That’s No Moon
What to know: TPPF attorneys are taking aim at 133 Dallas city ordinances that violate the “Death Star” law, which prohibits cities from overregulating Texans.
The TPPF take: The Death Star bill is fully operational—for freedom.
“The city of Dallas—and other cities—have continuously expanded their powers over residents during the last several decades,” says TPPF’s Nathan Seltzer. “All of these unnecessary regulations increase the cost of everything Dallas residents buy. It increases their rent, their grocery bills, their restaurant tabs, and their property taxes.”
For more on the Death Star bill, click here.
What’s Good for the Goose
What to know: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is urging the Legislature to consider enacting a local government spending limit, saying: “What I would like to see done is to make sure that every property taxing jurisdiction must live within the same spending limits that the state has to live in. And if they’re confined in that…their ability to impose greater property taxes is going to be hamstrung.”
The TPPF take: Spending is the problem. A well-designed spending limit is the solution.
“There’s a growing recognition at the Capitol that it doesn’t matter how much money is put toward tax relief; if the Legislature doesn’t do something to control local government spending, then any tax cuts will simply be stolen away,” says TPPF’s James Quintero. “If a spending limit is beneficial for state government, then it will also be a positive development for local governments too.”
For more on local spending, click here.
Bad Rule
What to know: EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is defending his agency’s repealing of an Obama-era rule that declared carbon dioxide a pollutant.
The TPPF take: The EPA’s “endangerment finding” was a politically motivated rule.
“Zeldin took steps this week to ‘drive a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion,’ when he rolled back the Obama era rules that declared war on the oil and gas industry—not to mention American cars—with draconian regulations against fossil fuel emissions,” says TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester. “Everybody supports action to maintain a clean environment, but people have had it with what Zeldin rightly calls the ‘climate change religion’ which proscribes a series of virtue signals that have no impact at all.”
For more on the EPA rule, click here.