Why is John Bel soft on vouchers?

Good news! John Bel says he's finally ready to do something about Bobby Jindal's disastrous school voucher scheme.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said he will call for an overhaul of the state’s scholarship voucher program, saying the structure that uses public money to pay for private school tuition for nearly 6,900 underprivileged students was poorly conceived.

In an interview just weeks after an in-depth examination by a consortium of local and national news organizations highlighted flaws, Edwards said he will call on state leaders to reform the $40-million-a-year Louisiana Scholarship Program. The governor did not specify what changes he will seek, but said the goal should be for schools in the program to perform better.

He doesn't say what he's going to do.  But he definitely is not interested in abolishing the voucher program.  Which raises the question from us, why on Earth not?

Last month, WVUE, WWNO, Reveal, and what's left of NOLAdotcom collaborated on a damning series of reports confirming what most of us already knew about the voucher scheme. The plan was always more about siphoning money away from public education regardless of whether Louisiana students realized any benefit, which, of course, they did not.

Seven years later, however, the $40-million-a-year Louisiana Scholarship Program has failed to live up to its billing. The nearly 6,900 students who’ve left public schools have instead been placed into a system with numerous failing private schools that receive little oversight, a months-long examination by a coalition of local and national media organizations has found.

And this was always at least part of the intent. We've known pretty much since the beginning that the voucher scheme was a direct attack on the concept of public education, an avenue for Bobby Jindal's cheap pandering to science denying evolutionists, and an obvious opportunity for the sort of corruption described in these reports.

 It's even worse than you might think, though. As the Bayou Brief points out, the vouchers aren't merely a means of diverting public money into unaccountable private hands. They're also a vehicle for ultra-wealthy individuals like Eddie Rispone, for example, to set up very large tax loopholes for themselves.

In December of 2014, he donated $1 million to ACE Scholarships Louisiana, a Student Tuition Organization, and according to an audit of ACE, 100% of his donation was rebate eligible.

While we do not know Rispone’s income or how much of his donation was used toward scholarships, it’s possible to estimate how much Rispone could have profited off his $1 million donation.

If Rispone’s entire donation was used for scholarships in 2015, assuming Rispone did not donate more than 50% of his annual gross income and that he was in the highest income bracket (36.9% marginal tax rate), Rispone’s donation qualified him for up to a $950,000 rebate from the State of Louisiana and a federal tax savings of $369,000.

Therefore, his $1 million donation had a potential return of $1,319,000 ($950,000 + $369,000) for a profit of $319,000.

So, given all of this, since we know the voucher program is a disaster for Louisiana education,  and since we know criminally wealthy oligarchs like Rispone are benefiting from it. Why does John Bel say we should merely "reform" (he doesn't specify how) rather than abolish it?  Rispone is even applying a significant portion of his ill-gotten and protected wealth to challenge John Bel in this year's election.  Why would he let him get away with that?