Commonwealth Foundation Receives Friedman Innovation Award

Published on Friday, June 01, 2007
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The Commonwealth Foundation in Pennsylvania won the Third Annual $25,000 Friedman Foundation Grant Award for Innovation in Promoting School Choice for its "Property Tax Relief Scholarship Act." The proposal would provide children with more educational choices and homeowners with school property tax relief.

"We are ecstatic that the Friedman Foundation recognized our efforts to leverage the economic arguments for school choice," said Commonwealth Foundation president Matthew J. Brouillette. "The moral arguments for giving parents and children more school choices are powerful. But we wanted to demonstrate that choice is also good for the taxpayers' pocketbooks." Brouillette hopes that using both the moral and economic arguments for school choice will improve their chances of success in the coming months and years.

Friedman Foundation executive director and COO Robert C. Enlow recognized the merits of this year's Award winner. He stated, "With their unique proposal linking property taxes and school choice, the Commonwealth Foundation continued the Pennsylvania tradition of innovation in meaningful systemic education reform. The award is well-deserved."

The cornerstone of Commonwealth's education initiative is the Property Tax Relief Scholarship Act. Commonwealth originally introduced this proposal in 2006 and began marketing the idea to policymakers. The proposal added a new point of consideration in the state's ongoing debate about school property tax relief. The Act stipulated that instead of using new state funds generated from gambling for direct property tax relief, the new monies would first be used for scholarships to low-income families.

Under the proposal, a school district would be required to reduce property taxes for each student that exited for a non-government school. The Foundation crafted a funding and property tax reduction formula for each school district and demonstrated the impact on school property taxes based upon projected migration levels. The result was property tax relief that was double, triple and even quadruple the levels projected by the plans crafted by the governor and General Assembly.

In 2007, the Commonwealth Foundation plans to use research, multi-media productions, a website, and public forums to spread the good news about school choice and the Property Tax Relief Scholarship Act. Specifically, the Friedman Award will be used to help develop an interactive website that quantifies the number of students likely to use choice scholarships in each school district and the potential savings to taxpayers. The website will be used be to demonstrate to each lawmaker the benefits their constituents would enjoy under this Act.

Through the Award, the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation seeks to encourage new and innovative efforts to promote school choice in specific states and to develop long-lasting partnerships with state-based think tanks as they undertake efforts to promote choice. The Friedman Foundation Grant Award is only available to State Policy Network members or organizations that partner with SPN members for the purpose of the award. The Maryland Public Policy Institute and Grassroot Institute of Hawaii were Award winners in 2006 and 2005, respectively.

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