Sent to the St. Peterburg's Time and the Star Banner, May 27, 2000
To the Editor
After former Governor Voinovich and the Ohio legislature gave about $1 billion in tax money to predominantly private Catholic schools during the 1990s primarily for vouchers , a federal judge struck down the program. The court order is being appealed. The story of how this program evolved is detailed in the February, 2000, issue of Church and State.
Doug Oplinger and Dennis J. Willard of the Akron Beacon Journal report, "After three years...the voucher program had instead become a subsidy to the Roman Catholic Church....The Catholic Conference of Ohio and the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland...won tremendous school aid from the state during the Voinovich years...ahead of poorly funded public schools...in 1997-98, 98% of all Catholic schools were connected to a high-speed computer network while only 42% of public schools had the same high-speed access."
Catholics Voinovich declared if the idea of such aid were identified as a Catholic movement, that would be its death knell. According to a letter from Archbishop Pilarczyk, the governor promised and delivered taxpayer dollars in exchange for the church leaders' silence.
Essentially, for voucher students in Ohio, their only choice was either public schools or Catholic schools. In Catholic schools, "All students whether Catholic or not, must participate in mass, daily religious classes and other religious activities and must receive a religious grade." The voucher program provided incentive for parents to send their children to religious schools with tax money...
Now a US Senator, Voinovich, "...remains proud of the state dollars that have gone to private schools -- and in particular to those run by the Catholic Church." He adds, "I'm not sure what I can do here in Washington, but I'll do what I can."
Inasmuch as the Catholic agencies which received these funds were aware such funding could be determined to be illegal, Ohio may be able to take steps to try to recoup some of these funds from the Catholic agencies.
Hopefully, Florida officials will take steps to avoid voucher problems such as those in Ohio.
James M. O'Hara