As reported by Texas Scorecard, the board for the Harris County Department of Education (HCDE) voted last week to end a longstanding, taxpayer-funded contract with HillCo Partners, an Austin-based lobbying group that also advocates on behalf of many other local governing bodies, including the city of Houston. Harris County Department of Education Board Members argued...
The Certificates of Obligation Act of 1971 allows some governmental entities—like cities, counties, and certain special districts—to issue debt without voter approval to fund any public project. More specifically, certificates of obligation (COs) can be used “to fund the construction, demolition, or restoration of structures; purchase materials, supplies, equipment, machinery, buildings, land and rights of...
Here’s a Dickens of an idea. After the Gainesville Daily Register published a moving piece about a downtown merchant decorating for Christmas, another local business owner asked, via Facebook, why the city doesn’t fund such decorations. Great Marley’s ghost! Still, it’s not an outlandish idea. Lots of cities decorate for the holidays, and many focus...
There may be no more ironically named governmental body than the Austin Regional Affordability Committee. In its most recent meeting, the committee heard testimony about how awful it would be for the city of Austin if the Legislature were to limit its ability to raise taxes excessively — not lower them, mind you, but merely...
Property taxes are crushing small businesses, middle-class families and elderly Texans. In 2016, property taxes levied statewide grew to $56.1 billion. That’s a burden so large that the taxman effectively took $2,000 from every man, woman, and child in the Lone Star State or $8,000 from a family of four. Tax bills aren’t just gigantic...
Answer: $354,563,202,276. According to newly released figures from the Texas Bond Review Board, local government debt grew to a staggering $354.6 billion in fiscal year 2018. On a per capita basis, that’s enough public debt to swamp every man, woman, and child in Texas with more than $12,500 in red ink. As in years past,...
The American education lobby is caught in a pickle. On one hand, advocates and influencers are trying to convince people that public education is chronically underfunded, even going so far as to claim that schools are “starving.” On the other hand, watchdogs have documented countless examples of waste and misuse of funds—everything from the McKinney...
Election Day is near and it’ll soon be time for voters to decide on the most contentious issues of the moment: which politicians to elect, what propositions to pass, and how much, if any, new debt to approve. Every voter has to make up his or her own mind on the ballot questions before them....
Last year, city officials spent $150,000 to open “free” public restrooms that are accessible 24 hours a day and include a part-time attendant to “clean and restock the bathroom, enforce a 10-minute limit, as well as track hourly usage.” It’s a whole lot of city spending that looks something like this. Reasoning that this was...
Stocks are soaring, and consumer confidence is higher than it’s been in 18 years, thanks in part to the Trump administration’s aggressive renegotiation of outdated U.S. trade deals. Its latest push to modernize NAFTA has been particularly well-received by the market. In response to an announcement that the U.S. and Mexico had reached a preliminary...
The Austin city council looks like it will put a massive $925 million bond package in front of voters in November which would be “the largest in Austin’s history.” If approved, the near-billion dollar proposal would raise the city’s property tax rate by another 2 cents per $100 of value, further putting the squeeze on...
Answer: Yes! A quick look at the data shows that there’s plenty of reason to support a third-party efficiency audit of the city of Austin’s finances. For fiscal 2018, the city’s budget totals almost $4 billion, which ranks on the high side compared to its peers. Of the big cities in Texas, only the city...