By Peggy Venable AFP-Texas Director
Taxpayers are the big winners as the so-called local option" transportation tax fails to make it onto the Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) Sunset legislation. Even high-priced taxpayer-funded lobbyists and local elected officials descending upon the Capitol for a last-ditch effort couldnt put lipstick on this pig.
House bill sponsor Rep. Vicki Truitt spoke out via a letter chastising the conservative groups which helped kill the local option tax. We conservatives usually like local options. But not when the cards are stacked against taxpayers.
Americans for Prosperity-Texas opposed this local option tax. Local officials dont need more taxing authority or the ability to put more tax increases on the ballot until they agree to an automatic rate rollback election. But local government officials and their associations didnt want taxpayers to have the opportunity to determine how much government we want and are willing to pay for unless we want MORE government and agree to higher taxes to pay for it. Taxpayers deserve the right to LOWER property taxes when the appraisals increase more than 5 (or even the current 8).
Whats fair is fair. Deny taxpayers the opportunity to lower taxes and taxpayers should not agree to any opportunity for local tax spenders to raise taxes. (Ways and Means Chairman Rene Olivera promised his friends at the Texas Association of Counties that he would not allow a revenue cap out of his committee and he did not. Our contention is that cost DFW a local option transportation tax).
However even after calling local officials to Austin Friday in a last-minute attempt to rally support for the local option tax Rep. Truitt got one thing right.
But it wasnt encouraging local officials to come to Austin. The suits" which held a press conference in front of the capitol were all tax spenders. I didnt see North Texas taxpayers there. Just suits with their printed signs on stakes. (Frankly the taxpayer-funded lobbyists did their clients -- counties and cities -- no favors. As they carefully orchestrated the press conference they appeared to miss the obvious.)
Local elected officials were at the capitol asking for authority to raise taxes with no taxpayers there saying we want higher taxes" and the officials all wore suits and carried manufactured signs. Hum… Did I hear the DFW officials spent taxpayer dollars to the tune of several million dollars for these lobbyists? DFW taxpayers tax dollars at work!
Rep. Truitt is right about one thing we conservative groups SHOULD have been expressing our outrage over the proliferation of Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs) which create a new taxing entity with little or no oversight.
Rep. Truitt called us out on that and AFP-Texas will ask for a study of MUDs during the interim as no one appears to be paying attention to these local taxing entities except the folks who are raking in the tax dollars.
We taxpayers will not mourn the demise of the local option" tax but should be bemoaning all the MUDs created the last few legislative sessions. Its worth studying and exposing the MUD-y mess created by these local taxing entities. For that we should thank Rep. Truitt for calling us out.
