are over $12 billion reasons to vote against John Lehman'.”

Additionally, Wisconsin law requires that when a political committee sends "direct mail" like this, the mail has to include one of those disclaimers at the bottom that says, “Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s agent or committee.” But they didn't do that, either.

And finally, the law requires that if they engage in this kind of "express advocacy," they have to file campaign finance reports like any other political action committee, and they didn't do that, because they never registered as one with the board of elections.

Please trust that I have read the whole document and condensed several pages of legal-ese into these few sentences. But if you want to read it for yourself, it's here (http://elections.state.wi.us/docview.asp?docid=9969&locid=47).

How does this affect Utahns? Well, we have millions of dollars from ACM flowing into our state through Parents for Choice in Education (and I should mention a little later something I've learned in my searches about how PCE is an odd bird in the ACM family of political action committees), and we have PCE already sponsoring a nasty push-poll about the voucher referendum. Are our laws in Utah as tight as the Wisconsin laws that govern this activity? Or are looser election laws another reason that ACM was drawn to push its experiment here? I don't know this, but I hope someone does and can report it.

When ACM responded to the complaint, it said that there's a difference between "issue advocacy" and "express advocacy," and what it had done was "issue advocacy," which didn't require it to file with the board of elections or report its campaign finances like other political action committees. Assuming that the board of elections would accept its hair-splitting of "issue advocacy" from "express advocacy," then ACM confesses that it has done "issue advocacy" in Wisconsin "from time to time." As for registering with the appropriate authorities, ACM says it did all it was required to do under the law, since it was only doing "issue advocacy."

So the main question seems to be, what's the difference between "issue advocacy" and "express advocacy"? And which did/does ACM do?

This is dry stuff, but here's what Wisconsin says: Express advocacy is communication that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a candidate or that is "unambiguously related to the campaign of that candidate."

Even ACM itself, in its attorneys' answer to the charges, said that "whether the Lehman Ad unambiguously advocates the defeat of Assemblyman Lehman is a close question. To be sure, the Lehman Ad notes that there are 'over $12 BILLION reasons to vote against John Lehman'.” (As a member of the legislature, Lehman voted on the state budget, and ACM says he shouldn't have voted for a $12 billion budget expense, which is why they wanted him to lose his race for Senate.)

So how does ACM say it escapes guilt? It says, "the Lehman Ad does not ask recipients to vote against Lehman." Instead, they say that because the mail "expresses an anti-tax message," it is "issue advocacy" and not "express advocacy." The complaint documents include the text of the "direct mail" piece, so you can read the message for yourself and see if this is a pro-Lehman or anti-Lehman advertisement:

The “Lehman flier,” and its subject language, reads as follows:

There are $12 BILLION reasons to vote against John Lehman.
John Lehman wants over $12 BILLION in HIGHER TAXES.
$12 BILLION. That’s right. BILLION with a “B.”
That’s how much John Lehman wants in higher taxes.
John Lehman supports raising payroll taxes by more than $12 BILLION dollars.
It’s a tax that would devastate small businesses, job creation, and Wisconsin’s economy (www.lehman4senate.com)
Lehman wants to raise our sales taxes, too.
Lehman’s tax proposal includes higher state sales taxes, taxing Wisconsin families on the things they need most.. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nov.3, 2002)
John Lehman even voted to tax Social Security benefits. Lehman voted to keep the tax on Social Security benefits. (AB 100, 6/22/05)

Do you think they were asking people to vote against Lehman?

Here's a good question. If we get nasty "push-poll" telephone calls at home or "direct mail" telling us to vote for the voucher plan but no one identifies ACM as the source of funding for these activities, have they committed a crime under Utah law? I just don't know how strict or how lenient our laws are about these activities, and how far ACM-PCE are required to go to report what it's doing. It's clear from the Wisconsin complaint that ACM is willing to lean as far "over the line" as it can, and then will use attorneys and legal-ese to confuse a simple issue.

And here's one more thing. In its response to the complaint in Wisconsin -- seeing that it was caught "unambiguously" advocating for the defeat of a candidate -- ACM asked the board of elections not to go any further in "litigating the issue," since ACM has, since the complaint was filed, registered as a political committee with the board. The reason for this request seems clear to me: If ACM can stop the board of elections there from issuing a ruling on what constituted "express advocacy" in this case, then ACM is free to continue doing the same thing in that state, and it blocks Wisconsin from offering that sort of definition to other state boards of election as an example to follow. Of course, there's also the likelihood that if the Wisconsin board found that ACM had engaged in "express advocacy" after all, then it clearly broke state law and would have to pay expensive fines.

So there's a lot at stake in ACM's legal struggles in Wisconsin that could affect what it does in states like ours. A ruling against ACM in Wisconsin would cause other state authorities to consider what ACM is doing there.

Here's how the plaintiffs' attorneys answered ACM's explanation and pleas for leniency (I'm cutting out a lot to make this brief):

Notwithstanding ACM’s request for leniency, the circumstances here call for the imposition of a meaningful penalty.

ACM was fully aware of its obligations... As a pro-school voucher organization founded by prominent Michigan Republicans Richard and Betsy Devos in the Spring of 2003, and backed by Wal-Mart heirs John and Jim Walton to the tune of $6.2 million, ACM has funneled millions of dollars into state legislative campaigns to elect pro-private school voucher legislative majorities in states across the country.

ACM, Inc. in Alexandria, Virginia, is registered under section 527 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, and in its tax return Form 990 plainly states its primary purpose as: “supported nonfederal committees and candidates . . . through direct contributions, in-kind contributions and independent expenditures in the form of media and direct mail.”

Despite its high-profile and financially potent presence in numerous state legislative elections, ACM pleads for leniency in the imposition of a fine here in Wisconsin because it “mistakenly” and “unintentionally” used the phrase “vote against” in its anti-Lehman ad sent to the electors of the 21st Senate District. The notion that ACM accidentally crossed the line from issue advocacy to express advocacy for the defeat of a candidate is belied, however, by ACM’s subsequent course of conduct. It has engaged in express advocacy in at least two other legislative races where it expressly advocated for the defeat of Pat Kreitlow in the 23rd Senate District and Corey Mason in the 63rd Assembly District.

ACM is a sophisticated and well-financed advocate for certain political candidates in state legislative races across the country. ACM has substantial resources staked by some of America’s largest financial empires. It has deployed these resources nationwide to leverage substantial influence in the selection of predominantly conservative Republican legislative candidates sympathetic to private school vouchers. ACM’s political largesse has wended its way -- via issue ads as well as by express advocacy – into Wisconsin’s electoral arena and our ongoing debate on the use of public tax dollars for private school vouchers. Wisconsin’s campaign finance registration and disclosure provisions are not abstract requirements for clean and tidy elections. Rather, they are intended to ensure that the electorate knows whose resources have successfully resulted in the selection of our elected officials, so that issues of political accountability are evident and transparent to the public once a successful candidate assumes political office.

Even if it did unwittingly, or accidentally cross the line in the Lehman race into express advocacy, ACM must understand that there are consequences for doing so. If ACM wishes to be a political influence in Wisconsin’s state legislative process, it must comply with our state’s campaign finance requirements. If it fails to do so, the legislature has provided for a range of relatively modest civil penalties to ensure compliance and to deter future noncompliance. To be sure, the legislature’s statutory enforcement scheme contemplates that more serious and intentional violations shall be subject to criminal prosecution. However, the full range of such civil penalties are plainly appropriate in the instant case where a non-resident political action committee has spared little in attempting to influence the outcome of a wide range of important legislative elections in Wisconsin.

If you're interested in seeing how ACM does its business from Michigan through a network of state political action committees across the country, it's explained in a document that was filed by Alliance for Choice in Education, one of ACM's big donors. ACE is listed as a defendant in the Wisconsin litigation, so they're concerned too with how the state board of elections decides this case. They submitted this document on November 29, 2006. You can find the whole document here (http://elections.state.wi.us/docview.asp?docid=10402&locid=47) but I picked out this part to show how the money flows -- and how ACM money from Michigan and elsewhere gets to Utah.

At a board meeting of Alliance for Choices in Education (ACE) on April 26, 2006, the board approved a request to spend up to $200,000 on issue advocacy in Wisconsin.

On September 21, 2006, ACE sent $90,000 to All Children Matter (a Virginia state PAC hereinafter referred to as ACM-VA State PAC) with explicit instructions that the funds be used for issue advocacy in Wisconsin (attached to this verified answer as Exhibit 1 is the transmittal letter from ACE to ACM-VA State PAC that accompanied ACE’s donation, which clearly states that the $90,000 is to be used for issue advocacy).

On September 29, 2006, the $90,000 donation from ACE to ACM-VA State PAC was reported by ACM-VA State PAC to the Virginia State Board of Elections. The $90,000 was deposited in the bank account of ACM-VA State PAC, which was the source of funds for issue advocacy in Wisconsin in 2006. ACM-VA State PAC could not have used ACE’s donation for express advocacy unless ACM VA-State PAC deliberately ignored ACE’s instructions and chose to use funds specifically restricted to issue advocacy at the very time that it had other unrestricted funds eligible to be used for express advocacy readily available.

Under any circumstances, once ACE gave ACM-VA State PAC $90,000 and directed that it be used for issue advocacy, that donation was no longer under ACE’s control. Notably, ACM-VA State PAC did expend more than $90,000 for issue advocacy in Wisconsin. All express advocacy done in Wisconsin was paid for by ACM-WI State PAC.

So it looks like big donors are told to contribute directly to ACM's political action committee in Virginia and to include some instructions about how they want their contributions spent.

I didn't intend to get lost in the hills on ACM's trouble in Utah, but I learned a lot about how it behaves when it gets caught leaning way over the line of the law and how they take great pains to hide everything they can get away with hiding.

What are they doing in Wisconsin?

I have to tell you that after googling and reading news media articles online about All Children Matter of Michigan -- probably close to a hundred of them in the past couple of weeks -- I think I understand the way they put their money into a political action committee, either one in Michigan or one in Virginia, and then funnel the money to their operations in different states. They seem to pick small, cheap states -- ones where they believe they can win enough legislative races to get their voucher proposals adopted, or where they can influence a voter referendum. And they seem to prefer states where there's at least one wealthy partner in that state who will work with them (like Patrick Byrne here, or Rex Sinquefield in Missouri, or David Brennan in Ohio). And they seem to prefer states where there's an in-state "institute" that can produce pro-voucher studies or editorials (like the Sutherland Institute here, or the Show Me Institute in Missouri).

But they've been involved in something in Wisconsin that I'm still trying to understand. Reading the news articles about it is like reading many different pieces of a puzzle. But I found a summary at Wisconsin Democracy Campaign that I think includes most of the important parts. I found it here (http://www.wisdc.org/ind04issueads.php). It explains a little bit about ACM's activity in Wisconsin, and its relationship to an organization called Alliance for Choices in Education (ACE), based in Milwaukee. (Although it sounds similar -- this confused me for a little while -- it is not the same group as the Alliance for School Choice (ASC), which is based in Phoenix, although ACE IS connected to ASC, and they're both connected to ACM, formally or informally. I admit it would be a lot easier to have all these state groups and individuals sketched out on a piece of paper.) Here it is:

All Children Matter is a right-wing group formed in Spring 2003 based in Michigan advocating school choice in the form of private school voucher programs and charter schools. Milwaukee school choice advocates, George and Susan Mitchell, represent the group in Wisconsin (see Alliance for Choices in Education). This group reportedly sought to influence about 16 state legislative races.

WDC [Wisconsin Democracy Campaign] confirms the following efforts. The group ran issue ad campaigns by direct mail in the 22nd, 30th and 32nd Senate districts. The mail pieces supported Republican Senate candidate Dan Kapanke (SD 32) and attacked Democratic incumbent Senators Robert Wirch (SD 22) and Dave Hansen (SD 30). They attacked Wirch and Hansen for their lack of support of a property tax freeze and made a veiled and unsubstantiated charge that they would send tax dollars to schools in Milwaukee at the expense of schools in their own districts.

It's these pieces of "direct mail" that apparently broke Wisconsin elections laws, and I'll explain that some more in a minute.

This group is headed by Michigan multimillionaire Dick DeVos, whose family is connected to Amway Corporation. DeVos' wife Betsy served for several years as the chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Her brother, Erik Prince, is the founder and owner of Blackwater Security Consulting, the private tactical training facility providing security forces in Baghdad. School choice advocate George Mitchell represents the group in Wisconsin, and has said ACM spent more than $500,000 to influence state legislative elections in 2004.

The Alliance for Choices in Education (ACE) is a non-profit advocacy organization that promotes parental school choice programs in the Milwaukee area. Headquartered in Milwaukee, ACE’s Board of Directors include a number of representatives of area private schools, and Dr. Howard Fuller, Institute for the Transformation of Learning, Susan Mitchell, Vice Chair, School Choice Wisconsin, Dr. Daniel Grego, Secretary, TransCenter for Youth, Inc., and Tim Sheehy , Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce.

ACE ran issue ads for their "Lift the Cap" campaign. Based on information from the liftthecap.org web site, beginning in the spring of 2004, thousands of "Lift the Cap" yard signs, banners and bumper stickers were distributed in neighborhoods throughout Milwaukee. This was the beginning of a grassroots effort to mobilize community support for lifting the cap on the number of enrollments in Milwaukee’s school choice program. They were utilizing a real "issue ad" campaign urging citizens to call Governor Doyle and ask him to "Lift the Cap." As noted on their web site, they were utilizing radio commercials on urban contemporary and news talk stations, television commercials during Sunday morning news shows, billboards and bus signs throughout Milwaukee, and print advertisements in community newspapers and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In 2002 Fuller and Mitchell were both leaders in the American Education Reform Council (AERC), now known as the Alliance for School Choice.

