Every two years, legislators must write a new state budget that best serves the people of Texas while also limiting the burden it places on them. In order to write such a budget, the Legislature has to maximize available tax dollars by balancing actual needs and available revenue. Remember, for every dollar the Legislature allocates to one area of the budget, it loses the ability to spend it in another.
Kudos, Tarrant County
Fiscal conservatism is alive-and-well in Texas’ 3rd largest county. As evidence, consider that Tarrant County officials last year approved a tax rate below the no-new-revenue (NNR) tax rate, resulting in an astonishing “13.17 percent” rate reduction. As impressive as that was though, county leaders took things one step further by creating a 10% local option...