Hurricane Harvey is sure to test the mettle of incoming Texas legislators. When lawmakers reconvene in January 2019, the state’s revenue picture is likely to be a little gloomier than usual, given that total losses from the storm could reach $190 billion. Even if the economic impact doesn’t hit revenues hard, Harvey will force...
The hotel occupancy tax (HOT) is sometimes called a “waste tax” because it can’t be spent on much more than fluff. Here’s another example of that. KXAN launched an investigation recently into money spent by Visit Austin, a private 501(c)6 that markets the city internationally and “receives a substantial portion of its revenue from the...
Austin is vying for Amazon’s impressive new “HQ2” — a second company headquarters that could supercharge the local economy with $5 billion in capital investment and 50,000 new, good-paying jobs. Landing the state-of-the-art campus would be nothing short of blockbuster. While Austin has much to offer and much to gain, it shouldn’t fall into...
Do you have a custom pecan wood table in your house that costs as much as a car? If not, then the city has nicer stuff than you. A new city audit found that, during recent renovations at City Hall, the previous city manager submitted a Purchase Order for “a custom pecan wood table” costing...
A new report from the Austin city auditor confirms what many of us knew already—that construction costs often balloon far beyond their original estimates. The auditor’s review of the Public Works Department, the branch of city government that “designs, manages, and inspects major capital improvement projects,” identified a slew of problems with the city’s construction...
This commentary was originally featured in the Austin American-Statesman on August 27, 2017. The Texas Legislature’s special session may be over, but what happened over the last 30 days will have lasting effects. Perhaps the biggest thing to take place under the pink dome this summer wasn’t the passage of a new law, but rather...
The Texas House of Representatives is set to take up and debate two major local government reforms that, if done right, will positively impact the lives of millions of Texans. For conservative policy wonks, the next 48 hours promise to be nothing short of historic. First up today in the House is Senate Bill 6,...
Texas has a property tax problem. The Lone Star State currently imposes the sixth highest effective property tax rate in the nation, and in 2015 alone, more than 4,100 local taxing entities soaked taxpayers for $52.2 billion in property taxes. That’s enough to take $1,900 from every man, woman, and child in Texas or about $8,000 from...
This commentary was originally featured in Breitbart on August 9, 2017. Though the new budget hasn’t been finalized yet, an early draft recommends raising taxes and fees by almost five percent, meaning many could soon find themselves paying a lot more for city services. Already, city government costs the average Austinite $3,865 annually. Under the...
Texas has a property tax problem. The Lone Star State currently imposes the sixth highest effective property tax rate in the nation, and in 2015 alone, more than 4,100 local taxing entities soaked taxpayers for $52.2 billion in property taxes. That’s enough to take $1,900 from every man, woman, and child in Texas or about $8,000 from...
Property tax reformers scored a big win on Friday when the House Ways and Means committee voted 8 – 1 to advance House Bill 4, a proposal to reduce the rollback tax rate and require an automatic election for large local governments wanting to increase their budgets by more. That pair of structural reforms is...
Over the long-term, lawmakers should be thinking about how to achieve the ultimate prosperity-generating reform: the elimination of property taxes entirely.