AERC lobbying arm, the American Education Reform Foundation, was a national organization headquartered in Milwaukee that supports school choice and school vouchers.

Susan and her husband, consultant George Mitchell, have long been substantial financial contributors in Wisconsin state politics. Since 1993 the Mitchells have contributed more than $56,000 to candidates for state office. Other financial backers of the group have included the Lynde and Harry Bradley and John M. Olin Foundations which provided the Council with $1.3 million between 1998 and 2001. Wal-Mart heir and prominent school voucher proponent John Walton provided nearly $1 million dollars between 1999 and 2000. In addition, a conduit called Funds for Choice in Education and chaired by George Mitchell funneled more than $109,000 to candidates for state office during the 2001-2002 election cycle and more than $101,000 to legislative candidates in the 2003-2004 election cycle.

There's John Walton's name and money again, still playing a role in funding voucher proposals across the country even though he died two years ago.

The "direct mail" flyers that ACM paid for in Wisconsin are the cause of some litigation still going on there. As I read about these mailed flyers, I wondered what our own election laws say about ACM's ability to fund the same thing here, and I honestly don't know if they have the freedom to send things like this to us. I haven't seen any yet. But Parents for Choice in Education, supported largely with ACM funds, has already admitted sponsoring a nasty "push-poll" here.

"Media Mouse," which says it's an independent media outlet in Grand Rapids, Michigan, wrote about those "direct mail" flyers and the litigation here (http://www.mediamouse.org/features/121606devos.php) last December.

All Children Matter (ACM), an organization founded by former Republican candidate for governor and longtime financer of the school voucher movement Dick DeVos, is being accused of laundering money and failing to properly register with the state of Wisconsin according to a complaint filed Friday with the Wisconsin Elections Board. The complaint alleges that a political action committee (PAC) run by All Children Matter out of Virginia failed to register in Wisconsin before contributing $35,000 to a PAC run by the organization in Wisconsin.

Through the Virginia-based PAC All Children Matter is also accused of violating Wisconsin election laws that bar corporate contributions, with an entity in Wisconsin--Alliance for Choices in Education--contributing $90,000 in money that eventually made its way back to Wisconsin in the form of $35,000 spent on "issue ads" criticizing three Democratic legislative candidates. The complaint describes the transfer of money from Wisconsin to Virginia and then back to Wisconsin as "a scheme to launder campaign contributions" that hides who paid for the advertisements.

Which sounds exactly like what I learned they did in Ohio, and that they're being investigated right now for doing.

Across the United States, All Children Matter has intervened in a number of state legislative races, often drawing criticism for pumping large sums of out of state money into legislative races. During the 2004 election in Wisconsin, All Children Matter contributed over $500,000 to candidates. All Children Matter campaigned heavily for Republican state legislators in Florida in during the 2004 election, but never disclosed the fact that it ultimately was formed to support school vouchers. In South Carolina in 2004, All Children Matter contributed several hundred thousand dollars to candidates who had pledged support for "school choice" while also funding direct mail advertisements in school board races.

The organization also intervened in Utah in 20046, contributing the majority of the money used by a Utah-based organization pushing for school vouchers. In Missouri's 2004 election, close to 95% of the candidates supported by All Children Matter were elected as a result of the organization's $385,339 in contributions. While these contributions are legal in the aforementioned states, they are often disclosed only as "All Children Matter" and obscures the out-of-state sources for the majority of the money. In Missouri, a study revealed that less than 1% of the total contributions to the state's ACM PAC came from Missouri residents.

Again, this is similar to what they've done already here. ACM contributed more than half of the funding behind Parents for Choice in Education last year, with the handful of PCE's leaders adding another substantial percentage. Reporters for local newspapers even wrote that while people who supported the petition drive (to let Utah voters voice their opposition to the plan in November) include hundreds or thousands of people who tended to give smaller amounts, less than $100 each, PCE tends to have a few dozen individual and corporate donors who give large sums to support the voucher plan.

As a result, All Children Matter's activities in Missouri and other states should be seen as an attempt by wealthy political activists--many like DeVos with long histories of supporting the religious and economic right--to subvert the democratic process.

All Children Matter was formed in the Spring of 2003 by Dick DeVos and his wife Betsy DeVos8 as an organization that would work to coordinate a national movement in support of political candidates that support government-funded vouchers for private schools.

The organization has been active in the "opportunity" states of Florida, Wisconsin, Texas, Colorado, and Virginia where DeVoses believe that the pro-voucher movement has a chance of succeeding. All Children Matter is one of many organizations around the country supported by Dick and Betsy DeVos, who have a long history of support the voucher movement.

So Utah is an "opportunity state" because they see it as an opportunity to win their voucher referendum. But, I just learned, when they tried to pass their voucher plan in their own home state, the voters voted it down there.

In Michigan, they bankrolled a failed 2000 ballot initiative that would have created a voucher program and run the Education Freedom Fund, an organization that awards scholarships for students to attend private schools as a means of building support for private schools and creating an ideological climate in which private schools are seen as "better" that public schools. In addition to running the Education Freedom Fund, they hold leadership positions in a number of organizations that are working to pass voucher programs around the country and to build support for the privatization of the public schools. Like their funding of organizations through their Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation, their participation in the voucher movement is a fusion of religious right and free-market ideology.

"Media Mouse" offers a list of related links at their website, and I hope you'll check some of them out for yourself:

http://www.mediamouse.org/resources/right.php?personId=5
http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?s=5821676
http://www.wisdc.org/ind04issueads.php
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/10/27/Opinion/_and_hidden_motives.shtml
http://www.metrobeat.net/gbase/Expedite/Content?oid=oid%3A3319
http://eyeonwilliamson.blogspot.com/2005/08/where-did-65-rule-come-from.html
http://www.missouriprovote.org/Docs/Complete_ACM_Report.pdf
http://www.mediamouse.org/resources/right.php?personId=4
http://www.mediamouse.org/features/092006dick_.php
http://www.mediamouse.org/resources/right.php?orgId=25
http://www.mediamouse.org/resources/right.php?foundId=5

Finally, "One Wisconsin Now" made a note of ACM's legal troubles in Wisconsin here (http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/one_wisconsin/the_forward_report/all_children_matter_has_a_troubling_history/) and made a list of other places where ACM has run into trouble for its activities that may have "bent" state laws.

On Friday a group of Racine area residents filed a complaint with the State Elections Board charging the Michigan-based organization, All Children Matter, with breaking Wisconsin state law. The complaint arose from a flyer distributed by the out-of-state organization, telling voters to "vote against" 21st Senate District Candidate Rep. John Lehman. This act clearly constituted express advocacy which triggered Wisconsin's statutory regulations. An organization doing express advocacy is required to disclose who they are, where they get their money, and how they are spending their money. All Children Matter did not report this information or register as a political action committee with the State Elections Board.

The recent complaint filed against All Children Matter is nothing new for the right wing organization. They have been the subject of numerous complaints all over the country for the manner in which they engage with issues and elections.

On June 7, 2005, the Associated Press reported on an ethics complaint filed against a Republican legislator in Missouri involving All Children Matter. That complaint alleged that a Republican legislator appeared to bribe her fellow Republicans to get them to reappoint her as chairwomen of a House education committee. In a letter to her colleagues, the legislator mentioned that she has helped to raise nearly $400,000 for Republicans, most of which came from All Children Matter.

In 2004, All Children Matter was accused of violating Florida election law with a flier promoting a candidate for the state House. A rival candidate filed charges against the organization with the Florida Elections Commission, stating that their support for the other candidate was express advocacy that violated campaign-contribution limits. Another candidate in Florida threatened to file a libel lawsuit against All Children Matter for sending out a flier accusing the candidate of not paying their property taxes.

Earlier this year in Texas, another group requested that All Children Matter be investigated by ethics officials. They claimed that the pro-voucher organization may not have filed reports with the state's election commission as frequently as required. They were also accused of not reporting certain donations from specific contributors.

And this is who is behind PCE, as clearly shown in campaign finance records.

How did this happen?

If I find more information about the investigations in Ohio and Wisconsin, I'll post it.

What are they doing in Ohio?

The Turner Report, the blog that gave me a lot of information about what All Children Matter has been doing in Missouri, updated its reporting last night, and its most recent post is worth reading (http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2007/08/two-years-after-his-death-walton.html). Mr. Turner writes that the late John Walton, son of late Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, "continues to fund All Children Matter from beyond the grave. Apparently, Mr. Walton made sure that his estate would continue to fund his favorite causes, including the nation's top voucher proponent, All Children Matter."

Documents from the Virginia State Board of Elections indicate All Children Matter's Virginia PAC, which provided the $200,000 to fund the negative campaign advertising in the waning days of the 2004 election that propelled Matt Blunt into the governor's mansion, has received $4.1 million from Mr. Walton during the past year. Mr. Walton has been the PAC's biggest contributor since the beginning of 2006. It is almost a guarantee that some of Mr. Walton's money will make its way into Missouri in 2008.

And John Walton has been dead for two years now.

But I want to share something more interesting about what ACM has been allegedly caught doing in Ohio, in violation of Ohio law. And based on what I've found on the internet this evening, Ohio isn't the only place it's happening. There's some sort of litigation going on in Wisconsin, too, which I'll get to.

First, the secretary of state in Ohio called two weeks ago for a hearing when she discovered that ACM sent $870,000 to Ohio through its political action committee based in Virginia, called ACM-VA. WAVY-TV reported here (http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=6921183&nav=23ii) that

A Virginia political action committee's transfer of $870,000 to an Ohio affiliate has caught the eye of Ohio's chief elections official, who is investigating the donations' ties to Ohio's biggest charter-school operator. The Columbus Dispatch reports that Akron industrialist David Brennan, who also is president of the for-profit White Hat Management charter schools in Ohio and six other states, has given $200,000 since 2004 to All Children Matter.

The Virginia group transfered $870,000 to an Ohio affiliate last year to help elect Republicans -- the subject of a state election-law complaint. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner argues that the influx violated state campaign laws. The Ohio Elections Commission has set a hearing on the matter for August 23rd.

The Columbus Dispatch added more details in a report on August 14 here (http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/content/local_news/stories/2007/08/14/CTYCAP_ART_08-14-07_B3_A07K1LO.html). According to its report, ACM responded to the secretary of state's charges by saying, essentially, that neither she nor the Ohio Elections Commission warned it in advance that sending this money from Michigan through Virginia into Ohio was against the law, and that they shouldn't do it. In fact, the commission did send ACM an advisory, but ACM says the commission interpreted ACM's question differently, so it went ahead with its funding plans around the law.

A national group supporting school choice is under fire for its election activity in Ohio. But leaders say a 2006 Ohio Elections Commission advisory failed to directly warn it not to proceed. All Children Matter, a Michigan-based organization whose primary political action committee is registered in Virginia, started an Ohio PAC in 2006 and spent nearly $860,000 helping Republican candidates. The group was not active in Ohio campaigns prior to 2006, though it used Ohio-based direct mailing companies to help with campaigns in other states.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner recently filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission arguing that All Children Matter illegally transferred $870,000 from its Virginia PAC to its Ohio PAC. Virginia does not have campaign-contribution limits and allows corporation contributions; Ohio's limit for PACs is $10,670, and corporate money is barred. Her complaint was filed with the Elections Commission, which sent All Children Matter an advisory opinion in May 2006.

"There was an advisory opinion issued to us, but it did not address the statute in a way that we had asked, so we moved forward," said Greg Brock, the group's executive director. "The only reference it made was that we had to be properly registered in Ohio. By the time the advisory opinion was issued, a couple months after we asked for it, we had already registered our committee, so that was a moot point." The advisory does talk about the need to register, but also says, "It would not be possible for an existing All Children Matter PAC from another state to (properly file) with the Ohio secretary of state."

An editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer here (http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/opinion/1187425921238390.xml&coll=2) spells out the difference:

At issue is more than $850,000 in campaign contributions that a Virginia political action committee favoring school choice gave to its Ohio counterpart in 2006. The two states' PACs - both called All Children Matter - consider themselves affiliates and believe it was legal to transfer funds from one to the other. But Brunner's campaign finance administrator, J. Curtis Mayhew, notes that Ohio law requires that the Virginia PAC establish a formal presence within the state. Mayhew says the Ohio Elections Commission pointed out that requirement when All Children Matter-Ohio inquired in May 2006 - which was before Democrats swept all but one of the state's executive offices.

Because the Virginia PAC's contributions are not allowed, Mayhew wrote, the Ohio group must refund them. Not only does the Ohio PAC not have the money to do so, Columbus attorney William Todd countered in a letter to Mayhew, it does not believe it must. By his reading of state statute, the two PACs are in fact affiliates; besides, Todd continued, "it is our understanding that such transfers between affiliated PACs regularly occur in Ohio and that your office has not attempted to assert this interpretation of the statute."

Here's a question that I thought of while reading these matters from Ohio: Right now, we only have Parents for Choice in Education, which is mostly funded by ACM and a handful of wealthy partners here in Utah. But is it possible that, after building its operation here in Utah through PCE for the past few years, it will open a base of operation here and use it to run voucher campaigns across the West, the way it runs its campaigns in the East through Virginia? It already looks at us as a small, cheap state where it's easy to do its business. If it succeeds here in November, does anything stop ACM from setting up a real base of operation here?

I'm remembering that there seemed to be a pattern in ACM's operations in Utah and Missouri -- a pro-voucher in-state "institute," a wealthy in-state partner, and a process to fund legislative campaigns for lawmakers who would support voucher legislation. In the Ohio articles, the only part of the pattern I haven't seen yet is the pro-voucher "institute."

