AUSTIN – The Texas Public Policy Foundation today announced the launch of its Center for Local Governance, led by the Foundation’s former Senior Fiscal Policy Analyst James Quintero. This ninth center for the Foundation will promote excellence in local governance via sound budgeting, citizen accountability, and greater transparency.
The Center will work to transform local governance in Texas into a model for the nation, espousing the values of fiscal responsibility, self-governance, and community engagement. Working with local governments across the state, the Center will focus on four specific policy areas: spending and debt, funding flexibility, transparency and accountability, and local control.
“The Texas Model of liberty and limited government made Texas the nation’s shining economic and entrepreneurial star, even as the rest of the country suffered under Washington, D.C.’s big-government ideas,” said Brooke Rollins, President and CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Now it’s time to take the same research and free-market principles that have proven successful at the state level to the communities where we live and work. James Quintero’s vast experience and proven record in fiscal policy ideally qualify him for this effort – and we are excited about the things to come from this new Center.
“It is said that ‘government is best which governs the least,’” said James Quintero, Director of the Center for Local Governance. “Unfortunately, today we see local public pensions putting city coffers in the red, Independent School Districts raising huge sums of money on the backs of the taxpayer through ruinously expensive capital appreciation bonds, and local governments making it impossible for citizens to see exactly where their tax dollars are spent without a labyrinth of red tape. The Center for Local Governance will serve as the resource taxpayers, councilmen, and superintendents can lean on for proven, data-driven ideas for more effective and responsive local governments across the Lone Star State.”
To learn more about the Center for Local Governance visit: http://www.texaspolicy.com/center/local-governance
James Quinterois Director of the Center for Local Governance at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. As a Senior Policy Analyst with the Center for Fiscal Policy, Quintero concentrated on restricting the growth of taxation, appropriations reform, increasing governmental transparency, and instituting expenditure limits. Quintero holds an MPA with an emphasis on Public Finance from Texas State University.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit free-market research institute based in Austin.
Primary website: www.TexasPolicy.com
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