Thank you, Rep. Will Hartnett

We are sitting here in the House Ways and Means Committee hearing with folks from around the state. The first bills are all calling for increasing the homestead exemption from $15,000 to as much as $45,000. That sounds good. Homeowners would pay school property taxes on less of their property. But property taxes would be shifting from homeowners to the businesses in that district...businesses which provide jobs and set the cost of goods and services.

So Dallas Rep. Hartnett asked one bill sponsor this: "You mean you want to lower taxes for homeowners and shift $1.5 billion to all other taxpayers?" Well, yes.

He then pointed out to another of the bill sponsors that these bills could raise the rent for apartment dwellers.

Thanks for the astute questions, Rep. Hartnett.

Here's the bottom line: it's the spending, not just the taxes. Shifting taxes from one set of taxpayers to another could make us all poorer.

We need to be spending the existing local property taxes more wisely. Schools now spend only about half their funding on instruction. And local government revenue in Texas is growing four times faster than Texans' paychecks. It's time we give taxpayers the right to control government growth and determine just how much government we want and are willing to pay for.

AFP-Texas supports SB 700 and HJR 1575 by Sen. Dan Patrick and Reps. Carl Isett and Dan Paxton, respectively. Those bills represent true local control.