May 12, 2010
Why Brighter Choice is so hot to impose even more unwanted charter school buildings on the City of Albany and soak the taxpayers
Last week a major story about corruption in the City of Albany broke nationally, but the story has been completely suppressed here in the Capital District. As of the date of this posting, not one media outlet in our region, corporate or otherwise, has seen fit to so much as mention in passing this explosive expose. Consider it regional censorship, even though it adversely affects every taxpayer in the City of Albany.
Juan Gonzalez is that rarest of creatures, a real actual journalist working regularly for the corporate media. How a real journalist like Mr. Gonzalez has ended up writing a column for a worthless rag like the Daily News is just one of life’s mysteries. But for some reason his employers let him write groundbreaking investigative articles, he does not merely provide content.
Friday morning (May 7) I was kinda half listening to Democracy Now! on WRPI FM (91.5) and lingering over a late breakfast when I suddenly heard Mr. Gonzalez say, “I have focused on Albany, New York, which in New York state, is the [school] district with the highest percentage of children in charter schools, twenty percent of the schoolchildren in Albany are now attending charter schools.” I nearly spilled my coffee.
Cash Cow: Brighter Choice Charter School Building At Krank Park
Sometimes a blog post writes itself because, well, someone else wrote it for me. Rather than paraphrase Mr. Gonzalez’ explanation, I have chosen to reprint his Democracy Now! report, which in itself is a concise summary of his May 7 column for the Daily News. Juan Gonzalez often co-hosts on Democracy Now!, here he is with Amy Goodman:
AMY GOODMAN: Juan, before we move on to the Gulf, you have a very interesting column in the “New York Daily News” today, an exposé around big banks and charter schools.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, Amy, one of the things I’ve been trying now for a couple of years is to try to figure out why is it that so many hedge fund managers, wealthy Americans, and big banks, Wall Street banks- executives of Wall Street banks, have all lined-up supporting and getting involved in the development of charter schools. I think I may have come across one of the reasons.
There’s a lot of money to be made in charter schools, and I’m not talking just about the for-profit management companies that run a lot of these charter schools. It turns out that at the tail end of the Clinton administration in 2000, Congress passed a new kind of tax credit called a New Markets tax credit. What this allows is it gives enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in under served communities and it’s been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools.
Journalist Juan Gonzalez
I have focused on Albany, New York, which in New York state, is the district with the highest percentage of children in charter schools, twenty percent of the schoolchildren in Albany are now attending charter schools. I discovered that quite a few of the charter schools there have been built using these New Markets tax credits.
What happens is the investors who put up the money to build charter schools get to basically or virtually double their money in seven years through a thirty-nine percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that their lending, so they’re also collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the thirty-nine percent tax credit. They piggyback the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits like historic preservation or job creation or brownfields credits.
The result is, you can put in ten million dollars and in seven years double your money. The problem is, that the charter schools end up paying [with] rents the debt service on these loans and so now, a lot of the charter schools in Albany are straining paying their debt service- their rent has gone up from $170,000 to $500,000 in a year or- huge increases in their rents as they strain to pay off these loans, these construction loans.
The rents are eating-up huge portions of their total cost. And, of course, the money is coming from the state.
One of the big issues is that so many of these charter schools are not being audited. No one knows who are the people making these huge windfall profits as the investors. Often, there are interlocking relationships between the charter school boards and the nonprofit groups that organize and syndicate the loans.
There needs to be some light on this whole issue and the state legislature right now is considering expanding charter school caps, but one of the things I press for in my column, there has to be the power of the government to independently audit all of these charter schools or we’re not going to know how public dollars are ending up in the coffers of Wall Street investors.
AMY GOODMAN: Congratulations on doing this and we’ll continue to expose it as you do.