The hearing on this issue was held just last week. I don't know if the elections commission took any action there yet, but the Akron Beacon Journal spelled out the issue this Sunday here, and reading it made me think about how money gets sent into Utah and passed around to help lawmakers get elected, and to help one another get elected, and to influence how we think and vote on issues like the voucher referendum in November. As much as I want to ask, "What do we know about what's going on," I sometimes think it's more important to ask, "What DON'T we know about what's going on." What we DON'T know about these people from Michigan could hurt us a lot worse than what we can easily find out, because they clearly have drawn a target on Utah and they know how to do what they're doing.

The Akron Beacon Journal's story is here (http://www.ohio.com/news/willard/9381836.html) and it says,

Ohio's current campaign finance system hinges on full disclosure and limited contributions. The public should be able to follow the money, and caps on contributions should ''level the playing field'' for individuals and political action committees. This is a myth. Last week, lawyers for Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and a pro-charter school PAC named All Children Matter Ohio squared off before the Ohio Elections Commission. Brunner alleges the Ohio PAC exceeded contribution limits and illegally received $870,000 from a sister PAC based in Virginia that never registered in Ohio.

The true source of the money was hidden because the Virginia PAC dumped the dollars into Ohio through five and six-figure checks. The Ohio PAC spent the money on 29 Republican candidates for statewide office, the General Assembly and the State Board of Education. There is an Akron angle. David Brennan, the charter school entrepreneur, gave money to the Virginia PAC.

Let's clear the legal cobwebs here.

Brunner is arguing that so-called fat-cat contributors such as Brennan are maxing out on their contribution limits to candidates in Ohio. They then contribute to a PAC in Virginia. The out-of-state PAC launders the money back to Ohio in a way that cannot be traced directly to the fat cats. This does trample the spirit of Ohio's campaign finance reform.

But let's be honest. Ohio's campaign laws are filled with so many loopholes for PACs, parties, candidates and caucuses that there is no need to cross state boundaries to bypass contribution limits and circumvent disclosure requirements.

Last year, 10 candidates for state representative, including Jon Husted, R-Kettering, faced no opposition in the general election. Essentially, they were elected when the polls closed after the primary on May 2. Although they had no reason to do so, the 10 candidates raised $1.46 million after securing their seat and spent even more $1.87 million because they had money left over after the primary. According to campaign finance reports maintained by Brunner's office, Husted spent $1.2 million. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, spent $173,000, and Jim Carmichael, R-Wooster, spent $111,000. Republicans are not the only ones funneling money. Armond Budish, D-Mansfield, an unopposed freshman in an open seat, spent $238,000 after the primary.

Legislators who are unopposed or in secure seats and raise money for candidates in heavily contested races to avoid contribution limits and disclosure are called ''banks.'' These ''banks'' launder the money to the point where it is impossible to determine whether the funds came from an individual or a PAC that had already contributed the maximum to a candidate in a contested race. So the contribution limits and the disclosure requirements in Ohio's campaign finance laws are meaningless.

The All Children Matter Ohio PAC could have used this and other loopholes to collect and distribute funds to candidates without landing before the elections commission or eventually in court with Brunner. Brunner alleges the Virginia PAC didn't register in Ohio and therefore did not have the legal standing to move money to its affiliate, All Children Matter Ohio. But what Brunner's legal beef really amounts to is that the Ohio PAC violated the law because it didn't follow the rules established by legislators to launder campaign contributions in Ohio.
And that's no myth.

Do we have loopholes that big in Utah? Are our campaign finance laws just as "meaningless" as this reporter says Ohio's law are?

After learning what we have learned about ACM and PCE, the bigger question looks like, What don't we know about what they're doing? In Utah? In Missouri? In Texas? In South Carolina? In Ohio? And in Wisconsin?

And who is asking the questions to find out those answers for us before November?

What did they do in South Carolina?

Another internet search turned up some information about All Children Matter of Michigan operating in South Carolina. A newspaper editor there, writing on June 22 about a local politician, dug out an article he wrote in 2004 about a state Senate campaign and who was funding it. Editor Brad Warthen of The State newspaper has his own blog and explains ACM's activities in his state there (http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2007/06/you-want-someth.html).

You want something to criticize Ken Wingate for, Democrats and other knee-jerk critics? How about his promise to denounce the extremist out-of-state group All Children Matter if it got involved with his campaign to unseat Sen. Joel Lourie, which he then failed to keep? This was a great disappointment to me, because all other dealings I had had with Mr. Wingate gave me the impression that he was a man to keep such a promise. Here's why I wrote about it at the time:

LOURIE VS. THE ANTI-SCHOOL OUTSIDERS
Published on: 10/31/2004
BY BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

THE S.C. SENATE District 22 race is not about Ken Wingate and Joel Lourie any more. That's because an out-of-state group with an extreme agenda has dumped what looks like more than $100,000 into the race in the last week. (That's $80,000 we know about in TV ads, plus a couple of mailings that likely cost more than $10,000 each.) Even when it was just between Mr. Wingate and Mr. Lourie, two men I'd known and respected for some time, I had already made up my mind that I preferred Joel Lourie. So had our editorial board. We had good things to say about Mr. Wingate, but had to go with Mr. Lourie's stellar record. Also, while we thought Mr. Wingate might be OK on education, we knew Mr. Lourie would be one of the Senate's staunchest advocates for schools.

Mr. Wingate has good things to say about his support of schools, but also has a disturbing affinity for the "choice" movement. That, combined with his close association with Gov. Mark Sanford - for whom "choice" is the only kind of education reform - gave us pause.

It also attracted the support of the Michigan-based All Children Matter.

Here, particularly, is the part of Mr. Warthen's article that caught my eye, enough that I re-read it a couple of times and thought he could be writing about what's going on in Utah right now.

This group doesn't care about Ken Wingate or Joel Lourie or you or me or any of the people of South Carolina. It cares only about advancing its agenda.

And since it doesn't mention its agenda in its ads (for the good reason that it is unpopular), I'll define it: Advancing a national movement away from the notion that states have a responsibility to provide good, accountable public schools.

In South Carolina, the group backs the governor's proposal to take money that would otherwise go to run public schools and use it to pay some parents to send their kids to private schools.

It doesn't want to do this through open debate, because it would lose.

Instead, the group uses stealth tactics in an attempt to stack the Legislature with people who will do its bidding. It believes, with good reason, that Mr. Wingate will be more malleable to its purpose. By contrast, there is probably no one running for legislative office this year who is less likely to do this Orwellian-named group's bidding than Joel Lourie.

It doesn't matter to All Children Matter that few Senate districts in South Carolina are more supportive of public education than District 22 (and with good reason, given the excellence of the schools in the district). That just gives the group more motivation to talk about something other than its real agenda in its ads.

But the next point was a mystery to me, why a politician would first say he'd "denounce" ACM if it interfered in his race -- even in his favor -- but then changing his mind when ACM did get involved.

Several weeks ago, Mr. Wingate told me that if All Children Matter weighed into this race, he would denounce it. He now refuses to do so, using the Clintonian logic that since All Children Matter has a South Carolina presence, this does not constitute an incursion by outsiders.

Yet the group had two South Carolinians representing it before he made his promise. I asked him if he had any evidence demonstrating that "All Children Matter of South Carolina" today consists of anything more than a Post Office box and the two individuals he and I both knew were involved before. "I am under the impression that there is more of a presence than that," he said. "I'm not going to start reeling off names."

But set that aside, because this is no longer about Ken Wingate and Joel Lourie. It's about whether the voters of District 22 will be persuaded to go along with a group that would undermine their public schools.

Mr. Lourie believes that if that happens, it will not only mean his defeat. It will be a huge boost for the narrow agenda of All Children Matter. If it can use its money to defeat one of the strongest advocate of public schools in one of the most pro-school districts in the state, it will intimidate the rest of the Legislature into supporting it.

I'm afraid he's right. And for the sake of the rest of South Carolina, I sincerely hope the people of District 22 won't let that happen.

His description is so eerily similar to what's going on here that you could replace "South Carolina" with "Utah" and change the candidates' names, and it could be published in the Trib.

Continuing his analysis just less than two months ago, Mr. Warthen added this footnote in his blog: "All Children Matter is a part of the anti-public school movement that we've seen manifested in other groups, such as SCRG and CIA. There's a pattern -- driven and funded from out of state, highly ideological, striving to remake our Legislature in its image, and misleading about intentions when it does get involved in the electoral process. These groups have a much greater potential to harm South Carolinians, black and white, than the League of the South could in a thousand years. They are determined, they are well-financed, and they strike at the very heart of our state's greatest hope for the future."

Knowing what I know now, this affirms what I concluded on Friday, that these people in Michigan picked Utah because they consider us a small and cheap state where they can run a voucher plan through the legislature, past Utah voters, and then use their victory to build momentum for campaigns in bigger states. It's a national campaign, not just an idea that grew from Utah voters or lawmakers.

Mr. Warthen concluded the same thing about what ACM is doing in South Carolina -- is it another small, cheap state? And the writers at the Turner Report have uncovered the same pattern in Missouri -- is it another small, cheap state, too?

But this web connecting Michigan money to voucher campaigns in Texas, Missouri and South Carolina isn't all that I found online this weekend. In Ohio, ACM has run into legal trouble because Ohio's campaign laws prohibit some of the kinds of transfers of money between political action committees that ACM has gotten away with in smaller, cheaper states. Right now, ACM is working to get itself out of hot water there.

What did they do in Missouri?

As much as the Trib and KSL -- and several bloggers and readers commenting on articles online -- have written about the money coming from All Children Matter in Michigan to PCE in Salt Lake City, the media and bloggers in some other states have been digging a good deal too.

In Missouri, bloggers report that the governor, Matt Blunt, was apparently elected by a razor-thin margin after ACM spent $200,000 against his opponent in 2004, and the governor returned the favor to ACM by hiring its treasurer, Ed Martin, to be his chief of staff. When Blunt tried to appoint someone approved by ACM to the state board of education, she was opposed by too many lawmakers and her appointment was dropped. In June, with the legislature out of session, Blunt reportedly appointed a man who ran for State Senate with ACM funding, but lost. In his effort to change public education in that state, the governor has the aid of a high-dollar contributor named Rex Sinquefield, who is the executive director of an "institute" that produces policy studies supporting vouchers.

These are the parts that caught my attention. A lot of money flowed from ACM in Michigan into another state to get pro-voucher candidates elected. In that state, ACM has the help of an "institute" that turns out policy studies supporting vouchers. And ACM has the help of at least one very wealthy in-state contributor who's willing to spend a lot of his money and to organize a few other wealthy spenders too.

On June 11, a Missouri blog called the Turner Report wrote (http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2007/06/enemies-of-public-education-are-blunts.html):

Some were surprised when Governor Matt Blunt appointed former State Rep. Derio Gambaro, D-St. Louis, who has an extensive background as an educational voucher supporter to the State Board of Education, after Blunt's failure to seat Donayle Whitmore-Smith on the board last year. A bigger surprise would have been if he had appointed someone who did not support vouchers. The Turner Report has noted numerous times that the out-of-state voucher group All Children Matter pumped nearly $200,000 into attack advertising against Blunt's Democratic opponent State Auditor Claire McCaskill in 2004. Most of that came in the waning days of the race and likely provided Blunt with the razor-thin margin by which he became governor.

But it is not just All Children Matter that is pushing to force Missouri into becoming one of a handful of states that allows educational vouchers. Blunt's first quarter disclosure form, filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission, shows that the governor's three biggest contributors are all voucher supporters or school choice supporters if you go with that euphemism.

Rex Sinquefield has strong connections with both Blunt and Gambaro. Ethics Commission documents show Sinquefield, the head of the conservative Show-Me Institute, contributed $100,000 to Blunt on March 14. The Show-Me Institute is one of the leading advocates for vouchers. Sinquefield has funded studies to prove vouchers would be the route to go for Missouri. In 2006, Sinquefield virtually bankrolled Gambaro's unsuccessful candidacy for the state senate seat eventually won by Gambaro's Democratic primary opponent Jeff Smith.

Though a contribution limit of $675 was in effect at that time, Sinquefield contributed $20,700 into Gambaro's account during its final quarter, by placing $6,500 donations into three committee accounts, which then turned the money over to Gambaro. No pretense was made otherwise, since those were the only contributions those commttees received during that time period. Sinquefield and his wife each chipped in with $600 directly to Gambaro to account for the other $1,200.

But Sinquefield's $100,000 contribution in March was not the only one of that amount received by Blunt, according to the Ethics Commission documents. He also received $100,000 from EthelMae Humphreys and David Humphreys, the mother and son who are in charge of TAMKO in Joplin. Mrs. Humphreys sits on the board of directors of two powerful pro-voucher groups, the CATO Institute and Sinquefield's Show-Me Institute.

If the $300,000 Blunt received from the Humphreys and Sinquefield wasn't enough, the governor also received a $25,000 donation from the CNS Corporation, run by millionaire Charles Norval Sharpe, who runs the Heartland Academy, a private school, and has long been a backer of pouring public money into private schools.

A school choice effort failed in the legislature this year by a 96-62 vote, with only Kevin Wilson, R-Neosho, joining the majority from the Joplin area. That doesn't mean it won't make it through in 2008. Voucher proponents have money and have absolutely no problem spending it. And now, at least until January, they have another backer on the State Board of Education.

Three days later, the same blog reported here (http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2007/06/st-louis-american-examines-gambaro.html) that a local newspaper had picked up on ACM's activity in Missouri:

The St. Louis American places the credit (or blame) for Governor Matt Blunt's appointment of voucher supporter Derio Gambaro to the State Board of Education with Blunt's chief of staff Ed Martin. Martin was formerly the treasurer for All Children Matter, the pro-voucher group which has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Missouri elections.

