Powell implemented the use of the state's sinking fund to pay interest on school bonds, a measure which had passed over Governor Helm's veto, but Helm refused to carry out. In 1855, Kentucky's voters passed by landslide a measure to raise the school tax from two cents per hundred dollars of taxable property to five cents per hundred dollars. The measure enjoyed the support of both Governor Powell and superintendent of public schools Robert Jefferson Breckinridge. Under the leadership of Powell and Breckinridge, Kentucky's school system became among the strongest in the antebellum South.