HB483

The EFA program needs accountability. It would be easier and more transparent if the company were incorporated in NH, instead of NY. Why have we turned over such an expensive program to a NY firm with no ties to NH except this money-making program? Please vote Ought to Pass.

I want the corporations that oversees our educational spending to be located in NH, not NY or another state. Furthermore, I am against the money being appropriated to religious schools or to home schooling that is totally unsupervised. There may be alternative private schools that offer an education for certain students whose communities do not offer them a choice in their public schools. This would include technic

I believe this bill should be supported so that the 501C is incorporated in NH and is best able to be monitored.

The management of any educational vouchers in NH must be overseen by a 501C3 in NH and not one in New York State which makes any oversight of funds impossible. So NH needs to be able to oversee what is happening with these funds.

The majority of voters want you to limit increasing vouchers to those students already in private schools. Please listen.

Children’s Scholarship Fund (“CSF”), which administers EFAs, also administers the Education Tax Credit Scholarship program (“ETC”). However, there is even less transparency and accountability with the ETC program than with EFAs. The Department of Education recently did a compliance review of 50 determinations of eligibility for the EFA program and found a 25% error rate. As a result, CSF has had to change its training manual to fix some of the discovered problems. Yet CSF has been making eligibility determinations for ETC applicants since 2016, presumably using the same faulty procedures. In all those years, no one caught the problem. As far as I can tell there's been nothing like a compliance review of this program by anyone. The Financial Statement prepared for Children’s Scholarship Fund - which is a national organization with partners all around the country - doesn’t even mention NH’s ETC Program. A couple of years ago I called the DRA to ask if they audit the ETC program and they said they do random audits of the corporations they oversee, but the chance of any particular organization being audited is very small.  They said if they get a complaint of fraud, that will trigger an audit.  At the time I was looking into some apparent errors in the annual reports submitted to DRA by the two ETC scholarship organizations (including CSF), but I wasn't prepared to claim they were fraudulent so I just let it go.  The person I spoke with had no interest in pursuing the errors I’d discovered, without a claim of fraud. All of this indicates to me that the ETC program is flying totally under everyone's radar. A local board of directors focused only on the NH program, filing its own 990s (with more granular information about the local program than is contained in a 990 filed by a multi-million dollar national organization) and having its own financial audits) would at least provide a layer of oversight and transparency.

I support this bill...requires that the scholarship org. that’s paid to administer vouchers be a 501(c)(3) incorporated in NH; the current org. Is incorporated in NY

Vaccines provide protection not only to individuals but to communities against infectious disease. The NH vaccination program to ensure access to vaccinations for all children provides a path that will protect both children and their communities from the spread of communicable diseases. One job of government is to provide protections to its citizens. As a citizen of NH I want our government to continue to ensure that the health of our citizens is protected by ensuring access to vaccines for all children within our state.

Dear Representatives, I urge you to SUPPORT this bill. Thank you for your time.

Scholorships must be incorporated in NH

VEHEMENTLY support

If you're going to continue to pay a private company to administer NH funds, at least they should be registered in NH.

It makes sense to have 501c3s based in NH.

Public tax dollars should not be supporting religious schools.

Yes, 501(c)(3) needs to be incorporated in New Hampshire

It makes sense to have scholarship organizations for the purpose of receiving New Hampshire educational tax credits be located in New Hampshire.

Keep it local.

As stated in early testimony- I am not in favor of vouchers. Religious education should be taught at home or in churches. Parents are not qualified to provide a fair and equal public education to our citizens. If we have a bipartisan committee reviewing curriculum standards comprised of diverse political backgrounds, our public education should suffice for all- with the exception of parents who choose to home school- that choice should not be compensated with public tax dollars because there is already a tax funded option that meets the requirement necessary to educate that child. We have limited funds to provide public education - they are not infinite it is imperative that the system be effective for as many of our children as possible funding the highest quality of education possible- in order to achieve that we must work together to set the highest standards possible with the minimal amount of tax dollars necessary. That is exactly why we need a Federal Department of Education. To provide any additional funding necessary to meet the lack of funds allocated by the States for a superior level of education to be provided to our children. New Hampshire is notorious for providing a lack of necessary resources for the provision of a fair and equal education to all its students. So this bill should not even be up for a vote. Of course it's better to have a New Hampshire based organization manage New Hampshire based tax dollars. That is a no brainier.

I support this bill.

Let's keep the organization that administers the NH voucher program in NH!

I support HB483. The scholarship organization using millions of our tax dollars should be a 501©(3) organization incorporated in NH. Why is an organization incorporated in NY handling NH monies?

I support this bill.

We should not be paying an out of state agency to conduct NH business.

NH should not be using the NY organization to administer the voucher program. NH should use a NH organization.