Americans for Prosperity has unveiled a new idea for boosting funding for North Carolina’s opportunity scholarship program.
From an AFP news release:
RALEIGH – With the state budget in deadlock, Americans for Prosperity urged Governor Pat McCrory and the General Assembly to put an end to expensive special interest subsidies to Hollywood film companies, and to apply the savings to improving educational options for North Carolina’s working families.
In the statement below, AFP-NC deputy state director Donald Bryson urged the state legislature to focus on what should be shared policy goals: helping all children obtain a quality education and ending taxpayer handouts for the politically-connected film industry:
“The current budget deadlock is a result of legislators focusing on the things that divide them rather than the things that should unite them. They can easily unite behind two policy issues they have agreed to previously – the Opportunity Scholarship Program and allowing special tax subsidies for the film industry to expire.”
“By allowing these misguided film subsidies to expire, as agreed to in the tax reform agreement in 2013, and reallocating the currently budgeted $20 million to our state’s Opportunity Scholarship program, legislators can provide 4,700 more opportunity scholarships to low-income children across our state. If there’s anything we should all agree on, it’s that every family deserves the freedom to choose a quality education for their children, regardless of income.”
“School choice reform is the civil rights struggle of our day. North Carolina has been a leader in the fight and our legislators are to be commended for their hard work. Today, they can easily double our existing Opportunity Scholarship program by ending handouts to Hollywood.”
