Billionaire Control, Part Two: Elected Officials

Nebraska’s education system has been hijacked by billionaires. In the last post in our Billionaire Control series, we looked at the NCSA and how the Sherwood Foundation’s many nonprofits are like tentacles of a single octopus, funneling money through layers of nonprofits and giving the appearance of diverse groups supporting the same cause.

In this post, we’ll dive into another problem: conflicts of interest for elected officials who are tied to Sherwood Foundation nonprofits. When these elected officials vote against school choice legislation, are they voting as representatives of the people who reside in their districts? Or are they voting as board members and/or staff of Sherwood-funded nonprofits?

Senator Adam Morfeld
State Senator Adam Morfeld is the executive director of Nebraskans for Civic Reform, a Sherwood-funded nonprofit. In 2016, the Sherwood Foundation’s IRS 990 form reported donations to Nebraskans for Civic Reform totalling over $269,000. Elected to the legislature in 2014, Morfeld has been serving on the Nebraska State Legislature’s Education Committee and faithfully towing the anti-choice Sherwood line, as shown in his own words below.

Morfeld is one of the most outspoken anti-choice members of the legislature. Although he himself benefitted from a private school education when he was young, he voted “yes” on Burke Harr’s measure to indefinitely postpone LB295, which would have made it possible for Nebraska’s low-income children to receive scholarships from private donations, thus lowering the taxpayer burden for K-12 education while opening up more education opportunities for those in need.

In the Education Committee hearing for LB630, Adam Morfeld not only disparaged public charter schools but talked about being the executive director of a nonprofit (funded by the Sherwood Foundation) and about running a program in a Nebraska public school (Civic Nebraska, funded by the Sherwood Foundation). How could an elected official in this position objectively consider the school choice needs of the children who reside in his district? The conflicts of interest are too great.

Senator Kate Bolz
Elected to the state legislature in 2012, Kate Bolz was employed as a “Community Educator” and policy analyst for Nebraska Appleseed, which received over half a million dollars from the Sherwood Foundation in 2016. Nebraska Appleseed repeats the teachers’ union and Sherwood anti-choice talking points, as seen in the following 2017 tweet. (Incidentally, Nebraska Appleseed gave a grant to Morfeld’s nonprofit, Nebraskans for Civic Reform in 2014.)

Interestingly, Senator Bolz has not been vocally opposed to school choice measures. In fact, although she was present, she abstained from voting when Senator Burke Harr tried to indefinitely postpone a final vote on LB 295 (Opportunity Scholarships) this past session. We hope that she continues to consider the merits of opening up additional education opportunities for students in Nebraska. Here she is with Sherwood-funded Adam Morfeld in the t-shirt of another Sherwood-funded organization, Nebraska Loves Public Schools.

Senator Sara Howard
The third person in the above photo is Senator Sara Howard, who serves on the Advisory Board of New Leader Council-Omaha, an organization that receives donations from the Sherwood Foundation. Senator Howard also serves on the Omaha Public Schools Foundation, which received over $5 million from the Sherwood Foundation in 2015. Additionally, Howard worked as a staff attorney for Sherwood-funded One World Community Health Center. That’s a lot of work for Sherwood organizations, which may be why she received the Emerging Leader Award from Sherwood-fund Nebraska Appleseed.

In a 2016 Omaha World-Herald article, we learn that “Howard said she doesn't support charter schools because she would rather invest state dollars into systems that have higher student success rates.” We hope that Howard reads some peer-reviewed research (rather than Sherwood-funded talking points) about public charter schools and other school choice measures before the beginning of the next session. Here’s a great place to start.

Senator Anna Wishart
​Elected to the legislature in 2016, Senator Anna Wishart serves on the boards of two different Sherwood-funded nonprofits. She holds the position of Director of Partnerships for Nebraska Children and Families Foundation, and she’s on the NextGen Board of Advisors for the Lincoln Community Foundation. The Sherwood Foundation gave over $3.8 million to the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation in 2016 and $100,000 to the Lincoln Community Foundation in the same year. She has also been on staff at Beyond School Bells, a nonprofit funded by Sherwood-funded Nebraska Children and Families Foundation--this is another example of two-layer-deep funding, making it difficult for taxpayers to follow the money trail.

Anna Wishart is on the record as opposing public charter schools. The Omaha World-Herald reported, “Wishart said the state has strong public schools and that she would not support charters, saying she believes they would be less accountable to the public. But she added that she strongly backs educational innovation within the public school system.” Perhaps her tepid opinion reflects the fact that Wishart is a Millennial (and Millennials strongly support school choice), and yet she is heavily involved with organizations that vehemently oppose parents’ rights to choose. It’s a difficult position to be in: 79% of black Millennials support policies to allow charter schools, but your major source of funding says absolutely not.

