We started Texas' 88th legislative session a couple weeks ago and it runs through May 29. Most of the action happens at the end, but Abbott and Patrick have already outlined some of their priorities, and given the Republicans have solid majorities in the House and Senate, their priorities have a decent shot of coming to pass. For the uninitiated, Texas only convenes a legislature once in two years (aside from special sessions), so I thought it might be worth having a thread. The backdrop to the session is that we just announced a $32 billion surplus (from a total budget of $188 billion). As our comptroller says, its a rare opportunity to have this much extra to spend. We were not that long ago dealing with a budget deficit and cutting education budgets to balance it, and I won't be surprised if we're dealing with another budget deficit even as soon as next year. Republicans, of course, want to do tax cuts when they get surpluses (the Dems want to spend it on infrastructure, as is their wont, but they don't have the votes to matter). Abbott's and Patrick's announced priorities include border security, education reform, school safety, property tax cuts, and the grid. The two (inter-related) things on my mind in all this is the education reform (school choice), and the impact of property tax cuts on schools. Starting on the latter, Abbott wants to cut $15 billion from property tax revenues. The only part of this plan the media seems to know about is $3 billion in funding for homestead exemptions. I actually like this idea. Right now, your homestead doesn't get taxed at all on the first $30k of its valuation. They want to raise that to a proposed $70k. That primarily helps lower wealth people, especially in rural areas where valuations are lower, without much meaningful property tax reduction for the River Oaks crowd (they'll be fine). What I'm not as clear on is which budgets get backfilled with the $3 billion. Property taxes primarily pay for the school district, the city, the county, hospital district, county improvement district, community college, and around Houston things like flood control and the port. Will Texas pay for the losses to the school districts and the port etc, or just the county entities relying on property taxes? Also, subtracting this $3 billion, there's another $12 billion in property tax revenues Abbott wants to cut and I don't know the plan for that. Who gets that money? The other thing is Abbott wants to push school vouchers (paywall) again to expand school choice. I'm an outlier here (amongst liberals) in that I think the privatization of k-12 education with state vouchers would be a benefit to the state. But only if you go all in, not with some hybrid model of state schools competing with private schools for government dollars. I'd want to see the public schools spun off into nonprofit private schools that compete with all the others for students and their vouchers with some state agency oversight. But, that's not what Republicans are going to try for. They want to make a frankenstein hybrid model that will undermine the funding of public schools without making the private schools prepared to serve all students equally (this article talks about many of the weaknesses of the hybrid I fear). I emphatically don't want that. We need to pick a lane -- capitalism or socialism -- and stick to the one model. Anyway, we talk about federal government and the culture wars too damn much in this forum. Texas politics is going to impact many of our posters more than Biden's classified documents ever will. Cross your fingers for this legislative session.
Property Taxes related. This is probably a zero-sum game. Homeowners pay higher property taxes due to these huge breaks for business. Texas OKs $31 billion in business tax breaks as program ends (houstonchronicle.com) Texas doles out $31 billion in property tax breaks for business as Chapter 313 expires Texas’ largest corporate incentive program is dead — for now — but a rush of applications as the law expired last year has put taxpayers on the hook for a projected $31 billion in tax breaks for nearly three decades to come, a Houston Chronicle analysis has found. And lawmakers may add to that staggering tally during this year’s legislative session if they pass a replacement for the so-called Chapter 313 program, though some industry boosters have found less enthusiasm in Austin than they'd hoped. ... Even without a replacement, however, the program’s lack of a deadline by which projects must be built means Texans may pay for tax breaks through 2049 under a program that ended in 2022. Chapter 313, named for its place in the tax code, grants manufacturing and renewable energy companies 10 years of deep discounts on their school property taxes, the largest chunk of Texas property taxes. To make up for the lost revenue, the Legislature allocates more state funding — the taxes all Texans pay — to public education, leaving less money not only to increase school spending but to build roads, provide health care and fund other vital services.
I'd love for my property taxes to get cut. I'm buying a home in an area where my tax bill will be 3 times as much as where it is now. Tired of providing for corporations and the wealthy.
No governing body for their mental health expertise. Probably more likely to diddle your kids than help them with depeession. Good job Texas.
