01/29/2025
District 1! Let’s call and email Knoxville reps and ask them to vote against vouchers!!!
[email protected]
(615) 741-1766
[email protected]
(615) 741-2287
[email protected]
(615) 741-4110
[email protected]
(615) 741-1648
[email protected]
(615) 741-2264
[email protected]
(615) 741-1721
[email protected]
(615) 741-6879
[email protected]
(615) 741-6806
Our two Dem reps who are against vouchers and plan to vote against:
[email protected]
[email protected]
đźš© ROBBING PETER TO PAY PAUL? The officially-proposed voucher bill for next week's special session has finally dropped publicly, and woooo boy, it's a whooper of a boondoggle.
Fiscal estimates compiled by the General Assembly (so you know their math is already predisposed to be as generous to the voucher bill as possible) forecast that Lee's voucher heist will cost state public coffers nearly a HALF-BILLION DOLLARS in the program's first year alone.
Moreover, nearly $100M of that money appears to be raided annually from the Education Lottery Scholarship program—robbing public school graduates of their higher-education scholarships on which they rely to attend college, trade schools, or any postsecondary attainment path. This seems to be a peculiar pivot away from Gov. Lee's promised investments in expanding trade and postsecondary career education that helped him win his office in the first place back in 2018. So much for honoring his word, we suppose (but can't say we're surprised).
Longtime observers of Tennessee politics will recall that, back when the lottery scholarship program was first devised back in 2003, policymakers then explicitly guaranteed that such funds generated from legalized gambling and lottery proceeds would *only* be used to fund college and postsecondary scholarships for Tennessee students. Now, it seems, that promise has long been forgotten as Lee and Sexton plan to use those exact same dollars to subsidize private schools across the state and confiscate your public dollars to enrich their out-of-state voucher cronies and political dark money groups with a generous taxpayer gift every year.
Even if flooded-out Upper-East Tennessee communities weren't being held hostage for their disaster relief funds in a forced quid-pro-quo exchange for getting onboard with this scam, it would still be an offensive and appalling misuse of vast sums of public dollars.
It's time to get on the phones and call your state officials, folks.
And check out this little gem from the fiscal assumptions on the bill. Lee and Sexton are already admitting that 65% of the voucher recipients are ALREADY IN PRIVATE SCHOOLS that they are ALREADY PAYING FOR out of their own pockets. So how in the world is this bill not a gussied-up welfare program for rich families who are already sending their kids to private schools??
[From Blountly Conservative]
Check out the bill as filed 👇🏻
https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=HB6004