Senator Burke Harr
Burke Harr was the president of Project Harmony’s Service League, which received over $2.8 million from the Sherwood Foundation in 2016, according to IRS 990 forms. He has also appeared in the Sherwood-funded film Consider the Alternative, produced by NElovesPS, another Sherwood organization.

Although he attended private schools himself, and although he has sponsored tax-credit legislation, Senator Harr put on quite a show during the LB295 hearing this past session, jumping ahead of the bill’s sponsor to make a motion to indefinitely postpone the bill that would offer tax credits to organizations or businesses that donate to private school scholarships for low-income K-12 students. Sherwood-funded Stand for Schools recently honored Harr at a fundraiser in Omaha for his “support of public schools."

Senator Kathy Campbell
Elected to the Nebraska legislature in 2008, Kathy Campbell termed out in 2016 when she was replaced with Senator Suzanne Geist. Kathy Campbell’s husband Dick was asked to be one of the first board members of OpenSky and served as the Sherwood-funded organization’s treasurer. A 2013 Watchdog article says, “Campbell said OpenSky started with a small group in Omaha, including Kristin Williams of the Sherwood Foundation, which ‘promotes equity through social justice initiatives.’” Another early board member of OpenSky was Howard Buffett, grandson of Warren Buffett. In 2017, Kathy Campbell replaced her husband Dick on the OpenSky board.

Earlier this year, Sherwood-funded OpenSky released a policy brief about LB295 (Opportunity Scholarships) that included misleading information. For instance, it said that scholarship tax credits are not likely to create savings for the state. Peer-reviewed academic research does not support this claim. In fact, data published this year shows that tax-credit scholarship programs generated between $2 million and $223 million for the sponsoring states in 2014 alone. This isn’t the only questionable claim in the OpenSky report, and of course, the report was used by Sherwood-funded Stand for Schools, Sherwood-funded NCSA, and various other Sherwood stakeholders to mislead people about the true nature of tax-credit scholarships. ​

Senator Tony Vargas
Executive Director Tony Vargas of Omaha Healthy Kids Alliance has received $20,000 for his nonprofit in the three years for which we have IRS 990 forms for the Sherwood Foundation (2014, 2015, and 2016). He also sits on the board of New Leaders Council-Omaha (along with senate colleague Sara Howard), which also receives Sherwood Foundation donations.

At some point in the past, Vargas supported charter schools, at least according to election opponent John Synowiecki. He even voted for a charter school bill (LB972) while serving on the Education Committee of the Nebraska state legislature, but in the years since, he has backtracked on his support for school choice options. He was appointed to the Omaha Public Schools Board of Education in 2013, and in the past few years, Vargas has seemed to avoid speaking about his former support for school choice.

LPS School Board Member Connie Duncan
Connie Duncan serves as the Vice President of Philanthropy for Sherwood-funded Nebraska Children and Families Foundation and as a board member for the Lincoln Community Foundation, which also accepts funds from the Sherwood Foundation. On the 2016 IRS 990 form for Stand for Schools, Duncan is listed as Treasurer.

Although local school boards don’t have any jurisdiction over statewide school choice legislation, Duncan regularly makes her anti-choice opinions known. Here she is on Facebook supporting a press conference by Stand For Schools, a Sherwood-funded organization that opposes education opportunities outside of traditional public schools.

Billionaire Control of Nebraska Education
Do some Sherwood Foundation donations represent conflicts of interest when it comes to elected officials’ votes? Absolutely. If elected officials must weigh their votes between the people they represent and the wishes of their employers or largest donors, we no longer have a true representative democracy.

Senator John Kuehn has written about this very problem: “It is not uncommon for foundations to donate to other nonprofits, which may in turn fund additional nonprofits, effectively laundering donor money and removing it several steps from public view. Have you ever wondered who funds Nebraska Loves Public Schools? Founded in 2011 by the Sherwood Foundation, several Sherwood-funded groups also provide financial and logistical support to the organization. Thus, voters may have to look back through several layers of financing to identify the true source of funds.”

Our investigation of elected officials serving in Sherwood Foundation nonprofits was not exhaustive, but we did find instances where one Sherwood-funded foundation donated to another Sherwood-funded nonprofit, such as Wishart being employed by Beyond School Bells, which is funded by Nebraska Children and Family Foundation, which is funded by the Sherwood Foundation. If money talks as loudly as it seems to, we are only hearing from one billionaire, despite the appearance of diversity in our elected officials.

Stay with us as we learn more about the many ways Dark Money is preventing children in Nebraska from accessing the educational options available to their peers in other states. Only two other states in the nation (West Virginia and North Dakota) join Nebraska in offering no school choice options to students. We have some schools in the state where fewer than 10% of the students are reaching proficiency benchmarks, yet because of billionaire control of elected officials and other parties, these children and their parents have no other options.

Catch up on the Series:
Part One: NCSA and Affiliates
Part Three: Activism in the ESUs