Bill Phillis of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition reports on a court case that would relieve charter corporations of any obligations to pay property taxes.
He writes:
“Case before the Ohio Supreme Court: Is a non-profit real estate company that leases property to a Dayton charter school and is owned by a charter school corporation eligible for a property tax exemption?
“The tangled web of Ohio charter school policy is fertile ground for the weeds of inefficiencies; crafty, convoluted and intertwined contracts; corrupt financial arrangements and duplication of programs and facilities.
“Recently, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that White Hat Management, an operator of charters, owns the publicly-funded physical assets of the charter operation. Now, a charter operative wants the Court to grant the bonus of a property tax exemption for property leased to a charter.
“The Court will hear this case (250 Shoup Mill LLC v. Joseph W. Testa, Tax Commissioner of Ohio et. al.) on April 19. Public school advocates will be very interested in the decision.
“The Ohio charter school experiment, that was supposed to be an incubator of innovation and creativity, continues to waste tax dollars on mostly poor-performing charters. The charter plaintiffs in the 250 Shoup Mill case seek to compound the harm to taxpayers by a request to shift their tax burden to other taxpayers.”
Is there any doubt that a court that would turn over real property purchased with public funds to a private charter entrepreneur would give charters property tax relief?
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
Join Our Mailing List!
Ohio E & A
100 S. 3rd Street
Columbus OH 43215
Sent by ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Once the Ohio court makes this decision, legalizing additional theft of taxes, the state’s citizens will probably opt for the for-profit schools-in-a-box of Gates and Z-berg.
A nation destroyed, one state at a time, because its citizens didn’t fight for democracy.
LikeLike
privatization (noun) \ plən dər\ – the legal sanctioning of the theft of public resources. See Thatcher, Reagan, bootstraps, personal responsibility, gumption.
LikeLike
Another Biercian raises his head. Did Bro Ambrose resurrect himself from that unmarked grave in Mexico to start a new revolution? ¡Viva la revolución!
LikeLike
This is nothing new. There are many millionaires, billionaires and corporations that pay little or no tax and even get paid subsidies by the federal or state governments. It’s well documented that the feds pay millionaire farmers to grow nothing and hand out more than $100 billion annually to for-profit corporations in corporate welfare — that more than a Trillion dollars every ten years.
For instance, one of Bill Gates billionaire buddy’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, a company with $485 billion in assets and $20 billion in profits has been given over $1 billion in corporate welfare. In addition, Warren Buffet is the second richest man in the United States according to Forbes 400 list.
Why does Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway get corporate welfare?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2014/03/14/where-is-the-outrage-over-corporate-welfare/#2b1e56d86881
And Buffet isn’t alone. A well known candidate for president rides this tax-payer funded gravy train too, and his name is Donald Trump. – Trump has thrived with government’s generosity (LA Times, May 11, 2011)
LikeLike
Boeing makes billions off of government contracts but for most of the past decade has paid little or no Federal income tax (some years they even got money back).
And of course, Gates own company keeps some 100 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying 30 billion in taxes.
People like Gates, Buffett and the people running Boeing give new meaning to the word “hypocrite”, which actually seems to be a rather tame description.
They are really “hyperhypocrites” — nay, “ultrahyperhypocrites”.
LikeLike
the 1% provide fuel for blood to boil, our blood
LikeLike
And the funny (not ha ha) thing is that Buffett is regularly celebrated, even among progressive types, as generous and asking to pay more in taxes and things. Funny (again, not ha ha) that he doesn’t seem to have actually voluntarily paid more taxes.
LikeLike
The organizations involved with this case belong to the Gulen charter school network. 250 Shoup Mill LLC is a subsidiary of New Plan Learning, Inc, which owns 14 of the properties occupied by members of the Concept Schools chain in the Midwest. Here’s the courtroom video of the arguments and where the justices clearly have a hard time grasping this charter school property business scheme that may well have been created to be intentionally confusing: http://www.ohiochannel.org/video/case-no-2015-0340-250-shoup-mill-llc-v-testa
LikeLike
Thanks for the info.
LikeLike
Columbus Dispatch “However the (court) decision goes, it won’t matter going forward because, in 2011, the General Assembly slipped a provision into the state budget expanding the tax exemption to cover charter school property owners like Shoup Mill LLC, in addition to school operators.”
The total elimination of all tax support for charter schools should be agenda for Ohioans, Taxpayer intent is to own public assets and to spend money for students locally. Siphoning off money for profit and political objectives, which may be international in scope, like the investments of Gates and Pearson’s BIA, and Turkey’s in-fighting, is wrong.
Our politicians are contemptible for setting up the charter school system debacle.
Sherrod Brown’s support for it is a particularly galling betrayal!
LikeLike
Re: Brown, I agree. I am drafting a letter to him on this and other education issues. His stance on this issues is completely at odds with everything he has advocated in the past.
LikeLike
Sherrod Brown cannot be trusted on matters of public education. He voted for John King. The Ohio Supreme Court is Republican, one Democrat. Among the applicants for Supervisor of Public Instruction, one was a Gulen charter operator and he is not the only charter operator seeking the position. The state is clearly wide open for more exploitation.
LikeLike
Did you know Ohio’s charters are *technically* nonprofit?
They are! Pursuant to the state charter law.
It’s an absolute joke but they repeat it like it means something outside a tax designation.
Now that they’ve made the word “public” meaningless, they’ll now destroy the common understanding of the word “nonprofit” and then all bets are off for privatization. Open the floodgates and get ready for a brand new industry- 100% publicly-funded private entities that everyone is pretending are “public”.
The word is “contractor”. They’re government contractors. In any other sector we would use plain language, except “education” is somehow special.
Ridiculous and misleading to the public.
LikeLike
Ohio is picking a new state superintendent. Thanks to the dominance of the “ed reform movement” the entire discussion centers around charters, vouchers and labor unions.
93% of the kids in this state attend public schools, but no one talks about their schools.
I know public schools are full of stodgy traditionalists and unfashionable, but could we possibly persuade public employees to shift their focus away from their grand plans for privatization and do some work on the schools most kids attend?
Is it really too much to ask that public employees support public schools,despite their personal preferences and career goals?
LikeLike
Here’s the ed reform backed candidate for Ohio state superintendent.
Try to find a mention of the public schools in the state:
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/04/former_kasich_advisor_robert_sommers_among_five_finalists_for_state_superintendent_job.html
Really? Our entire state government is now focused on how to spend the Obama Administration grant for charter schools?
Can we possibly discuss the public schools, or is that now impossible? Utter and complete capture by this lobby. It’s all choice all the time in state government!
It isn’t enough that they spent all of last year “reforming” charter schools.They now plan to spend all of this year opening more of them.
I’m tired of paying people who have little or no interest in the schools that exist. Its bad enough DC is ga-ga over privatization. They’ve now captured states.
LikeLike
Chiara, I agree with what you say about the choice most Ohioans have made in public school and the fact nobody talks much about it. Probably most people wreaking havoc on public schools went to public school. In Cincinnati, a radio station promoted a company called “Brute Force Cybernetics, We create a need, then fill it” as a spoof. In my mind this is what we are seeing in Ohio charter schools.
LikeLike
@rgthornbury
That’s actually a neat aphorism for all of ed “reform”.
LikeLike
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the Ohio Department of Education had contracts with White Hat Management that let them keep property purchased with some of my tax dollars, and yours if you live in Ohio. The ruling was correct; the contracts were not. Here is another example of giving away public goods.
LikeLike