Speaking of progressives and "Mr. Gambaro’s educational philosophy and qualifications," the Missouri Citizen Education Fund reports that Gambaro received $600 in direct contributions from All Children Matter for his failed state Senate bid and that All Children Matter also spent $7,577.12 in independent expenditures on his behalf. All Children Matter is a school choice advocacy organization; Martin previously served as its treasurer.

What is left out of the St. Louis American article is that the money that can be specifically linked to All Children Matter is far from being the only cash poured into Gambaro's unsuccessful state senate campaign by voucher supporters. One of All Children Matter's top contributors, Rex Sinquefield of the Show-Me Institute, managed to legally launder all kinds of money into the Gambaro campaign by donating it to campaign committees, which earmarked it for Gambaro.

The similarities between ACM's activity in Utah and Missouri are striking.

Missouri has the Show Me Institute, turning out pro-voucher policy literature on behalf of ACM and its operation in Missouri. We have the Sutherland Institute, which does the same thing.

Missouri's lawmakers accepted a lot of contributions from ACM for their campaigns for election or re-election, and the ones who won their races introduced legislation to create vouchers in Missouri. The same thing happened in Utah, except that in Utah, House Bill 148 passed. In Missouri, it never got out of the legislature.

Missouri has Rex Sinquefield, a wealthy man who has a relationship with ACM and who spends a lot of his own money promoting vouchers in that state. We have Patrick Byrne.

Sinquefield gets a lot of attention in Missouri because of his wealth. The Columbia Tribune wrote last month (http://blogs.columbiatribune.com/politics/2007/07/the_rex_factor.html),

Businessman and Show Me Institute President Rex Sinquefield was a noticeable player in the last two campaign finance quarters.

The rush of campaign finance reports have come and gone, but one of the constant players in the mix is Show Me Institute President Rex Sinquefield. The co-founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors has caused a stir during the last two fundraising quarters. He donated $100,000 to Gov. Matt Blunt’s campaign in the April period and this time around provided funds to a hodgepodge of state lawmakers from both political parties.

Sinquefield says that he is “issue-oriented” and doesn’t necessarily give contributions based on political party. The “school choice” movement — which incorporates using tax credits, vouchers or other fiduciary means to send children to private schools — is especially important to him. "School choice" entities have at times been controversial, especially groups such All Children Matter that pour money directly and indirectly into campaigns.

And for anyone willing to untangle a knot of staffers shared by ACM and the Alliance for School Choice in Phoenix, the Turner Report gives us an indepth explanation (http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2007/07/voucher-proponents-preparing-for-major.html).

It explains that Missouri's former House Speaker Pro Tem, Carl Bearden, recently left office to work for a brand-new lobbying firm called Pelopidas that now lobbies for vouchers.

Over a two-day period in April, lobbyist Travis Brown spent $2,872 entertaining and wining and dining some of the top pro-voucher politicians in the state of Missouri, including Governor Matt Blunt's chief of staff Ed Martin, Speaker Pro Tem (at the time) Carl Bearden, and St. Louis Democrats Theodore Hoskins and Rodney Hubbard.

On Sunday, April 15, all of the politicians received $164 in entertainment from Brown - the price of two tickets to the Cardinals' party suites.

All of the gifts came courtesy of the recently-created Missourians for a Better Economy. As I noted in the July 13 Turner Report, despite a lengthy list of clients, during March, April, and May, Brown appeared to be doing most of his lobbying for Missourians for a Better Economy and the Brown Lobby Firm, and from all appearances, both are operated by Brown.

Things became a bit more clear last week when it was announced that Bearden was leaving the House to work with Brown at Pelopidas LLC, a firm which will advocate for issues, with the issue at the top of the list being educational vouchers. On the same day that Brown filed paperwork with the Missouri Ethics Commission to represent Pelopidas, he also officially became the lobbyist for retired billionaire Rex Sinquefield, the principal force behind the Show-Me Institute, which has made vouchers its top priority.

In addition to Brown and Bearden, Pelopidas will be led by Brown's wife, lobbyist Rachel Keller Brown, whose sole client is Advocates for School Choice, a Phoenix, Ariz., organization that does exactly what its name says. Advocates for School Choice is the lobbying arm of the Alliance for School Choice, also based in Phoenix. Before becoming Governor Blunt's chief of staff, Ed Martin was Missouri coordinator for the Alliance for School Choice, as well as being treasurer for the voucher-supporting All Children Matter.

The odd combination of Democrats and Republicans that Brown has been wining and dining over the past few months, has almost exclusively been politicians who have favored educational vouchers and efforts to fund scholarships for students to attend private schools.

With the forming of Pelopidas, the growing effort by people such as David Humphreys and Ethelmae Humphreys of TAMKO, Charles Norval Sharpe of CNS Corporation, All Children Matter, and Sinquefield, who appear willing to pay whatever amount it takes to make educational vouchers a reality in Missouri, public schools are in for a battle in 2008.

Willing to pay whatever amount it takes to make vouchers a reality. And public schools are in for a battle. That sounds familiar too.

How are they all connected?

There are no records posted yet of campaign contributions made by Parents for Choice in Education in 2007, so I cannot tell if Rep. Brad Last received any donations from PCE's political action committee after the last report deadline in 2006. He did not receive any contributions from PCE in 2006, according to his and its report here (https://ucrs.utah.gov/ucrsppc/public.html). But according to his campaign report, he received a donation of $250 from "Utah's Working Moms and Dads" on September 22.

"Utah's Working Moms and Dads" has no website but an organization called "CampaignMoney.com" says UWMAD is a 527 committee that was created on January 3, 2006. The only contact person for the group is Rodney W. Rivers, and its legal address is P.O. Box 123 in Provo. (http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/527/utahs-working-moms-and-dads-inc.asp). Google says that "Rodney W. Rivers" is a real estate lawyer (http://pview.findlaw.com/view/1457917_1?noconfirm=0) licensed to do real estate work here (https://secure.utah.gov/cas/search?page=agentDetails&id=141633) for the law firm of Jeffs and Jeffs, also in Provo.

The only other reference I could find on the internet to UWMAD was here (http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=22995), where it says that "Parents for Choice's biggest donors are a Virginia-based group called All Children Matter; Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com; and Rick Koerber, a private-school investor who oversees a number of companies under the Utah County umbrella group FranklinSquires. Byrne and the Koerber group also finance Utah's Working Moms and Dads, a political action committee that backs school-choice candidates."

Last week, I found that the second- and third-largest individual contributors to PCE in 2006 were Mr. Byrne ($50,000) and Mr. Koerber (at least $30,000). So it makes sense, if they also run UWMAD, knowing that UWMAD gave a $250 contribution to Rep. Last's campaign.

If all of this is accurate, then it could be said that a contribution of $250 to Rep. Brad Last set in motion the chain of events making Utah the accidental front for a nationwide battle on universal school vouchers, giving All Children Matter of Michigan the best (and maybe the cheapest) victory it has won in any state yet. It looks like the only thing standing in ACM's way in Utah is the November 6 ballot.

Rep. Last seemed to understand in February that his vote was the one-vote margin that passed House Bill 148, the voucher plan, and what his vote would mean to Utahns for the rest of 2007. KSL quoted Rep. Last saying, "To every single one of you who wants to lynch me right now, I say don't talk to me until you read this bill, and don't talk to me until you do."

In that article on April 12, KSL's John Daley dug into ACM's activity here (http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=1098460):

The controversy over Utah's school voucher program has generated a lot of public and private debate. Now, Eyewitness News has discovered that some heavy hitters with big checkbooks are making sure their side of the issue is heard. We followed a money trail that led to the likes of Wal-mart, Amway, Overstock.com and others. We followed the money, looked at contribution filings and found there was plenty of campaign cash on both sides of the voucher debate. Money on the pro-voucher side was in much bigger sums, half of it coming from out of state. A big push is on to repeal, via referendum, the law creating a groundbreaking $3,000 per child school voucher program, which passed by one vote in this year's most dramatic Capitol Hill battle.

The fight pitted two political powerhouses and top five Utah campaign contributors, pro-voucher group Parents for Choice in Education and the Utah Education Association, the teacher's union. That campaign money translated into remarkable loyalty. In the Senate every lawmaker who got money from the pro-voucher group voted for the key bill creating vouchers. Those getting UEA money all voted against.

In the House there was a similar show of loyalty to the side that gave the money -- 96 percent who got money from the pro-voucher group voted for and 78 percent who got money from the other side voted against. Karen Hale, a former Democratic lawmaker said, "Yeah I think we can connect the dots when we see that money coming in and seeing what happened in the vote in the legislature."

Pro-public school money generally went to Democrats. Pro-voucher donations generally went to Republicans, including GOP House Speaker Greg Curtis, who by many accounts used his considerable clout to pressure some members to vote Yes. In several stories we've done on the influence of campaign money on House votes, Speaker Curtis has declined our request for an interview. He did so on this story, too.

The biggest financial force in the voucher fight is a national pro-voucher organization called All Children Matter, based in Michigan. Its funders include the son of a former Amway billionaire and an heir to the Wal-mart fortune. The political action committee for Parents for Choice in Education took in half a million dollars last year; half came from out-of-state, $240,000 from All Children Matter. Sen. Pat Jones said, "Why should well funded people out of state care about Utah's school system? What is in it for them?"

We found most of those opening their wallets have a philosophical stake in the issue, including Patrick Byrne, founder and CEO of Overstock.com, who gave Parents for Choice $80,000 last year. Byrne, a self-described libertarian, says education would be better with more competition, which he says unions and Democrats oppose.

With a referendum vote looming, the two sides continue to debate the impact of money. Pat Rusk the former UEA president said, "The difference to me is that we have a lot of teachers giving five or six dollars versus five or six people giving a lot of money.

Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne gave plenty of money in the last governor's race too -- $75,000 to the campaign of Governor Jon Huntsman, who ultimately signed the school voucher legislation. His office told KSL that campaign contributions had no influence on his decision.

Our calls to All Children Matter, the pro-voucher group in Michigan, were not returned.

Two days later, Brock Vergakis of the Associated Press filed a similar report. In it, he, too, explained that Utah was a test case in a nationwide voucher campaign, and that "voucher proponents [would] use Utah's new school voucher program as an example to get legislation passed elsewhere. That is exactly what national voucher groups and their donors had in mind when Utah and its conservative Legislature were targeted with more than $500,000 in campaign donations last year."

Mr. Byrne told Mr. Vergakis, "This is the camel's nose under the tent. If it takes hold here and proceeds here it will have a demonstrative effect that no other states can afford to ignore."

Mr. Vergakis goes on:

Byrne is Parents for Choice in Education's largest donor from Utah. Nearly half the money the group spent on legislative campaigns came from a political action committee called All Children Matter based out of Alexandria, Va., that has its headquarters in Grand Rapids, Mich. All Children Matter donated $240,000 to Parents for Choice in Education in 2006 and about $250,000 during the 2004 campaign cycle, finance reports in Utah show.

Utah was one of 10 states that All Children Matter has targeted to affect state elections, spending about $8 million nationwide in the 2003-04 election cycle. It is an organization dedicated to supporting candidates who favor charter schools and voucher programs. It's largely financed by heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune and the founders of Amway, according to finance reports in Virginia. In 2004, Jim Walton and John Walton, children of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, each donated more than $3 million to All Children Matter, the reports showed. In 2006, the estate of John Walton donated another $4.1 million, the reports showed.

"It's certainly not a grass-roots operation. These are heavy hitters," said Rich Robinson, director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, a nonpartisan organization that tracks campaign spending.

Another large donor to All Children Matter is the DeVos family, which founded Amway, a household and nutritional products company, campaign finance reports show. Dick DeVos is a former CEO of the company and a failed candidate for governor of Michigan. He's advocated creating school voucher programs for years and led a ballot initiative that would have allowed vouchers, which was defeated by voters there.

Between 1999 and 2005, DeVos and his relatives spent more than $7 million funding voucher political action committees, including more than $430,000 to All Children Matter, according to records kept by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network.

Messages left by The Associated Press for DeVos, All Children Matter Executive Director Greg Brock and at Wal-Mart headquarters were not returned.

A spokeswoman for PCE told Mr. Vergakis that PCE was "David" against the Utah Education Association, a "Goliath" because it has spent more money opposing vouchers and supporting public schools. But Mr. Vergakis discovered that while "all the UEA's political contributions came from individual donors from Utah and most of those were for less than $100," the same wasn't true for PCE. "In the past five years, the UEA has spent about $1 million in campaign expenditures. Parents for Choice in Education has spent about $900,000," he wrote.

Marilyn Kofford, education commissioner for the Utah Parent Teacher Association, said getting the law repealed will be a tough battle and also compares the struggle to that of David and Goliath, the Bible's Philistine giant killed by a rock from David's slingshot.

"We fought it for 10 years, and we were successful for 10 years. Then they brought in their big money and helped some of the legislators win," she said. "We are not wealthy people. We are basic, good middle-of-the-road citizens. Somewhere we're going to have to find the resources, but there's no way we will ever raise as much as they do. They will probably outspend us 10-to-1, big time."

The discovery of ACM's deep investment in Utah vouchers led "Marshall" at the Wasatch Watcher (http://www.wasatchwatcher.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=123) to write, "Welcome to Democracy in Utah, brought to you by out of state money from Wal-Mart and Amway that don't care that your voice is heard because they need to set a precedent."

This guy gave more money than I make in an entire year so his pet cause could be shoved down our throats. This is exactly the kind of choice people like Patrick Byrne want for our Democracy and our schools, where those that have the dough have the choice while the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.

