(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Yesterday I posted an analysis of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article. The article reported as fact, not opinion, that the Milwaukee voucher program has a “funding flaw” because it fails to pay the Milwaukee public schools to teach students whom the Milwaukee public schools do not teach.
The occasion for the article was a debate over whether it was still true, as it had been in previous years, that the Milwaukee voucher program increases costs for local property taxpayers – this is what people had always meant in the past when they talked about the “funding flaw” in the program.
The claim made by the local voucher movement that the program no longer increased costs for property taxpayers seemed solid to me at the time, and the voucher opponents quoted in the article tacitly accepted it by desperately trying to change the subject. To my knowledge, nobody else had disputed the claim. So I reported the claim as true.
Robert Costrell, who knows more about this than anyone, now says he thinks the claim that vouchers no longer cost extra in local property taxes is incorrect. Apparently it comes down to whether a certain element in the formula varies by enrollment or not.
So I’ve attached a correction to the original post, and I apologize that I didn’t wait longer to hear from more people before reporting the claim as true.
That said, the bulk of my post was on another subject (the attempt by some Milwaukee politicians to use the voucher program to fleece state taxpayers, and MJS’s docility in reporting their obviously specious claims as true) and on that subject I stand by everything I wrote. I only hope my carelessness on this other point doesn’t help get MJS off the hook for its irresponsibility.
(Edited to more clearly differentiate Costrell’s thoughts from my own.)
(UPDATE: Bob Costrell’s new analysis is here.)
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Over the past several years, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has expressed concern over what he called the school choice “funding flaw.”
The flaw was described in a 2007 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article:
“As the law stands now…nearly $1,000 more comes out of property taxes for Milwaukeeans for each voucher student than for each MPS student…[Mayor] Barrett and others have labeled this the ‘funding flaw’ in the voucher program.”
In the December 7 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article “Fairness is in the eye of the beholder” School Choice Wisconsin (SCW) references the fact that the local per-pupil tax levy for MPCP students is, in 2008-2009, less than the local per-pupil tax levy for MPS students.
On October 23, SCW issued a press release referencing the fact that the “funding flaw” as originally defined no longer exists. State Representative Jason Fields requested a memo from the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau that confirmed the Milwaukee taxpayer cost for a MPCP student is $235 less than for a MPS students in 2008-2009. Rep. Fields subsequently put out his own press release.