Becker, Buhler quiet on vouchers

Even though both Salt Lake City mayoral finalists — Ralph Becker and Dave Buhler — say public education is very important to them, and both say they'll work hard to make education better in the city, neither man is talking much about private school vouchers, nor addressing in their paid ads the controversial ballot measure.

Becker, the current Democratic House minority leader, and Buhler, who was a GOP state senator from 1995 to 1999, stand firmly against vouchers, they told the Deseret Morning News.

But while both men's Web sites go on at some length about improving public education, the word "vouchers" doesn't appear in either man's education issue papers.

Becker said he has opposed vouchers year after year in the Legislature — "I've always spoken against it."

He voted against the main voucher bill, HB148, in the 2007 session, as did every other Democratic lawmaker. Becker worked last spring gathering signatures on the anti-voucher referendum drive. A campaign aide overseeing the candidate's Web site said not putting Becker's anti-voucher stand under his education section "was purely an oversight," considering Becker did issue an anti-voucher press release last spring, which can be found elsewhere on the Web site.

"We did something early on (on vouchers)," said Becker. Maybe the issue "has gotten lost" in the campaign, said Becker. "I don't know what happened. I've not put (vouchers) in any mailer or any (electronic) ad. But every time it has come up" in debates or other campaign functions "I've spoken in opposition to it — and consistently in the Legislature."

No voucher bills were introduced during Buhler's four years in the Senate during the mid-1990s, the candidate said.

"But I'm not shy about saying I'm against them — have been for years," said Buhler, whose job is as an assistant commissioner of higher education for the state. "They make no sense for the state as a whole but especially no sense for Salt Lake City, where our public schools are losing students."

The Becker campaign says that while no pure voucher bills came before the Legislature during Buhler's four years, two bills with voucher aspects did — and Buhler voted in favor of both of them. In 1995 and 1996 Senate bills were introduced that provided a small amount of funds for troubled students to attend special private schools. "It was not vouchers," said Buhler, "and it cost like $30,000 a year and would have helped a few kids, so I voted for it."

In 1997 and 1998, a Senate bill would have created a program that allowed local school boards to start a parents' refundable tax credit for qualifying families who sent their kids to a private school.