And now this is it even legal for states to do this. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/1...ills-border-wall-illegal-entry-crime-sb3-sb4/
Texas GOP Amendment Would Stop Democrats Winning Any State Election The Republican Party of Texas has voted on a policy proposal that would require any candidate for statewide office to win in a majority of the state's 254 counties to secure election, effectively preventing Democrats from winning statewide positions based on the current distribution of their support. Democratic voters in Texas are heavily disproportionately concentrated in a handful of major cities which only constitute a small number of counties, while Republicans dominate most of the more sparsely populated rural counties. On Saturday, Texas Republicans voted on a range of policy proposals at the party's biannual conference which took place from May 23-25 in San Antonio. Once these votes have been counted, the official Texas state Republican policy platform is expected to be revealed later this week. Proposal 21, under the state sovereignty section, called for a "concurrent majority" to be required in order to hold statewide office. It says: "The State Legislature shall cause to be enacted a State Constitutional Amendment to add the additional criteria for election to a statewide office to include the majority vote of the counties with each individual county being assigned one vote allocated to the popular majority vote winner of each individual county." In November 2022, Texas's Republican Governor Greg Abbott secured re-election with 54.8 percent of the vote against 43.9 percent for Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke. However, due to the concentration of O'Rourke's support in cities such as Dallas, Houston and Austin he only secured a majority in 19 of the state's 254 counties. Republicans already dominate statewide politics in Texas with the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and comptroller of public accounts all belonging to their party, as do all nine justices on the state Supreme Court. Newsweek contacted the Republican Party of Texas and the Texas Democratic Party, by online press inquiry form and email respectively, outside of usual office hours on May 27. This article will be amended if either wishes to comment. According to The Texas Tribune it is unclear whether requiring support from a majority of counties to achieve statewide office "would be constitutional and conform with the Voting Rights Act" as racial minorities are disproportionately concentrated in a small number of counties. On Saturday the Texas GOP also voted on whether to back a referendum on the state leaving the United States and becoming a fully independent country, a proposition it approved during the previous party convention in 2022. The motion stated: "Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto." Other motions proposed included a call to "abolish abortion by immediately securing the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization." There was also a call to reverse the renaming of military bases named after Confederate leaders to "publicly honor the southern heroes," and a proposal that Confederate "monuments that have been removed should be restored to their historic locations." On Thursday supporters of the Texas Nationalist Movement, which wants the Lone Star State to become an independent country, were photographed holding signs which read "TEXIT NOW!" inside the convention center. https://www.newsweek.com/texas-gop-...nder the state,order to hold statewide office.
When floods, fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power grid outages, and other disasters strike Texans, how good would you feel depending solely on Abbott taking care of you without federal assistance? Leaving the US is such a stupid idea. If you think it's bad now, imagine no federal assistance for disasters on top of no federal funding for education, mental healthcare, social services, infrastructure, etc...
I doubt that this amendment passes to change how Texas elects statewide offices but these days never know. That should give Democrats even more impetus to win a statewide office as soon as they can.
To be clear, there is no amendment yet. Legislative session will be early 2025. This was a party convention policy proposal, and those are routinely extreme. Still, there is some cause to worry given how thoroughly the Republicans dominate state politics right now. If a power player like Abbott thinks they can gain by doing statewide elections by county, they can make it a big issue next year in the legislature. I'm hoping they fear that it won't accord with the Voting Rights Act and decide to look elsewhere. Because voting by county is probably an even more terrible move than seceding from the US.
I guess you could argue that putting muscle into strengthening the grid would be political leadership, or prioritizing it over harassing trans people (or whomever else they pick on week to week), because severe weather ain't going away. Perhaps Texas GOP has an official stance in ignoring climate or weather patterns though, kinda like Florida.
If you want to protect power lines from tornados, you have to bury them underground. Costs can vary a lot depending on terrain, etc. But, to take one example, PG&E was asking for $5.9 billion to bury 2,000 miles of line to protect from wildfires. That's about $3 million per mile. And the entirety of that expense is funded by utility customers. PG&E's proposal would have increased residential bills $38/month for, I think, 30 years (the commission settled on a slightly smaller plan that will cost $32/month). Sometimes, it makes sense. Florida has a lot of buried line because they are vulnerable to hurricanes and now Florida has one of the more reliable grids in the country and their rates aren't terrible. Does it make sense to spend billions in north Texas to avoid being without power a few days per year? Maybe, but it's not really a slam dunk. Anyway, these decisions usually get made without governors involved. He appoints the PUCT commissioners. But, it's the utilities that bring proposals for asset investments and the PUCT that must decide if it means criteria to be safe, adequate and reliable service at just and reasonable rates. Utility profits are a return on assets, so they are highly motivated to spend on asset projects like burying lines. They haven't yet because they know they can't convince commissioners that the rate would be just and reasonable. A governor could put his thumb on the scale and tell the commissioners their jobs are on the line if they don't spend billions burying lines. But I'm not sure that's a good idea. Especially after he told them their jobs are on the line if they don't spend billions to increase generation capacity. In any case, I prefer the methodical approach of a utility rate case for deciding instead of having a governor make decisions on how to deploy billions in other people's household wealth to maximize his own political career. Commissioners are politicos too, but generally their political interests are more aligned with our own interest in a reliable grid. Sure, Abbott should spend less time harassing trans people, but I prefer he just stay the hell away from my industry. The laws the legislature passed to finally bury the concept of an energy-only market was a sorely needed reform, but now that that's done everyone will be better off if politicians stop thinking about us.
