GOP plan boosts school vouchers, smoking tax
Florists, restaurants busy even as toll of COVID-19 climbs
Nearly one-fifth of a proposed state funding hike for Indiana’s schools would go toward expanding private school voucher and virtual school programs under a Republican budget plan.
The plan prepared by Republicans who dominate the Indiana House also includes a 50 cents-per-pack cigarette tax increase and would impose a new state tax on vaping liquids.
The proposal, released Thursday, would increase the base funding for K-12 schools by 1.25% during the first year and 2.5% in the second year of the budget that would start in July. That would mean about $378 million more for school funding over the two years, virtually the same as proposed last month by Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb.
But House Republicans would direct $66 million toward raising the family income eligibility for the private school voucher program and about $4 million to boosting per-student payments for those attending online-only charter schools.
The additional money for those programs would mean smaller funding boosts for traditional school districts as they face pressure to improve the state’s lagging teacher pay after a Holcomb-appointed commission found it could cost more than $600 million a year to increase Indiana’s average teacher salary ranking from ninth-highest to third-highest in the Midwest.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Tim Brown said school districts would receive more money even with the recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Local school officials will make decisions about teacher pay increases, and the spending plan is aimed at increasing the say parents have in their child’s education, Brown said.
“Parents, by far and away, want to make choices for their kids,” said Brown, a Republican from Crawfordsville. “They want to have options, they want those options spelled out.”
The proposed private school voucher changes would raise
income eligibility for a family of four from the current roughly $96,000 a year to about $145,000 in 2022. A legislative report estimates that and other eligibility expansions would add about 18,000 students to the some 37,000 students now in the program.
Rep. Greg Porter, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, called the Republican school funding plan punitive and shortsighted.
“Republicans brag about increased K-12 spending while siphoning money from the schools educating a majority of students,” Porter said. “Hoosier school districts and educators, who have already been facing the repercussions of the supermajority’s financial apathy, are in dire need of tangible support from the Statehouse, not another legislative session spent fighting for scraps.”
The Republican-controlled Legislature will debate the spending plan throughout its session that is scheduled to last until late April.
The House Republican budget proposal would increase the state’s current 99.5 cents-per-pack cigarette tax that was last more than a decade ago to $1.50 and impose a 10% retail tax on electronic cigarette liquids.
The House health committee recently endorsed a $1-per-pack increase, while health advocates and major business groups had called for a $2 increase to help drive down the state’s 21.1% smoking rate for adults, which was the fourth-highest in the country for 2018, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The House has previously backed cigarette tax increases only to see them fail in the Senate.
Brown said the smaller increase was a consensus among House Republicans and would give Indiana a cigarette tax rate closer to those of neighboring states. The estimated $150 million a year from the tax increase would go toward the state’s Medicaid expenses, he said.
Other provisions in the House Republican plan would direct $150 million toward a regional development program proposed by Holcomb, along with $250 million for broadband expansion grants and $30 million toward grants helping small businesses recover from losses during the coronavirus pandemic.
Much of that money is made available by dropping a Holcomb proposal dedicating $400 million toward an early paydown of teacher pension obligations.
“We thought we’d invest in businesses and economic activity in the state, that we wanted businesses to be prepared to come out of this recovery,” Brown said.
The notecards poking from bouquets rushing out of a Chicago florist all carry similar messages: “looking forward to celebrating in person.”
“The notes aren’t sad,” said Kate Prince, a co-owner of Flora Chicago on the city’s North Side. “They’re hopeful.”
On this Valentine’s Day, Americans are searching for ways to celebrate love amid so much heartache and isolation as the coronavirus pandemic stretches past its year anniversary. Some are clinging to hope, seen in the most vulnerable and frontline workers getting vaccinated, in loosening restrictions on restaurants in the hardest hit places, in case numbers starting to wane. But the death toll is still climbing toward 500,000 dead in the United States and many remain shuttered in their homes.
Prince said florists are scrambling to keep up with the onslaught of orders from people trying to send their love from a safe distance.
“We are crushed,” she said.
Phones are ringing off the hook at restaurants in cities that have loosened restrictions on indoor dining just in time for Valentine’s Day, one of the busiest days of the year for many eateries that have been devastated by shutdowns designed to slow the spread of the virus.
In Chicago, the mayor loosened up indoor dining restrictions last week. After limiting restaurants to 25% capacity and 25 people per room, restaurants now must remain at 25% but they can serve as many as 50 per room.
The Darling restaurant is fully booked for this weekend and has been for weeks.
Sophie Huterstein, the restaurant’s owner, said COVID-19 has allowed the 2-year-old eatery to accomplish the impossible: make people happy to agree to a 4 p.m. reservation.
“People are being very flexible,” she said.
They are also this Valentine’s Day willing to do something else over a weekend where the high temperature will reach the teens and the low will plummet well below zero.
“We have 14 greenhouses and people are coming out in full ski gear,” she said.
