BY ADELE SAMMARCO

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Governor Chris Christie's proposal to use public funds for private school vouchers, primarily in urban school zones, in the Fiscal Year 2014 State Budget constitutes an egregious form of 'logrolling', which is prohibited by the New Jersey Constitution says the non-profit Education Law Center.

Logrolling, which has been around since the days of American frontiersman turned Congressman Davy Crocket, is the trading of favors, or quid pro quo, such as vote trading by legislative members to obtain passage of actions of interest to other legislative members. Since ideological diversity plays a role in the result of a vote, legislators often favor interests that offer them the most support.

When ideologies are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, such as the Republican governor’s stance on using school vouchers and the Democratically controlled state legislature currently reviewing the program, it may be difficult to ensure a simple majority, so buying a supermajority vote through 'logrolling' may be the most cost effective means to an end.

According to its website, the Education Law Center (ELC), founded in 1973, is the voice of New Jersey’s public school children and has become an advocate for equal educational opportunity and educational justice across the nation. Widely recognized for court rulings on behalf of at-risk students, ELC promotes educational equity through coalition building, litigation support, policy development and research in New Jersey, and at the federal level.  

In a March 26 letter to the Assembly and Senate Budget Committees, Education Law Center (ELC) advised legislators that including vouchers in the FY14 Appropriations Act as the governor proposed will make the annual state spending law unconstitutional.

The New Jersey Constitution, unlike the U.S. Constitution, requires that legislation address only one 'single object.' The single object requirement is intended to prevent 'logrolling,' the pernicious practice of including an unrelated and unpopular measure in a popular one in order to facilitate its passage by the Legislature.

In his proposed FY14 Budget, which totals $29.3 billion, the governor proposed a $2 million appropriation for a pilot program of publicly funded vouchers for private and religious schools almost identical to the Opportunity Scholarship Act (OSA), a bill currently pending in the Legislature that has failed to gain legislative support.

In his state budget address on February 26, Christie said he will call upon the Annual Appropriations Act, which is limited to spending on all governmental programs for the coming year. But the governor has been unable to secure passage of OSA in the last three years.

If the governor's proposal is included in the FY14 Appropriations Act, ELC says the majority of legislators who oppose diverting public funds to pay for private and religious schooling would have to vote against the entire state budget, with billions of dollars of spending allocations to multi-faceted programs, in order to oppose the voucher program. ELC calls this 'logrolling'.

“The governor is blatantly attempting to improperly use the Appropriations Act to enact OSA, a bill that has languished in the Legislature for years,” said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director and author of the March 26 letter. “It is a desperate ploy to do an end-run around the Legislature, in violation of the New Jersey Constitution.”

“We're confident legislators will not include the governor's voucher proposal in the final FY14 State Budget to ensure the Appropriations Act is constitutional,” Sciarra added.

Nonetheless, Christie says vouchers are necessary to repair failing school districts and expects to see a pilot school voucher program passed by the Legislature this year despite objections from the teachers' union.

The governor has been advocating for vouchers at just about every town hall citing students in failing public schools could be able to attend classes outside their district, however opponents say vouchers would only drain money from the state’s poorest schools.

Christie has also proposed abolishing lifetime teacher tenure and basing teacher evaluations partly on student improvement, but has been unsuccessful in getting those changes passed through the Democratic-controlled state Legislature.