But Utah isn't the only place where ACM is pouring huge amounts of voucher money, I learned. Beside Texas, which I mentioned last night, they also have operations in Missouri, Ohio and South Carolina.

What are they doing nationwide?

Tracking down the names and purposes behind Parents for Choice in Education's largest contributor, All Children Matter of Michigan, has been like pulling at what looks like a loose string on a sweater. But the more you pull on it, the more you find that it's all one string, knitted back-and-forth from one sleeve to the other. In just a few hours this weekend, I know that what I've learned can't be more than a fraction of what there is to know. But I've been amazed at the reach of this organization into several states across the country. And in every state, there's the same story: A little local money and a lot of Michigan money gets routed, usually through a political action committee in Virginia, into Utah, or Ohio, or Texas, or Missouri, or South Carolina, to get people elected or appointed who will push voucher plans through the legislature or the state board of education. The money that is spent in a single year to make this happen is more than most people will ever see in a lifetime.

Rebecca Walsh's story in the Trib (June 25, 2006) got me pointed in the right direction, looking at All Children Matter. Reading her article, I understood why Utah was picked for this voucher plan: It's considered a "small state" by people who fund ACM, so it's would be cheaper here to run a voucher plan through the legislature and past Utah voters, and then use that victory to build momentum for campaigns in bigger states. It means this a national campaign, not just an idea that grew from Utah voters or lawmakers.

I asked what this said about our legislature, that ACM could target us -- a small, cheap state -- to pour money into some legislative campaigns in order to protect or win enough votes to get a voucher plan through the legislature? I wondered what it says about us that for a few million dollars, these people from Michigan got exactly the bill they wanted, House Bill 148, by a one-vote margin in the House last winter. Mrs. Walsh explained that the voucher plan has almost nothing to do with Utah voters; it has more to do with the folks from Michigan and their fight against Utah teachers.

In fact, it isn't just Utah teachers, I discovered -- it's teachers (or public schools) across the nation.

A lot of people in the media have already been covering a lot of these details. You just have to put all the pieces of the puzzle together to see the big picture. This weekend, I found a lot more of the pieces scattered across the country.

For example, a writer named Susan Cunningham in Missouri wrote on August 28, 2005, about ACM on her weblog here (http://myvoiceonline.blogspot.com/2005/08/whats-matter-with-all-children-matter.html). She wrote,

"This national organization claims on its website to work for the election of public officials who are committed to ensure that all children in America have equal access to a quality education. The group was founded in 2003 by former Amway Corporation president Richard DeVos and lists some of its big contributors as hard-core privatization proponents. Whenever right-wing big corporation types start looking and sounding like "bleeding heart liberals," it's time to do some checking.

Background: Going WAY back - Fifty years ago, conservative guru Milton Friedman, called for "denationalizing schooling" and letting "private enterprise" do the job of educating young Americans. In a Wall Street Journal article in June of this year, Friedman celebrated the fact that his voucher idea was finally catching on. ("After 50 years, education vouchers are beginning to catch on," WSJ, June 9, 2005.)

The goal of most of the pro-privatization groups is to dismantle ALL public programs because they don't think it's the government's job to help individual people. The most famous statement by one of these adherents is the "drown it in the bathtub" comment by Grover Norquist in reference to his goal of eliminating government sponsored social programs.

All Children Matter is just one of many groups pushing for the de-funding of public education. They work together with front groups in local elections to get the candidates most willing to do their bidding into office.

And in her own research of them, she found this list of their activities:

November 2003 "Michigan PAC gave cash to 24 VA politicians." All Children Matter spent $300,000 to elect representatives favorable to school voucher programs and tried to make it look like they were primarily concerned about low-income children not having enough options. Virginia voters saw through the charade, but ACM promised to be back in future elections.

July 2004 "Groups push for passage of tuition tax-credit bill." Before the June primary, ACM sent mailers and bought radio time in South Carolina to lobby in favor of income-tax credits for parents who send their kids to private schools, despite the fact that low-income parents don't make enough to benefit from a tax break. A bill to that effect died in committee, but ACM promised to be back.

October 2004 "Pro-voucher group drops cash on state campaigns." ACM sent fliers to voters in St. Petersburg, Florida, in support of a pro-voucher candidate for state representative. The candidate tried to distance himself from the group and said he hadn't seen the flier before it was mailed. As state rep, the candidate voted to create the state's two largest voucher programs: the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship program for low-income kids and the McKay Scholarship which helps disabled children. ACM's donations to all Florida candidates in that election was over $500,000. That's a lot of "compassionate conservatism."

December 2004 "Out-of-state donors are big players in tax credit debate." Certain Republican incumbents in the Utah House of Representatives were targets of ACM for not being conservative enough! ACM's $252,000 combined with $50,000 from another pro-voucher group accounted for 86% of the money taken in by Parents for Choice in Education, the main Utah advocate for tuition tax credits for parents of private school children. They tried to defeat Republican Rep. David Hogue despite Hogue's credentials as a proven conservative and support from his own conservative colleagues. The reason? Hogue had voted against a tax credit bill. Similar tactics were applied to the race of Republican Rep. Jim Dunnigan, but both Hogue and Dunnigan were re-elected. (Parents for Choice, it seems, doesn't involve very many parents. Only 12 people were counted as "$50 or less" contributors.)

For good reason, Mrs. Cunningham asked, "What's really going on here?"

She decided,

There are lots of different motivations for people to want to dismantle public education. For some, it's about religion. Some people don't agree with the public school curriculum which is based on preference for the scientific method, historical inquiry, the celebration of individual diversity, and the belief that each child has unique potential. Parents who prefer private schools are certainly free to send their children to them or home school them or whatever. But they shouldn't be able to opt out of paying taxes for public schools any more than they can opt out of paying for public roads, parks, police departments or any other investment in the common good of the community. Educating ourselves is an investment in the future of our country, not just one families' kids.

For others, the desire to destroy public schools is about finding ways to make money. With so many of the avenues for capital investment and profit going overseas or becoming saturated with too many people fighting over the same resources, corporations are looking for new ways to make a buck. Thus the "privatization" of everything movement. Just as HMO's have succeeded in making lots of people rich, so too can EMO's, or so they think.

For others, the privatization craze is ideological. They truly believe in limited government and think all social programs should be run by for-profit companies or "faith-based" service organizations. For those who are eager to see both the conversion of programs to private ventures and the conversion of American voters to a conservative religious point of view, dismantling public schools accomplishes two goals at once.

Last year, WOOD-TV in Michigan did a story (http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?s=5539114&ClientType=Printable) on Dick DeVos, who founded ACM and who was running for governor of Michigan then, and the story lays out pretty clearly that Mr. DeVos and his wife have a lot of money to spend, and they have a specific public policy agenda, and they have figured out a way to get their money into several states where some lawmakers are willing to take their contributions and carry their agenda.

DeVos in 2003 set up a political action committee, All Children Matter, to promote efforts in other states to push vouchers and tax credits for businesses that create scholarships for children to attend private schools. The PAC is run out of west Michigan even though it's set up in Virginia. DeVos initially headed the group but since has handed that responsibility over to his wife.

The PAC has been a way for the DeVoses - and Wal-Mart heirs Jim and John Walton, among others - to give millions of dollars this year and in previous elections to candidates in states such as Ohio and South Carolina that support school choice. All Children Matter also has played a financial role in aiding efforts in Utah, Texas and other states to push for vouchers and tax credits for parents who want to send their children to private schools.

In 2004, for instance, All Children Matter gave about $1.4 million to All Children Matter-Colorado to spend on legislative races and help elect candidates who agreed with their views. In Utah that year, the group gave about $252,000 to a PAC called Parents for Choice that pushed for private-school vouchers and tuition tax credits.

All Children Matter spent more than $8.2 million in at least 10 states in the 2003-04 cycle, according to the nonpartisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network, making it one of the largest PACs to play a role in that election. Dick and Betsy DeVos gave $375,000 to All Children Matter from 1999 through 2005.

At about the same time, a writer at the weblog "Stone Soup Musings" in Michigan described here (http://stonesoupmusings.blogspot.com/2006/06/devos-name-pops-up-in-utah.html) what they learned ACM was doing in Texas.

Although DeVos is busy spending his fortune in Michigan to get himself elected governor (more than $5 million so far), his influence doesn't end there. Questions about the PAC's funding extend to Texas too.

[In March,] Texas Freedom Network President Kathy Miller... asked state election officials to investigate whether two political action committees funded by the state’s biggest private school voucher pusher have complied with campaign finance laws. One complaint Miller filed with the Texas Ethics Commission asks whether the Texas Republican Legislative Campaign Committee (TRLCC) –- funded almost entirely by San Antonio businessman Dr. James Leininger –- has met legal requirements before making campaign expenditures. The other notes that All Children Matter PAC –- a beneficiary of large Leininger contributions over the years –- may not have reported all of its contributions. [...]

All Children Matter PAC reported a December 2005 in-kind contribution of $54,360 for polling services to The Future of Texas Alliance PAC. Yet All Children Matter PAC reported a cash-on-hand balance of just $2,168.95 in July and has reported no income since. In fact, the PAC even failed to make monthly reports for August and September 2005. As a result, voters have no way of knowing how the PAC is accounting for the more than $52,000 difference in income and expenditures.

As much as I found published in 2006 and before, the coverage of ACM's activities across the country in 2007 has been much greater.

Why is Michigan money coming here?

When I said I'd start to look at who was behind the pro-voucher side of the November ballot referendum, there were two things I certainly didn't expect. One, how long I could spend chasing links to more links to even more links on the internet, and two, how many people -- far and wide apart across the country -- are involved in Parents for Choice in Education. At the end of it all, it became clear to me that PCE isn't a Utah organization at all; we just happen to be a convenient target for someone else's agenda because of the circumstances in our state and because we have a handful of people willing to devote their time to that agenda. After finding reading probably 50 different news articles going back over the past couple of years in Utah and elsewhere, I still can't tell how much money from Michigan and Virginia is being sent here to get vouchers passed in Utah, or who all is behind it.

But I learned one more important thing that helps: A lot of people in the media have already been covering a lot of these details. You just have to put all the pieces of the puzzle together to see the big picture.

Rebecca Walsh of the Trib wrote on June 25, 2006, that "Parents for Choice in Education has a grass-roots image and a name ready-made for focus groups. But it turns out most of the cash the advocacy group for private-school vouchers and tuition tax credits spreads around Utah in elections comes from big-business donors outside the state - including the Wal-Mart heirs and founders of multilevel marketing giant Amway."

Ms. Walsh's article isn't live anymore at the Trib's website, but you can read it (or most of it) at the weblog of Susan Ohanian here (http://www.susanohanian.org/atrocity_fetch.php?id=6257).

She wrote:

Organized five years ago as a political action committee - a fledgling roost for charter-school and private-school devotees - Parents for Choice initially was relatively low-budget and weak. But an infusion of out-of-state financing has changed that, allowing the group to build a base of support in the state Legislature and Governor's Office and shape the education-reform debate in Utah.

So far this year, the voucher advocates and related political organizations and individuals have given 21 candidates for the state Legislature more than $64,000 leading up to party conventions and Tuesday's primary election. Undoubtedly, that number will grow as candidates work their way to November's general election and Parents for Choice's financiers continue to send checks. If money is power, Parents for Choice is bulking up.

When voucher advocates first opened their doors, their ideas were big but money was scarce. Venture capitalist Jordan Clements and telecommunications executive Doug Holmes believed Utah needed a political organization to push education reform: merit pay for teachers and "school choice" - charter schools, private-school scholarships, vouchers and tax credits.

In 2002, with just $10,000, the PAC gave modest donations to a dozen conservative lawmakers and candidates. The next year was even leaner. Only six candidates received cash. But in 2004, all that changed with $255,000 in seed money from Michigan-based All Children Matter. That year, the PAC spread its good fortune around. And Parents for Choice supporter Patrick Byrne, Overstock.com chief, chipped in $75,000 for Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

Now, there are spinoffs of the PAC - Education Excellence Utah and Children First Utah. Other related or sympathetic PACs have formed recently, including Utah Working Moms and Dads, whose founders include former Salt Lake County Councilman Russell Skousen, and Future Moms and Dads. Parents for Choice in Education director Elisa Clements Peterson, Clements' daughter, refuses to comment about her organization's financing until September - a federal tax deadline that coincides with a state deadline for political action committee disclosure forms.

"Nobody's going to comment," communications director Nancy Pomeroy said. When pressed about the sources of Parents for Choice's money, specifically All Children Matter, Pomeroy said: "I don't know what you're talking about."

The last quote -- "Nobody's going to comment" -- reminded me of the articles in the papers last week about the nasty push-polling PCE did. PCE's spokeswoman didn't answer the questions asked of her, and the board member who was asked for comment wouldn't give one.

Mrs. Walsh explained the history of All Children Matter, the group that gave so much money to PCE and Utah legislators' campaigns last year:

All Children Matter evolved out of a failed 2000 Michigan citizens initiative for private-school vouchers. Chairwoman Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick, have a long history of pushing for "school choice." In 2001, Betsy DeVos organized the Great Lakes Education Project to push for charter schools in Michigan's Legislature.

Two years later, that group morphed into All Children Matter. Dick DeVos is an Amway heir and a 2006 candidate for Michigan governor.

The DeVos family has spent a good chunk of their fortune on the PAC. Along with them, Wal-Mart heirs Jim and John Walton are frequent donors, giving more than $3 million to the PAC in 2004.

Utah's voucher and tax-credit advocates have received their share of that funding. All Children Matter Director Greg Brock says along with Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin, Utah is a key state for the school-choice movement - in part because a political action committee already existed here. Also, campaign money spreads further in small states.