In New York City, the America Bar restaurant in the West Village is also fully booked for Valentine’s Day with a long waiting list and high demand for the newly allowed 25% capacity for indoor tables, said David Rabin, a partner in the eatery. More seats, along with the governor’s decision to allow closing times to move from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., has allowed him to give more shifts to his workers.
“For us, it’s a welcome gift,” he said. “It’s been great.”
T Bar NYC Steak and Lounge on the Upper East Side is also fully booked. Owner Tony Fortuna says some of his customers won’t dine indoors and he understands, but for those that have been clamoring to get back to restaurant dining, 25% is a good start. It gives people a glimmer of normalcy at a heartbreaking time.
“It gets everybody motivated, we see a little bit of hope,” he said. “It’s all about perception: you see people going out and moving around it makes everybody feel in a different mood.”
In Portland, a couple married 55 years has special Valentine’s Day plans.
Gil and Mercy Galicia have barely left their home in almost a year since lockdowns began, said their daughter, Cris Charbonneau. They had seen their close-knit family, three children and six grandchildren spread across the country.
Like many seniors, the year has been especially hard on them. They immigrated from the Philippines in the 1960s and have lived in their home on a half-acre plot for more than 40 years. Mercy, 80, is a cancer survivor and has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Gil, 88, used to go on daily walks at the mall to stay active, but he hasn’t for a year. He is fearful that the isolation has set them back, and he doesn’t know how much longer they can manage living on their own.
“We’re losing years, COVID has stolen this time that’s so precious,” Charbonneau said.
They don’t have a computer. When the vaccine became available, Gil called everywhere and couldn’t get through. Charbonneau was on a video call with them Thursday and saw a tweet from a local news station that the grocery store near their home had opened appointments online.
She was scrambling to get two appointments. She wasn’t paying attention to the date. She told them she’d booked them for Sunday, Feb. 14.
“That’s Valentine’s Day!” her father exclaimed and smiled at his wife.
“What a great way to celebrate my love for you.”
They hung up. Their daughter wept.
“That’s what we needed,” she said, “some hope.”
“Bullets wrote our past. Education, our future.”
On Jan. 28, 2021, the JEP (for Special Jurisdiction for Peace) in Colombia indicted eight FARC leaders for war crimes, and crimes against humanity. All allegedly participated in widespread criminal hostage-taking in exchange for ransoms.
The quotation above is the inscription on pens used on Sept. 26, 2016, to sign the peace agreement between the government of Colombia and the FARC. Craft workers fashioned the pens from recycled bullet casings, apt symbolism for progress in ending killing.
The term FARC is an acronym for the Spanish name of the powerful rebel army, known in English as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The movement eventually found inspiration and effective recruitment through communist ideology. At the same time, the FARC was rightly notorious for enormous illegal drug dealing.
Negotiators established the JEP to implement peace. Given Colombia’s long history of political bloodshed, numerous critics were skeptical.
During the half-century before the peace agreement, brutal warfare killed approximately a quarter of a million people. Fighting
ended only after complex negotiations.
Officials from the United Nations were present for the 2016 signing, along with representatives of Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Uruguay and the United States. Cuba has played a significant role long-term in brokering these negotiations. That is important, not only in symbolic terms, but also as a reflection of the substantial real strategic changes over the past three decades.
Soon after the remarkable success in early 1959 of revolu
tionary forces led by Fidel Castro, Cuba became a Soviet ally and force fomenting and supporting communist subversion throughout the Western Hemisphere. That commitment survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, increasingly vital as a prop for Cuba’s economy, and has only faded in recent years.
President Barack Obama visited Cuba, the first U.S. chief executive since President Calvin Coolidge to do so. Limited investment and travel opportunities resulted. However, politically
Cuba remains a brutal and repressive dictatorship.
Early in this century, the FARC seemed to be gaining momentum. The evolving conflict resembled the first years of the United
States’ long and costly military involvement in Vietnam. More and more civilian and uniformed advisers were being sent, along with a steadily growing array of helicopters, arms and ammunition, and other materiel.
The administration of President George W. Bush significantly expanded aid which began in the
Clinton administration, but also tried to minimize media attention. This effort was eerily reminiscent of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, which endeavored before 1965 to deflect Vietnam from the news even as U.S. involvement increased. Then, violence in Colombia began to decline, in great contrast to the evolution of the war in Southeast Asia.
The long war in Colombia made the nation an inviting place for international criminals. In November 2011, Viktor Bout, the “Merchant of Death,” was convicted and imprisoned. A Soviet Army veteran, he became enormously rich dealing weapons and drugs on a global scale. Colombia was a major profit center, but Drug Enforcement Administration agents posing as Colombia rebels arrested him.
Also in 2011, the U.S. Congress ratified free trade agreements with Colombia along with Panama and South Korea. The Colombia agreement indirectly is strong confirmation of established regional cooperation. The Summit of the Americas, begun in 1994, is held every three to four years.
The Organization of American States, formed in 1948, is one of the world’s oldest regional organizations.
Americans should be encouraged.