Taxpayer Advocate Calls Proposed State Budget Fiscally Responsible&"

“The proposed state budget makes sense” said Americans for Prosperity-Texas director Peggy Venable. 

“Texas taxpayers are well served by the proposed state budget as it is a responsible budget and includes a reasonable increase over last biennium” said Venable.  “The budget writers worked diligently to spend the people’s money wisely.”

“We will readily admit there may be some fat in the budget but leadership rejected a push to spend all the surplus and the budget’s growth over the last biennium is well under recent state budget increases”   said Venable.

“Taxpayers will not be well served by legislators using this fiscally-responsible budget to further other political objectives” continued Venable.  “Any plans to bust the budget and assure a special legislative session should be rejected.  Every day the legislators spend in session the budget grows and more tax dollars will be spent.” 

This legislative session has given taxpayers much greater fiscal transparency by passing legislation which puts all state expenditures and contracts online providing more publicly-accessible legislative record votes and providing school property tax reductions as well as phasing out the TIF telephone tax. 

Additionally legislators withstood pressure to re-regulate the electricity industry and to enact retroactive oversight.  Consumer choice prevailed as legislators protected private property rights by rejecting a move to subject all businesses to a smoking ban.

“While we didn’t get everything we wanted this session taxpayers should be satisfied that government did not grow unreasonably  and we will work diligently to protect taxpayers and make sure the school property tax savings are not devoured by cities and counties via appraisal creep” said Venable.