Florida would nearly triple the amount of tax credits it allows for corporate vouchers under a bill filed yesterday by state Rep. Trey Traviesa, R-Tampa.

HB 653 would increase the current cap by $30 million each year by the next five years, from $88 million now to $238 million in 2012. It would additionally increase the amount of individual corporate tax-credit vouchers from $3,750 to $4,500.

Voucher opponents were quick to pounce. “Imagine what they’d do … whether it wasn’t not good profitable times,” Mark Pudlow, spokesman for the Florida Education organization, told The Gradebook that dawn. “You’re in a situation where you’re cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the education budget considering of lower-than-anticipate revenues … yet we’re going to expand corporate vouchers.”

Voucher supporters argued the opposite. Since it costs the state less money to pay for a voucher than to support the same student in a public school, “We’re saving the money,” said Denise Lasher, spokeswoman for Step Up for Students, a group that advocates for tax-credit vouchers. The legislation “helps with the budget crisis … and lesson size.”

Traviesa’s bill proposes that the voucher amount be annually adjusted to 62 percent of what the state spends per pupil. It would plus offer private schools that accept such vouchers a $200-per-student premium whether at least 95 percent of their voucher students take the FCAT. Currently, those students - about 20,000 in all - do not have to take the FCAT.

Original post by Ron Matus