For Taxpayers Legislators Squandered Opportunities

For taxpayers the sense of urgency was heightened mid-way through the legislative session. Across the state property tax bills are higher than ever despite rate reductions enacted a year ago by the legislature. What had been feared came to pass: rate reduction without appraisal reform was a hollow exercise. Even as tax rates have come down property taxes owed are going through the roof thanks to an unreformed appraisal process.
 
One Republican state representative from north Texas Fred Hill of Richardson used his power as a committee chairman to silence debate on property tax reform legislation in the House. Thus was killed any effort to control the local taxing entities and appraisal districts draining Texans of their hard-earned cash making the American dream more akin to a financial nightmare.
 
So that left only additional tax relief as a balm to the taxpayers’ injured wallets. With $14 billion in surplus revenues certified by the Comptroller lawmakers could have provided historic rate reductions and additional relief.
 
But they did not. The death knell for additional tax relief came from the state’s Republican lieutenant governor David Dewhurst. He wanted the money set aside for the future rather than returned to the taxpayers now.
 
Future tax relief sounds nice but does little for the folks facing double-digit property tax burdens today. It also neglected an important political reality: if legislators won’t use surplus funds for tax relief in a year of plenty how can any of us trust them to use it for relief should budgets turn tight? Or even if lawmakers just feel like creating programs?
 
After all the “future relief” money now sits in a “property tax relief” fund but it is a fund lawmakers can loot without penalty because it is not constitutionally dedicated. Want to spend big in 2009? The property tax relief fund is ready to be raided.
 
The legislators’ $152 billion state budget offers little solace for conservative voters. While it only grows state government 9 percent (roughly inflation and population) it is built on last session’s 18.7 percent spending spree.
 
This is the way Republican majorities die not with a bang but a whimper. Nationally conservatives (regardless of party) fell into apathy and stayed home thus creating the Democratic majority in Washington.
 
Texas’ conservative voters are made of sturdier stuff; my experience traveling the state these last several weeks tells me voters are not yet willing to whimper away. We just have to turn our fiscal outrage into electoral action. From Laredo to Sherman Navasota to Amarillo I’ve chatted with voters from all backgrounds tired of lawmakers being more interested in spending programs than in providing homeowners with meaningful property tax relief.
 
One lady in the Valley told me she’d never considered taxes in her 50-some years of voting. This year she said pointing to her property tax appraisal notice will be different.
 
The late U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen said lawmakers “see the light” only after they have “felt the heat.”
 
Some legislators have become fiscally sloppy but are not beyond salvage. Others should probably be asked to find something else to do with their time. Elected officials must be reminded that they work for us; but that the taxpayers are taking a beating while politicians dish out cash to favored special interests.
 
As far as taxpayers are concerned legislators simply sat still this legislative session on the most pressing challenge facing so many of us: paying our property taxes. When we light a fire under the legislature we will see action – and finally our much needed relief and reform.
 
Michael Quinn Sullivan is the president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (www.EmpowerTexans.com) a non-profit advocacy organization based in Austin.