I didn't mention this in my notes on Wednesday, but when I google-searched the Heartland Institute, I found a page that lists its board of directors, and Thomas Walton is a member of their board. When I saw the Walton family name again in Mrs. Walsh's article, it made sense to connect those dots.

Reading her article, it makes it clearer to me why Utah was picked for this voucher plan: It's considered a "small state" by the people who fund All Children Matter, so it would be cheaper here to run a voucher plan through the legislature and past Utah voters, and then use that victory to build momentum for campaigns in bigger states. It means this a national campaign, not just an idea that grew from Utah voters or lawmakers.

And what does this say about our legislature, that this organization targeted us -- a small, cheap state -- to pour money into some legislative campaigns in order to protect or win enough votes to get a voucher plan through the assembly? What does it say that for a few million dollars, these people from Michigan got exactly the bill they wanted, House Bill 148, by a one-vote margin in the House this winter?

Though it certainly wasn't an overnight success. Mrs. Walsh shows that it took a few years for them to get what they wanted.

Virtually every year since Parents for Choice formed, Utah lawmakers have debated the merits of some legislation pushed by Parents for Choice - including proposals for publicly-funded tax credits or vouchers for parents who send their children to private schools, scholarships for disabled students and easing regulations on charter schools. The most controversial issues - vouchers and tax credits - inevitably stall as lawmakers split along the narrowest of margins.

Parents for Choice and All Children Matter are determined to shift that margin, Brock says. But like Peterson, Brock declined to talk about how much money the Michigan PAC is sending west this election year until September, for "strategic reasons."

The strategy is clear. So far, tax-credit advocates have targeted moderate, public-education friendly legislators, many of them schoolteachers. And the tactic already has worked: Lehi Rep. David Cox, a fifth-grade teacher, lost his bid for re-election at the Utah County Republican convention in April. His opponent, Ken Sumsion, got $3,545 from Parents for Choice and Utah Working Moms and Dads.

"That money made the biggest difference," Cox said. "They were researching my record a year ago to find any bills they could twist to make me look bad. I couldn't compete with the level of sophistication and expertise that was brought in."

I read this and I think, again, what does this say about us? That a group of wealthy people in Michigan come to Salt Lake City and decide who and what our state government is going to be?

And then Mrs. Walsh explains that it has almost nothing to do with Utah voters at all. It has more to do with the folks from Michigan and their fight against Utah's teachers. When you look at the details, the overflow of money from Michigan is even stranger.

Parents for Choice board member Steve Poulton, a former legislator, said sending money to sympathetic candidates is the PAC's right as a participant in democracy.

"It is delightful to see an organization like Parents for Choice in Education take on historically the most powerful special interest group in the state, the teachers union," Poulton said. "The education lobby - led by the teachers union - has long been without a counterbalance of any kind."

So far this year, UEA has spent $5,000 in legislative races, said Vik Arnold, UEA government relations and political-action director. Just three candidates have reported receiving cash from the teachers union.

UEA President Pat Rusk draws a line between her organization's political activities and that of school-choice advocates. For one thing, she says, UEA's funding comes from individual Utah teachers' donations and dues, which are pooled together. Parents for Choice seems to be financed in $1 million increments by wealthy, out-of-state business owners, Rusk said. She believes those donations undermine Parents for Choice's claims to be representing hundreds of Utah parents who want to buck public education.

"The money has allowed them to have Web sites and commercials," Rusk said. "There's a perception that they're bigger than they really are."
Whatever the number of its supporters, the survival of Parents for Choice is no longer in question. Seven candidates were on the group's "hit list" this year. With financing from groups like All Children Matter, that list likely will grow.

Who are the parents?

Yesterday, following up on a suggestion by a letter-writer to the Trib, I started looking for information on who was behind both sides of the voucher referendum. I'd already made a list of the Utah voters and groups that are part of Utahns for Public Schools, but I ran into a brick wall when trying to find out who makes up Parents for Choice in Education. But PCE has a political action committee and a political issues committee, and a foundation on top of that, so some of their donors are on record with the Lt. Governor's office.

And that office posts a lot of its information in the Utah Reporting System's website, https://ucrs.utah.gov/. You only have to look for the name of the PAC, or the PIC, and tell it what year's records to look for. I chose to look at the most recent full year's reporting period -- which is 2006, so there's no clear note of who or how much has been contributed or spent in 2007 -- and here's what I found.

Between March and June of last year, PCE's PAC collected $100,000 in two installments from an organization called All Children Matter, whose legal address is in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The next largest single contributor is Patrick Byrne, who gave $50,000 to PCE in three installments between January and July.

PCE co-founder Doug Holmes of Farmington gave $20,000, which would make him the third largest contributor, except that several different companies founded by Rick Koerber of Springville, companies that share the address of one corporate building in Provo, and one business associate of Mr. Koerber's, each gave $5,000 on the same day. It's clear that the companies are Mr. Koerber's companies because he lists them on his own personal and business website. So the contributions that were given on September 12 last year by Mr. Koerber himself, Founders Capital LLC, Hill Erickson LLC, Franklin Squires Investments, McGuire Group LLC and New Castle Holdings, total $30,000, making him the third largest single contributor. If you count the $5,000 given on the same date by Gabriel Joseph, a broadcaster who hosts Mr. Koerber's radio program, it brings the total of contributions made or influenced by Mr. Koerber on September 12 to $35,000.

I'd never heard of Mr. Koerber before looking at his website, but I learned that he's "a highly sought after motivational speaker and business consultant. He has worked with, represented, and held key positions in companies such as FranklinCovey, Toshiba America Business Solutions, Carleton Sheets Personal Coaching, and IKON Office Solutions." And that he and his wife have two children.

When I counted up all the remaining contributions to PCE's political action committee last year, in amounts from $5,000 to $50, the total came to under $44,000. But the top four entities who contributed -- ACM of Michigan, Patrick Byrne of Park City, Rick Koerber of Springville and Doug Holmes of Farmington -- gave (or directly influenced the contribution of) $195,000. That's a huge percentage of the whole.

What concerns me is that the organization's name is Parents for Choice in Education. On a lark, I googled to find out, if I could, how many parents and children they include. ACM is an organization, so technically it's not a parent, and it isn't a Utah organization anyway. I couldn't find out if Mr. Byrne has children; there are a lot of references to him on the internet because he owns Overstock.com and because his father was the CEO of Geico Insurance at one time, but I couldn't find anything saying that he has children. But I learned that Mr. Koerber and his wife have two children, and that Mr. Holmes and his wife have six children. So two of the four largest contributors to Parents for Choice in Education are actually parents.

I google-searched ACM to find out more about them, and I found out that Paul Rolly of the Trib has already written about them. In December 2004, he reported, "Three Utah political action committees -- married by one issue -- were financed generously by All Children Matter (ACM), based in Alexandria, Va. In fact, ACM's $ 252,000 combined with $ 50,000 from Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne accounted for 86 percent of the $ 355,000 taken in by Parents for Choice in Education, the main Utah advocate for tuition tax credits for parents who enroll their children in private schools."

"The principals and major local contributors to Parents for Choice in Education overlap considerably with those involved with Education Excellence and Children First, which also promote tuition tax credits."

"The thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to pro-tax-credit candidates from Parents for Choice in Education and its sister groups have come largely from All Children Matter, whose own donor list is an exclusive group," he wrote.

Doing his own research, Rolly found out a lot of names behind Dick and Betsy DeVos, the Amway leaders who run ACM. He learned that PCE collected almost $1 million in the first six months of 2004 "from just 13 donors." They included "Caxton Corp.'s Bruce Kovner, 'a leader in the Manhattan Institute think tank (and) a frequent source of pro-voucher research'; Club for Growth founders Richard Gilder and National Review President Thomas 'Dusty' Rhodes; [and] Wal-Mart heir John Walton."

"Another member of the little club with the big stick is Ohio for-profit school operator David Brennan, "who has been eyeing new states to expand his charter school and online school operations. Brennan hails from the same state as Majority Strategies, based in Columbus, which enjoyed $ 38,000 in contracts to print direct mailers for Parents for Choice in Education, and Lovette Peters of Cincinnati, a $ 20,000 donor to Parents for Choice in Education."

"The local contributors of Parents for Choice in Education, Education Excellence and Children First also are an exclusive club whose boosters include Jordan Clements, Royce Van Tassell, Doug Holmes, Elisa Clements Peterson, who is Clements' daughter and is paid about $50,000 a year as Parents for Choice in Education's executive director, and a small cluster of neighbors in and around Farmington. Parents for Choice, it seems, doesn't involve very many parents. Only 12 people were counted as $ 50-or-less contributors. Their contributions totaled $290."

It sounds like Rolly found a similar ratio of giving in 2004 to the one represented in PCE's reporting in 2006.

It's a start, but it still doesn't explain who's behind PCE in Utah, or why so many wealthy people far from the Wasatch Front have an interest in creating a universal voucher system in Utah. Is it profit? If so, whose profit? And if their interest isn't profit, what is it? And why Utah?

Who are these people?

In today's DesNews, Bruce Daniel of Vernal asks who the "anti-voucher organizations" are (http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695202971,00.html), which is a fine question to ask. If I could, I'd send Mr. Daniel the link to my notes of Monday, when I charted the information I'd found on the internet about the coalition of Utah voters allied against the voucher plan.

But I particularly liked his assertion that "Libertarians would say a parent has every right to know who is pushing whatever educational agenda so they can make informed decisions on where they want their children educated and by whom." It's an egalitarian notion, one that we all should take to heart. With that in mind, I'd like to spend some time soon looking at both sides, sketching what can be found about exactly who is bringing exactly what into Utah and its discussion about education and the proposed voucher plan. I think we understand how the anti-voucher movement took root and grew this past spring, and even its origins among parents, teachers and community leaders during the past several years. But the roots of the pro-voucher movement in Utah are not as clear. Paul Rolly of the Trib has mentioned this a few times, so I hope to review his columns and others I can find.

And Kent Overly of Draper referred in yesterday's Trib to a note published last week by Michael Van Winkle, also in the Trib, about the separation of church and state (http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_6682849 ). Breaking down the issue into its basic parts, Mr. Overly asks a salient question: "Should the taxpayers of Utah be forced to contribute taxes to parents who choose an alternate education for their children?"

But Mr. Overly then asks a much sharper question, one noticing that Mr. Van Winkle wrote his letter from "The Heartland Institute" in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Overly asks, "And Utahns, shouldn't we ask why someone in Chicago is so interested in a little old law in Utah?"

Good question. I remembered seeing Mr. Van Winkle's letter last week but admit that his Chicago address escaped me, so I reviewed his letter this morning (http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_6651624 ). He writes, "Voucher opponents in Utah are getting desperate. They are arguing once again that school vouchers violate the separation of church and state..."

In fact, a close reading of our governing documents suggest that whether or not the voucher plan violates a theoretical separation of church and state, it does seem to violate the Utah Constitution itself, as I've mentioned before.

But to follow Mr. Overly's point, I searched for some information on the Heartland Institute, to try and understand why "someone in Chicago is so interested in a little old law in Utah," as he put it. It turns out that the Heartland Institute's roots in the voucher movement across the country go pretty deep. It publishes a newsletter called "School Reform News," which reprinted this summer an editorial by Paul Mero from the Sutherland Institute, titled "Vouchers Subsidize Parents, Not Schools." In it, Mero says, among other things, that he saved Utah taxpayers about $360,000 by home-schooling his six children, and that home-schooled children make better basketball players than public school students. You can read the whole editorial here http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=21854 .

In the current issue of School Reform News, however, there's an article titled, "What Can We Learn from the Universal Voucher Law in Utah?" by three men who work in the Arkansas Department of Education Reform. I wondered if this office was affiliated with the Arkansas Department of Education, since its name is so similar. What I thought would be a simple google search led to a few more steps. Is nothing what it says it is anymore?

At the office's own webpage, http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/, I learned that it is not affiliated with the Arkansas Department of Education, but with the University of Arkansas's College of Education and Health Professions. It sounded perfectly legitimate -- a public university serving a public interest -- until I read further.

The office's webpage reads, "The Department of Education Reform is the newest department in the College of Education and Health Professions, established on July 1, 2005. The creation of the Department of Education Reform was made possible through a $10,000,000 private gift and an additional $10,000,000 from the University’s Matching Gift Program. This gift is one of the largest ever received by a college of education in the country. With these resources the department has six endowed professorships, ten doctoral fellowships, and funds for research and projects."

So an unnamed donor with an interest in "education reform" gave a gift of $10 million to the University of Arkansas, which matched the gift with public funds and opened a brand-new department whose products now include papers to be published by the Heartland Institute. And for that $10 million gift, they got a staff of six professors, 10 graduate students and various research aid to set up their operation. (Who in Arkansas would have $10 million to devote to such a narrow purpose, and would not want to give it publicly?)

Its director is Jay Greene. And Mr. Greene's biography, which is available on the public website, lists a good many articles he's written or co-written, with titles such as "Vouchers in Charlotte," "The Hidden Research Consensus for School Choice, Charters, Vouchers, and Public Education," "Private Schooling and Political Tolerance," "Private Schools and the Public Good," "Effectiveness of School Choice: The Milwaukee Experiment," "Sex, Drugs, and Delinquency in Urban and Suburban Public Schools," "The Education Freedom Index," and "A Survey of Results from Voucher Experiments: Where We Are and What We Know."

Now that we understand the point of view adopted by Mr. Greene and the Arkansas Department of Education Reform, it makes perfect sense that one of his graduate students, his deputy director and a research associate should write a new article called "What Can We Learn from the Universal Voucher Law in Utah?" and that it is published in School Reform News by the Heartland Institute. The article is brief (http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=21853 ); it draws some comparisons between the universal voucher law passed by the Utah legislature and voucher plans enacted in the South American nations of Colombia and Chile.

