James Quintero is the policy director for the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Government for the People campaign. Since joining the Foundation in 2008, Quintero has focused extensively on: state & local government spending, taxes, debt, public pension reform, annexation, and local regulations.
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...
In 2019, the Texas Legislature passed a law (House Bill 1495) to help correct “unethical political behavior” at the local level. One key provision in the law requires political subdivisions to disclose the amount of money being spent to lobby the legislature in their proposed budgets. As more fully articulated in Sec. 140.0045 (b)(2) of...
On May 15, 2024, Texas Public Policy Foundation’s James Quintero testified before the Senate committee on the issue of “squatter’s rights.” McCaw Property Management (n.d., para 1) defines a squatter as “somebody who is living on a land or in a building that is either unoccupied, abandoned, or foreclosed without the legal consent of the...
On Saturday, local governments of all types (i.e. cities, counties, school districts, and special districts) asked Texas voters to decide on nearly 275 separate bond propositions worth $17.4 billion (principal only). Using the Texas Bond Review Board’s bond election database, the Municipal Advisory Council of Texas’ website, and social media, we’ve tracked the results for...
Late last month, the Houston Chronicle published an article noting the Foundation’s longstanding effort “to see ETJs abolished completely.” What prompted the friendly mention was Tesla’s recent announcement that it would be using a new state law, Senate Bill 2038, to petition to have its electric vehicle factory, located in eastern Travis County, “removed from...
On Monday, a laundry list of left-leaning groups held the “Rally for our UT! Stop the Purge” protest to air their grievances against the state’s new commonsense law to curtail DEI programs at colleges and universities. The assembly of aggrieved—which included the Texas State Employees Union, the American Association of University Professors-UT Branch, NAACP, Texas...
On Saturday, voters around the state will say YEA or NAY to at least 270 separate bond propositions worth an estimated $17.4 billion in new debt (principal only). Any new debt endorsed by voters will, once issued, be added to the existing local debt service outstanding amount, estimated at $461.3 billion in FY 2023, as...
Texas’ “most progressive” school district—Austin ISD—continues to be a shining example of all that’s wrong in public education. To start, it was recently revealed that AISD is likely facing a $60 million budget deficit for the upcoming 2024-25 school year. But rather than reduce spending to close the gap, district officials appeared content “to [only]...
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has just released some revealing new data on public school superintendent salaries—and the detail has already prompted a bit of minor outrage online. The dissatisfaction appears rooted in the fact that, despite lackluster student outcomes and a persistent affordability crisis, the top-end of the superintendent salary spectrum grew to astounding...
As school districts across Texas begin to consider their 2024-25 budgets, which will likely be adopted in the late summer and early fall, many top-ranking officials are complaining about the difficult fiscal environment, suggesting they don’t have enough to make it through. In Bryan ISD, for example, one official warned about the district’s dire circumstances,...
Last week, New Braunfels ISD trustees committed to spend $4.3 million to fund 70.5 full-time positions in perpetuity. While the district’s staffing decision might seem unimportant at first, it actually hints at a large and growing problem becoming increasingly common in local budget matters. See, 26 of the 70.5 full-time positions were originally funded through...
Earlier this week, San Antonio ISD officials complained that “tough decisions” lie ahead as budget deliberations began in earnest. Some even lamented that, absent drastic action, SAISD would be forced into “cutting hundreds of staff positions” across the district. The source of district’s budget woes, according to the superintendent, was three-fold: “stagnant state funding, declining...