A new tax is coming soon to your utility bill. My guess is that it will be there quicker than you can say thanks to the Texas Legislature and you wont even have a chance to vote on it.
You might think that a no-new-taxes kind of guy like Gov. Rick Perry would have stopped this one or at least would have told lawmakers to require voter approval. From the looks of things he almost did.
I have serious concerns about Senate Bill No. 575 which will without voter approval increase taxes on Texans living in dozens of fire and crime control districts throughout the state Perry wrote June 19 when he declined to sign the bill. The residents of these areas voted to pay a sales tax upon creation of these districts and they ought to be given the same choice when decisions are made to increase their tax rates.
Still he let the bill become law without his signature. It allows crime control districts like those in Fort Worth and 22 other Tarrant County cities along with similar fire-control districts elsewhere to collect sales tax on residential gas and electricity.
Werent they already doing that? No in fact they have been forbidden to do so. Fort Worth for example expanded its sales tax to cover residential gas and electricity in 1992 and its crime control district has been collecting sales tax on other goods and services since 1995. But the crime-control district hasnt touched home gas and electricity use.
The list of taxes and fees tacked on to the end of your utility bill might show you that you already pay a sales tax but it should also show that the tax is collected at a rate that is less than the full rate allowed on other goods and services.
At my home in Euless for example the total local sales tax rate is 2 percent but the rate on my gas bill from Atmos Energy is 1.75 percent. The difference is the .25 percent crime district tax which hasnt been collected on my gas bill yet.
Why would Fort Worth Sen. Wendy Davis the author of SB 575 do such a thing? Its complicated. She didnt. The mess that the bill became is a good example of how ugly this session got how it produced bad law and how very difficult it became to tell what our elected senators and representatives were doing.
At the urging of Fort Worth city leaders Davis introduced her bill to clarify when fire- and crime-control districts should dissolve unless reauthorized by voters.
Her bill was approved by the Senate on April 9 but before it could get through the House the session took a dark turn. House Democrats started a talkathon May 22 and hundreds of bills died as end-of-session deadlines went into effect.
Bills that had been passed by the House or Senate became Christmas trees because their deadlines came later. Legislators whose stand-alone bills had died looked for ways to hang them as amendments on any still-alive bill that was somewhat relevant.
Sen. Jane Nelson of Flower Mound authored a bill calling for the sales tax on gas and electricity. It had passed the Senate but was buried in the House calendar. Democratic Rep. Solomon Ortiz Jr. of Corpus Christi added Nelsons bill as an amendment to Davis SB 575 during final House debate May 25.
It happened very late in the day approaching midnight. Like dozens of other bills it received little attention from House members.
I dont oppose paying this tax. It will probably amount to less than a dollar a month for me and it will go toward reducing crime.
But I strongly object to the way it was approved by the Legislature shoveled through the system literally in the dark of night as part of another bill that was not about taxes.
Like Perry I object to the way the tax can be imposed by the crime districts board with no public election. It probably would get voter approval just as crime districts themselves consistently have been approved and renewed.
For all their talk against new taxes our senators and representatives seemed to care little about this one.
Mike Norman is the Star-Telegram /Eastern Tarrant County editorial director. 817-390-7830
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/columnists/mike_norman/index.html
A new tax is coming soon to your utility bill. My guess is that it will be there quicker than you can say thanks to the Texas Legislature and you wont even have a chance to vote on it.
You might think that a no-new-taxes kind of guy like Gov. Rick Perry would have stopped this one or at least would have told lawmakers to require voter approval. From the looks of things he almost did.
I have serious concerns about Senate Bill No. 575 which will without voter approval increase taxes on Texans living in dozens of fire and crime control districts throughout the state Perry wrote June 19 when he declined to sign the bill. The residents of these areas voted to pay a sales tax upon creation of these districts and they ought to be given the same choice when decisions are made to increase their tax rates.
Still he let the bill become law without his signature. It allows crime control districts like those in Fort Worth and 22 other Tarrant County cities along with similar fire-control districts elsewhere to collect sales tax on residential gas and electricity.
Werent they already doing that? No in fact they have been forbidden to do so. Fort Worth for example expanded its sales tax to cover residential gas and electricity in 1992 and its crime control district has been collecting sales tax on other goods and services since 1995. But the crime-control district hasnt touched home gas and electricity use.
The list of taxes and fees tacked on to the end of your utility bill might show you that you already pay a sales tax but it should also show that the tax is collected at a rate that is less than the full rate allowed on other goods and services.
At my home in Euless for example the total local sales tax rate is 2 percent but the rate on my gas bill from Atmos Energy is 1.75 percent. The difference is the .25 percent crime district tax which hasnt been collected on my gas bill yet.
Why would Fort Worth Sen. Wendy Davis the author of SB 575 do such a thing? Its complicated. She didnt. The mess that the bill became is a good example of how ugly this session got how it produced bad law and how very difficult it became to tell what our elected senators and representatives were doing.
At the urging of Fort Worth city leaders Davis introduced her bill to clarify when fire- and crime-control districts should dissolve unless reauthorized by voters.
Her bill was approved by the Senate on April 9 but before it could get through the House the session took a dark turn. House Democrats started a talkathon May 22 and hundreds of bills died as end-of-session deadlines went into effect.
Bills that had been passed by the House or Senate became Christmas trees because their deadlines came later. Legislators whose stand-alone bills had died looked for ways to hang them as amendments on any still-alive bill that was somewhat relevant.
Sen. Jane Nelson of Flower Mound authored a bill calling for the sales tax on gas and electricity. It had passed the Senate but was buried in the House calendar. Democratic Rep. Solomon Ortiz Jr. of Corpus Christi added Nelsons bill as an amendment to Davis SB 575 during final House debate May 25.
It happened very late in the day approaching midnight. Like dozens of other bills it received little attention from House members.
I dont oppose paying this tax. It will probably amount to less than a dollar a month for me and it will go toward reducing crime.
But I strongly object to the way it was approved by the Legislature shoveled through the system literally in the dark of night as part of another bill that was not about taxes.
Like Perry I object to the way the tax can be imposed by the crime districts board with no public election. It probably would get voter approval just as crime districts themselves consistently have been approved and renewed.
For all their talk against new taxes our senators and representatives seemed to care little about this one.
Mike Norman is the Star-Telegram /Eastern Tarrant County editorial director. 817-390-7830
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/columnists/mike_norman/index.html