Here is one of their observations:

"If implemented, Utah's voucher plan will be wholly unique. For one, the plan is universal only in regard to opportunity, since it doesn't force families to make a choice, as Chile's plan does. Families can continue to attend their assigned school as if the voucher program didn't exist. The Utah plan also has graduated voucher amounts, ranging from $500 for the wealthiest individuals to $3,000 for the most disadvantaged. Vouchers are available only for use in private schools, so only children of families interested in private school, dismayed enough with their current public school, and financially secure enough to make up any difference between the voucher and tuition costs, will use it. This scenario by no means describes a market-based K-12 education system."

And here's another.

"Martin Carnoy's 1998 study of Sweden and Chile's national voucher programs analyzed the effects they had on traditional public schools. In Sweden, the research suggests, the voucher program "hardly touched public education," because public schools are generally held in high regard. In Chile, however, private schools were deemed to be better than public schools, and vouchers caused a 'flight from public education.'

"Carnoy found the effects of vouchers depend on the public's perceptions of traditional public schools. Public schools in Utah are generally held in high regard, and it appears likely that few Utahns would flee the public school system. Hence, if Carnoy's findings are credible, it may be difficult for researchers to ascertain vouchers' possible effects on public schools elsewhere."

Taking all of this into account, it looks like Mr. Overly's question was appropriate and his answer was right: "And Utahns, shouldn't we ask why someone in Chicago is so interested in a little old law in Utah? It's because it has broader and sweeping connotations for this national debate on vouchers."

How does this attract and keep good teachers?

An item in yesterday's DesNews reinforced what Rep. Greg Hughes told Lt. Governor Gary Herbert on the Bob Lonsberry show last week: Utah faces a teacher shortage. But diagnosis of the illness isn't the same as a prescription for a cure, and while Rep. Hughes and others have adequately diagnosed the ailment, none has yet offered a realistic prescription.

"Jordan, Alpine, Davis and Salt Lake City school districts combined reported nearly 150 teacher vacancies as late as Thursday," writes Jennifer Toomer-Cook, Laura Hancock and Tiffany Erickson. "School district bosses say they're getting creative in recruiting and keeping teachers in a profession that's become, for rookies at least, a revolving door. But that's getting harder, too. The issue largely comes down to money. And in a state that spends the least per student in the country, districts don't have much of it."

But while teachers are in short supply, students enrolling in public schools are not, she writes: "Utah's student enrollment is expected to grow from 540,000 to more than 680,000 students by 2014. At the same time, Utah will need 44,000 new teachers, according to a Utah Educator Supply and Demand study by Utah State University."

Toomer-Cook has learned that "fewer people want to become teachers."

Is it any wonder? Upon passage of this year's budget, lawmakers congratulated themselves for adding a record number of new dollars to the budget for public education -- just enough to keep Utah in 51st place in student expenditures. Sure, they deserve congratulations for investing needed resources in our public schools. But there appears to be a wide gulf between doing 'more' and doing 'enough'. Did they do more this year? Sure. Did they do enough? Well, here's where we find that wide gulf.

"Of Utah's some 9,000 new teachers licensed between 2000 and 2004, fewer than half remained in Utah public schools by the 2004-05 school year," Toomer-Cook writes.

Have any surveys been done of those teachers who went to college to become teachers, earned degrees that would make them teachers, became certified to be teachers, were hired to serve as teachers, and then who left the profession before their fifth anniversary in it? I don't know of any. But I think the average Utahn might imagine what such a survey would say. We might hear phrases like "overflowing classrooms" and "could earn a better income elsewhere." How do you overcome answers like those? The question reminds me of that game show, "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" Faced with just these facts, a fifth-grader could offer a good answer.

And last week, Rep. Hughes gave Lt. Governor Herbert that answer in his radio interview: Raise teacher salaries to a competitive level, and hire more teachers to reduce class size.

Plenty of our leaders know the good answer. But the gulf between knowing the good answer and making it a legislative priority is as wide as the gulf between doing 'more' and doing 'enough'.

If that's not enough to ponder, let's add one more point: How does House Bill 148 -- the voucher plan that we're all going to vote on in November -- help Utah attract and keep good teachers, and how does it help reduce class size? And if it does neither, why are we spending public tax dollars on it, rather than the real challenges?

Where is the accountability?

A friend told me that Rep. Greg Hughes was interviewed last week on the Bob Lonsberry show when Lt. Governor Gary Herbert was the guest host. I missed the show but was glad to find the link to that day's show on the internet (http://www.knrs.com/cc-common/podcast/single_podcast.html?podcast=BobWeekdays.xml). Listening to it, I was pleased to hear the balance of views; Rep. Ralph Becker spoke first, opposing the plan, and Rep. Hughes spoke by telephone to support the plan. But one thing Rep. Hughes said struck me as strange.

In discussing the topic of having public accountability in private schools that accept vouchers under the plan, Rep. Hughes said, "There is accountability. You must be an accredited institution to be able to receive a voucher. The accreditation process for private schools is rigorous. It's one that goes into the curriculum, the certification of their teachers, and it's one of the benchmarks that people use when deciding what private school to use, and it's one that we do require here in Utah."

I've looked at the plan before, but Rep. Hughes was so forceful in making his point that I was sure I'd missed something, so I reviewed House Bill 148 again. On the most recent, even closer look at the bill, here is what I found:

When applying for a "scholarship" -- the bill's term for a voucher (which calls into question the state's definition of a "scholarship," a topic for another day) -- a parent must sign a statement stating, among other things,

"I acknowledge that

(1) A private school may not provide the same level of services that are provided in a public school.

(2) The private school in which I have chosen to enroll my child has disclosed to me the teaching credentials of the school's teachers and the school's accreditation status.

(3) I will assume full financial responsibility for the education of my scholarship student if I accept this scholarship."

So there's a reference to accreditation, but no requirement of it, in that provision. In signing such a statement, a parent is merely saying that the private school where he or she hopes to enroll his or her child has informed the parent of its "accreditation status." Of course, that status could be non-accredited, but by issuing this notice of non-accreditation to the parent, the private school has satisfied this part of the voucher plan.

A little later in House Bill 148 I found this reference:

"To be eligible to enroll a scholarship student, a private school shall: (i) provide, upon request to any person, a statement indicating which, if any, organizations have accredited the private school."

Again, it is a reference to accreditation, but not a state requirement that the private school actually be accredited -- accredited by anyone at all. In fact, the plan clearly contemplates that the private school in question, while receiving public funds, could hold no accreditation whatsoever; the provision only requires that the school give the parent -- and only if the parent asks -- a statement indicating "which, if any, organizations have accredited the school."

Of course, this is only one person's close, careful reading of the bill. Despite Rep. Hughes's assertion to the contrary, the plan includes no requirement that a private school be accredited by any organization, even a private school set to collect public funds through a voucher. If such a requirement exists, it doesn't exist within this plan, and this plan is the one that Utah voters will vote on in November. If Utah voters haven't read the plan for themselves, they should; it is posted on the internet at http://le.utah.gov/~2007/bills/hbillenr/hb0148.htm.

While Lt. Governor Herbert didn't stop to explore Rep. Hughes's assertion further, it was still good to hear him raise the issue that rests at the heart of some voucher opponents' case against the plan.

"It's not an apples to apples comparison, it's really apples to oranges. Public education in the traditional sense has to take whoever's dropped off at the doorstep," Lt. Gov. Herbert said. "Private schools can discriminate, as far as who they take and what they take."

Later in the conversation, a caller asked about lawmakers' commitment to reduce class size, and Rep. Hughes offered an answer that may reveal where lawmakers' real concerns lie.

"It is a challenge," he said. "There are a couple of things that we fight in the legislature, one is better compensation for our hard-working teachers, the other is smaller class sizes, but oftentimes those are diametrically opposed propositions. If we have smaller class sizes, we need more teachers, and if we're not paying the teachers we have currently an adequate salary, paying them more, it becomes that much more challenging when we add to the ranks."

Half of Utah's new teachers leave within the first five years of their careers, either to go into the private sector or to go elsewhere in the country, in order to earn a higher salary than Utah pays its teachers, Rep. Hughes explained. Attracting and keeping good teachers with our current teacher salaries is a problem. But even if we pay our current teacher well enough to cause them to keep their career in Utah, the issue of growing class sizes isn't resolved unless and until we hire more teachers.

So within this brief note rests two problems and two solutions, all enunciated clearly by Rep. Hughes. To attract and keep good teachers, we should raise their salaries to a level competitive with surrounding states or with private-sector jobs that require similar education, credentials or experience. To reduce class sizes, we should hire more teachers.

If, as Rep. Hughes outlined, those are the two greatest problems facing our public education system in Utah, then is it clear to anyone why we are talking about shifting public tax dollars into private-school vouchers, rather than using them to establish competitive teacher salaries and hiring enough teachers that we really reduce class size? Upon a third careful reading of House Bill 148, I didn't find any provisions that address teacher salaries or class size, either.

Who's behind it?

Last week's flare-up about the "push-poll" sponsored by voucher proponents knocked the real substance of the November 6 ballot referendum on vouchers in Utah off the front burner for a couple of days. Voucher proponents worked hard to divert public attention from that substance and focus instead on people and issues far from the Wasatch Front. But the fact remains that there's a pretty important question on the ballot, and Utahns will get to decide whether they want a statewide voucher program that uses taxpayer dollars to create and fund a separate, private school system.

One good thing to come from the "push-poll" mess is that it gives us a chance to reflect on who put this voucher question on the ballot. The answer, of course, is Utahns. And, all things considered, Utahns spoke pretty loudly in doing it. No petition drive to put a question on the ballot had succeeded since 1974, so the battle to make it happen this year was uphill from the start.

The threshold was relatively high. A successful petition required a minimum of 92,000 signatures -- 10 percent of the vote count in the last gubernatorial election -- and required that the petitioners collect that percentage of signatures in at least 15 of Utah's 29 counties. That would be a tall order already, but there was also a time limit: 40 days.

And it goes without saying that only the signatures of qualified Utah voters would be accepted.

Which is why the Deseret Morning News of May 1 started its ballot referendum report with historic news, as petitioners not only submitted a successful petition, but also "[set] a record for the number of signatures gathered for a referendum petition. Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert said that not only are the 124,218 verified signatures a record number on a referendum petition, it's the first time in 33 years a referendum petition has been successful. The last one resulted in a land-use bill being overturned, in 1974."

That's a pretty powerful statement: Placing the voucher question on the ballot required that ninety-two thousand signatures from qualified Utah voters be collected, but the final tally showed that one hundred twenty-four thousand, two hundred eighteen individual, qualified Utahn voters felt strongly enough about the issue to sign their names on the petition -- more than thirty thousand more signatures of qualified Utah voters than were actually required.

[For those who don't remember, there was a strange footnote in the News's voucher story that day. "Utahns for Electoral Fairness", led by Bart Grant and Mike Ridgway, and examined the petitions and "believed enough of the signatures were fraudulent to nullify the referendum," the News reported. They went so far as to file a motion to stop the counting of the signatures, so the voucher referendum could not proceed. And history shows that a record number of valid signatures of qualified Utah voters were counted.]

But the News included this quote from the leader of the voucher movement: "When you have that many PTA moms and teachers and other government employees working on this, it's not hard to gather enough signatures to put on the ballot."

Her comment might have accurately been rephrased this way: "When you have that many qualified Utah voters who oppose the statewide voucher plan, it's not hard to gather enough signatures to put on the ballot." But even that statement would diminish the power of this particular issue, because many other ballot-referendum petition drives had been initiated and had failed in the 33 years since the last successful one in 1974. So the achievement really requires admiration.

But there was another note of discord running through the voucher leader's comment that day. "[Y]ou have that many PTA moms and teachers and other government employees working on this," she said. The fact is that signers of the petition were Utah moms, whether they were members of their PTA or not. And the teachers who signed were Utah teachers. And if any government employees signed the petition, they were qualified Utah voters who work for the people of Utah (which is the definition of a government employee).

That note of discord, even contempt for Utahns generally, was striking then, but just as striking again when you consider last week's nasty poll operation, and the voucher advocates' secrecy around it. As several media outlets and letter-writers noted, the push-pollers went out of their way to tie other organizations and other issues to the voucher debate, certainly attempting to discolor Utahns' decision-making processes about this important issue.

A quick look at the website of Utahns for Public Schools shows what I thought it would show: a list of those Utah organizations who worked to put the measure on the ballot and who are working to inform voters about the issue. Not surprisingly, the UTPS site even includes live links to the Utah organizations who are partners in that group: Utah State Parent Teacher Association (PTA), Utah School Boards Association (USBA), Utah School Superintendents Association (USSA), Utah School Employees Association (USEA), Utah Education Association (UEA), NAACP - Salt Lake Chapter, League of Women Voters, Utah Association of Elementary School Principals (UAESP), and the Utah Association of Secondary School Principals (UASSP).

None of these partner-groups is a surprise. All are member-organizations made up of Utahns. When I clicked through the live links to satisfy my curiosity, I found a few citations that answered a question: They range in size from the largest, the Utah PTA, which includes more than 138,000 Utahns, to what may be the smallest, the League of Women Voters, which includes about 350 Utahns in eight local leagues.

All Utahns. They're all Utahns, working with Utahns to think through the likely outcomes of a voucher plan facing Utahns on the November 6 ballot.

So, since my curiosity about who's on the anti-voucher side was covered, I looked next at the website for Parents for Choice in Education, the pro-voucher organization, to see what partner-organizations it includes. Though I looked for a while, the fact is that I didn't find any.

