AFP-TX Statement on Demise of "Local Option" Tax

As the gavel falls…
“Local Option Tax Gets Nixed”
Statement by Peggy Venable, AFP-Texas Director

As the so-called “local option” transportation tax fails to make it onto the Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) Sunset legislation, one of the bill sponsors (Rep. Vicki Truitt) spoke out – via a letter – chastising the conservative groups which helped kill the local option tax.

She failed to include Americans for Prosperity-Texas’ position that local officials didn’t need more taxing authority – or the ability to put more tax increases on the ballot – until they agree to an automatic rate rollback election. Taxpayers deserve the right to LOWER property taxes when the appraisals increase more than 5% (or even the current 8%). But local government officials and their associations didn’t 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.

What’s fair is fair. Kill the ability for taxpayers to lower taxes and we won’t 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 her 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 wasn’t calling local officials to come to Austin. The “suits” which held a press conference in front of the capitol were all tax spenders. I didn’t see her 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. We 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.

So 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. It’s 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.