Pension Cost Burdens on Texas Cities and Counties

October 24, 2016

James Quintero

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.

Marc Joffe

Public pension costs represent a significant portion of city and county government spending. As public pension costs rise, the risk increases for taxpayers and beneficiaries alike. Transferring control of these plans to local voters is a good first step toward more sustainable pensions statewide.

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Fool Me Twice: Why the Texas Grid is Still Vulnerable to Winter Storms | Part 3: How Texas Can Solve Its Winter Reliability Problem

Part 3: How Texas Can Solve Its Winter Reliability Problem Five years after Winter Storm Uri, the ERCOT grid is still not ready for the next major winter storm. The first two installments of this series showed that demand has grown more than 20% since 2021 while firm generation capacity has barely budged, and the...

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Assessing Tax Trends in the City of Arlington

Does history suggest that property taxes are too high in the city of Arlington? And, if so, have local decision-makers actively helped or hurt the situation? To help answer these questions, let’s review the city’s 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) and gather four types of data—i.e., tax levies, local population, total tax rates, and taxable values—over a 10-year time horizon. Using these audited estimates, we can gauge the growth of government (i.e., tax levy trends), assess its reasonability...

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Bigger in Texas: Sizing Up the State’s Finances

Every even-numbered year, the state’s Legislative Budget Board (LBB) publishes a helpful, user-friendly summation of the General Appropriations Act (GAA), otherwise known as the state’s two-year budget. On Wednesday, the LBB published the next iteration—its 2024-25 Fiscal Size-Up. From a 30,000 ft. level, this new report provides “a comprehensive review of how tax dollars were...

August 2, 2024

James Quintero

Marc Joffe

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