I found this "history":

Concerned by the looming education crisis in Utah and around the nation, Doug Holmes and Jordan Clements founded the Utah Education Funding Project in November 2000. Though the name of the organization has since changed and the breadth of its activities expanded, the founding principle of Parents for Choice in Education (PCE) has remained the same—Believe in Parents!

Since its founding , PCE has expanded into three organizations:

Parents for Choice in Education Foundation: Like the original Utah Education Funding Project, PCE Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating citizens, policymakers, and media on the benefits of school choice.

Parents for Choice in Education, Inc.: Founded in 2001, PCE Inc. focuses on direct advocacy through grassroots organization and lobbying policy makers.

Parents for Choice in Education PAC: As a non-partisan Political Action Committee, PCE PAC has been helping to elect school choice candidates since 2002.

But I didn't find any actual Utahns, except for the organization's board of directors (http://www.choiceineducation.org/board.php), and it is my assumption that they are all Utahns.

Does anyone have a better idea of which Utah organizations are supporting the Parents for Choice in Education?

Why all the diversion and secrecy?

Today brings word that Utahns are being subjected to some nasty push-polling, and supporters of the voucher referendum are admitting their role in it.

They don't use the word "push-polling," and they're secretive about exactly what they asked, and who they asked, and why they asked, and they don't comment on the nastiness of it; they say they're just trying to gauge public opinion. In this instance, however, they appear not to be gauging public opinion on their voucher referendum, but on same-sex marriage. The "push" part of the poll "pushes" Utahns to associate same-sex marriage with teachers, because teachers oppose the voucher plan.

What does this "pushing" have to do with the voucher referendum? It has nothing to do with the substance, but much to do with the politics. So, just as we found in yesterday's response by Rep. Steve Urquhart to a Utahn asking about the details of the voucher plan, voucher supporters are diverting attention from the facts of the voucher plan.

We are reminded of a very old truth in bad business and bad politics: If the product we offer is so awful that no one will buy it, we have to convince consumers that the product our rival offers them is even worse.

In June, the Deseret Morning News conducted a poll -- not a "push-poll" but an objective one -- which said clearly that 57 percent of Utahns would vote against the voucher referendum in November, while only 36 percent said they would vote for it. Six percent hadn't yet decided, but even if all six percent fell in support of vouchers, the plan would still fail at the polls.

This result shows that, if you inform voters about the details of a plan they aren't inclined to support, you run the risk of making them informed voters -- and you lose your voucher plan. The coverage of the legislature's fast-track of the first plan, and the immediate amendments collected in the second plan, then the back-and-forth with the Utah Board of Education, the Attorney General's office and the Supreme Court, all yielded a single result: Utahns already know enough about the voucher plan that they oppose it, but the more they learn about it, the less they like it yet.

So, to convince us that their voucher plan is in our best interests, the voucher salesmen have to invent a boogeyman and convince us that this boogeyman is worse than anything the voucher plan represents. And what is worse than vouchers? Same-sex marriage, of course.

Never mind that no one is promoting same-sex marriage; as the old Wizard of Oz said, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." Instead, these pro-voucher salesmen cajole us: Just trust us that same-sex marriage is worse than vouchers, so you should vote for vouchers.

In fact, word has already spread among those who got these calls. And according to those who listened to the push-poller, apparently none of the callers spent any time explaining the voucher plan's details.

That's unfortunate, because the voucher plan is a big deal, and the voucher plan is on the November 6 ballot. When voucher supporters don't spell out their case for the plan, they leave a lot of room for others to fill in the gaps, to point out that the voucher deal takes millions of dollars in public money away from our public schools, whether sooner or later. And that the voucher plan uses public dollars to pay for a separate, private education system, essentially giving one more tax break to the rich.

And that it really does nothing to improve the quality of education for the 90-plus percent of Utahn kids who attend public schools. Ultimately, it looks like the voucher plan will increase class size in public schools, since schools are budgeted -- and teachers are hired -- according to student enrollment. When you cut student enrollment by a handful or two, you can lose a teacher, and the rest of that teacher's kids will be shuffled into other teachers' already-crowded classrooms.

See, when you break it down like this, you can understand why the voucher salesmen want to avoid talking about their own product, and instead want to convince you that the teachers living in your neighborhood are scary, scary boogeymen.

Undergirding this strategy, when you think about it, is a secret contempt for Utahns. The sponsors of this push-poll have to believe that Utahn voters are gullible, easily led and easily MISled, and that they can't be trusted with voucher salesmens' secret plans and secret tactics.

When Salt Lake Tribune reporter Julia Lyon asked the group that sponsored the push-poll for a list of the questions asked in the poll, the group's leader refused to share it. It's a secret. When Julia asked one of its board members if he supported asking Utahns about divisive issues, or about push-polling his fellow Utahns generally, he wouldn't comment on either point. There are apparently a lot of secrets to keep.

Where else recently has this sort of secrecy been noticed? It was just two weeks ago, when Paul Rolly at the Trib poked around to find who was behind the 30-second radio ad claiming that LDS scripture supports the voucher plan. Paul found the ad's producer, Crowell Advertising, but Crowell said the ad's sponsor wanted to remain anonymous. So Paul checked out the website identified in the ad and found it tied to a group called "Concerned Parents." Being a concerned reporter, Paul called them. "When I called a telephone number attributed to that group," Paul wrote on August 6, "I reached 'Jeremy' who declined to tell me who he was or who was in the organization."

In the case of the radio ad, that secrecy has drawn more attention than just an article by Paul Rolly in the Trib. Paul followed up last week. "Anyone who collects and spends money to promote an issue for the purpose of influencing an election must register with the Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office as a Political Issues Committee," he wrote. "The people who paid for these political ads have not registered." Utah elections officials are giving them a couple of weeks to register, he said.

If we boiled down today's news, what messages would we find there? One might be that the teachers living in your neighborhood are scary. Another might be that folks sponsoring the voucher plan, and the radio ads, and the nasty-push-polling, have a lot of secrets they don't want us to learn. But surely, the most important message is that we shouldn't pay any attention at all to the substance of the voucher referendum, because we might not like what we find in it.

What does Utah's Constitution say?

A Salt Lake County correspondent named Susan writes to Rep. Steve Urquhart at his weblog with this question:"How can lawmakers justify diverting taxpayer money to private schools if these private institutions are not held to the same performance and assessment standards as public schools under federal No Child Left Behind guidelines?"

But Rep. Urquhart sidesteps the point of Susan's question and repeats his case for vouchers.

In fact, the Utah Constitution allows no room for the diversion that Susan describes. In their wisdom, Utah's founders and succeeding generations of lawmakers adopted and have governed the state by three principles relating to provision for education in Utah. The first is found in Article X, Section 1, which declares that "The Legislature shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of the state's education systems including: (a) a public education system, which shall be open to all children of the state; and (b) a higher education system. Both systems shall be free from sectarian control." This section affirmatively sets forth the state's responsibility for public education, available to all.

The second principle is found in the very next section, Section 2: "The public education system shall include all public elementary and secondary schools and such other schools and programs as the Legislature may designate. The higher education system shall include all public universities and colleges and such other institutions and programs as the Legislature may designate. Public elementary and secondary schools shall be free, except the Legislature may authorize the imposition of fees in the secondary schools."

Where Section 1 rigidly assigns responsibility for public education to the legislature, Section 2 grants the legislature flexibility to provide for schools and programs outside the pool that is described as "all public elementary and secondary schools," but even this grant of flexibility doesn't extend beyond the boundaries of "public" education. And the legislature has, in fact, exercised its authority to designate "other schools and programs" as part of the public education system, the most important example of this being the establishment and support of charter schools.

But while Sections 1 and 2 affirmatively establish the public education, assign responsibility for it to the legislature, and grant the legislature sufficient flexibility to make changes to the system as needed, Section 9 actively bars the state and local governments from supporting certain kinds of schools. It reads, "Neither the state of Utah nor its political subdivisions may make any appropriation for the direct support of any school or educational institution controlled by any religious organization."

This is one of the 10 reasons that Rep. Kay L. McIff, a Republican serving Emery, Sanpete and Sevier counties, opposed Urquhart's bill last winter. Rep. McIff wrote on April 11, "Utah entered the Union under suspicion that religion would dominate public schools. The Congressional Enabling Act of 1894 and the Utah Constitution of 1896 prohibited what the voucher bill now authorizes. The first Legislature could not have funded the parochial schools (mostly Mormon) then in existence. The constitutional barrier remains unchanged."

(Rep. McIff's guest editorial can be found here http://www.standard.net/live.php/opinion/topofutahvoices/101674/?printable=story.)

And while we consider the Utah Constitution's view of the measure now resting on the November 6 ballot, it is valuable to note Article IV, Section 10 of that document, which proscribes the oath of office administered and re-administered to elected and appointed officials. The section reads, "All officers made elective or appointive by this Constitution or by the laws made in pursuance thereof, before entering upon the duties of their respective offices, shall take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation: 'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, obey and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this State, and that I will discharge the duties of my office with fidelity'."

So, as a matter of constitutional law, and as a matter of fidelity to the state of Utah and its people, it is certainly incumbent on lawmakers to take the Constitution into account when drafting legislation. Which brings us back to Susan's simple question: "How can lawmakers justify diverting taxpayer money to private schools if these private institutions are not held to the same performance and assessment standards as public schools under federal No Child Left Behind guidelines?"

And the obvious, simple answer: There is no constitutional justification, so any justification that is offered must be political, and we are wise to observe it as such -- and to seek out objective information upon which to make our own decisions.

Susan correctly notes in her question, and we find in a plain reading of Rep. Urquhart's bill, that potential voucher schools will not be held to the same performance and assessment standards as Utah's public schools. But that is not the only difference in standards allowed by the voucher proposal.

Consider that state law requires that Utah's public, or constitutional, schools dismiss teachers who engage in criminal conduct. No law requires voucher schools to hold their employees to this standard. Similarly, state law requires that any building used for public education purposes must be a safe, secure building and meet building codes and safety standards. But nothing in the voucher plan requires these that safety and security provisions apply to voucher schools; it only asks that voucher schools not be housed in a residence or be an "online" school.

When it comes to the qualification of instructors, state law requires that teachers in Utah's public schools have a college education, and a teaching license, and be highly qualified according to state and federal laws. But nothing in current state law or the proposed voucher plan requires that voucher schools ensure the same level of educational or professional qualification for their instructors. Nor are there any coursework requirements applied to voucher schools, nor performance standards, nor requirements for real accreditation, nor even any requirement that classes meet regularly or that students attend them. Only Utah's public, or constitutional, schools are held to these standards.

Susan is right to be concerned about accountability under the proposed voucher plan. Even a careful reading of it finds no requirement that voucher schools demonstrate how they spend the public revenues they would receive, while Utah's public schools are required, by law, to show taxpayers annually all of their income sheets and expenses.

And if these differences in standards and accountability aren't enough, we are reminded that every child brought for enrollment in Utah's public education system is enrolled there, without exception, including children with special needs, and without regard for a family's income, or social status, or a family's religion, or the language they speak. But voucher schools are bound by no such requirements. They remain free to reject students with special needs, or to charge much higher tuitions and fees if they do accept such students. And they remain free to reject children of various faiths, to reject children whose parents lack economic status or social standing, and to reject children who don't yet speak English.

As we can see, the differences between the system supported by our Constitution and the system offered to us by a voucher plan are significant.

So if there is no constitutional justification for the voucher plan, what must be the political justification for it? A rational voter can conclude this for himself: The goal must be to devise two systems of education in Utah, thus dividing Utahns according to political philosophy, and by doing so, to undermine the work being done by the public education system defined in the Utah Constitution. To what end? Only Rep. Urquhart and the co-sponsors of the voucher plan know their motives. But any plan to degrade the system established by the Utah Constitution must have, at its heart, an intention to disassemble the Constitution's system and install in its place an alternative system, rooted in a different political philosophy -- one without any accountability to Utahn taxpayers.

A bird's eye view of the surface.

Here's what history tells us.

Rep. Steve Urquhart from St. George introduced the voucher plan in the State House in January, and it passed the House by one vote on Groundhog Day. A week later, the Senate approved it, 19 to 10, and Governor Jon Huntsman signed it into law on February 12. By state law, HB 148 would go into effect 60 days after the last day of the 2007 legislative session.

But within a week, Rep. Brad Last -- also of St. George -- offered a brand new bill to amend the first one, the one already signed into law but not yet in effect. Last's bill, HB 174, sails through both houses and is signed into law by Governor Huntsman on March 6.

A coalition of individuals and organizations opposed to vouchers began collecting signatures to put HB 148 on the ballot. By April 30, it collected more than enough signatures to force the ballot referendum, which meant implementation of HB 148 would be suspended until the voters could speak on November 6.

After two months of legal wrangling, the Utah Supreme Court ruled unanimously on June 8 that the first bill, HB 148/Referendum 1, would be considered the only valid, stand-alone voucher proposal, and that voters would decide on its fate (and the fate of its amendments in HB 174) on November 6.

So we find ourselves examining Referendum 1, which asks whether Utahns are for or against implementing the first statewide voucher system in America.

To make an informed decision, we have to ask some fundamental questions about the proposal.

What will the voucher plan do to Utah? How much will it cost taxpayers, and where will funding come from? Who will benefit from it, and who stands to lose?

What is the goal of the voucher plan? How will vouchers improve the quality of public education in Utah?

Why has no other state adopted a statewide voucher system? How have local voucher plans -- and voucher schools -- worked elsewhere?

Aside from the lawmakers who introduced the bill and voted for its enactment, who is pushing the voucher plan on Utah? And why Utah?