Rick Perry got over on the Tea Party because they failed to do their homework. Perry’s largest donors, like homebuilder Bob Perry and other hogs at the public trough, are getting water pipelines, roads and other infrastructure for pennies on the dollar, subsidized by the taxpayers they are driving off a cliffNote: Ms. Curtis also wants to remind all of the "Water War" conference scheduled Saturday March 19 in Bastrop. Go to the IndyTexans website below for the details.
Send your comments and news tips to roundup.editor@gmail.com, to Ms. Curtis at ljcurtis@indytexans.org or click on the "comments" button below the story
From Independent Texans
Linda Curtis
Published March 6, 2011
The recent “Save Our Schools” rally at the Capitol, with 12,000 attendees from across Texas, was a different kind of education rally. First, Texas Association of Business’ Bill Hammond, a Rick Perry ally lent his support. More importantly, the rally organizers turned from the typical “no cuts” ballyhoo to focus on one important underlying question – where did the $27 billion shortfall in our state budget come from? Our school tax dollars got gobbled up by the Texas growth machine.In 2006 a study by the Texas Association of Appraisal Districts (TAAD) revealed that across the state large-scale commercial properties were, on average, under-valued by 40%. The logical conclusion from the TAAD study was published in the Dallas Morning News in 2006. Roughly $4 billion per year that should have been collected in property taxes was not. The average elementary student can figure out that that’s about equal to the state’s crushing deficit.
Rick Perry got over on the Tea Party because they failed to do their homework. Perry’s largest donors, like homebuilder Bob Perry and other hogs at the public trough, are getting water pipelines, roads and other infrastructure for pennies on the dollar, subsidized by the taxpayers they are driving off a cliff. There’s no exchange of cash or checks. It’s not a “donation.” It is a perfectly legal payback. Officials from the Comptroller’s office down to city government, simply turn their heads to the problem they’ve known about for at least six years. Meanwhile, local and state governments (Democrats and Republicans) lower the costs of critical infrastructure, water lines and roads in particular. It’s all about subsidizing developers who are simply out to make as big and fast a buck as possible as 1,000 people per day move to Texas.
In 2009, a small real estate developer and a founder of ChangeAustin.org, Brian Rodgers, brought just a sample of the problem in Travis County, amounting to $120 million in under-valuations to the Travis County Commissioners Court. Rodgers found out, in a subsequent study he commissioned on the costs of growth in Austin, that for every new home built, $25,000 in public infrastructure costs are off-loaded onto current residents. In Austin alone, that amounts to $150 million per year. One wonders what the costs of growth are now in some other big growth counties like Bastrop (28%), Hidalgo (36%), Comal (39%), Guadalupe (47%), Denton (53%), Montgomery (55%), Colin (59%), Hays (60%), Williamson (69%), Ft. Bend (69%) and Rockwall (82%).
Nationally recognized researcher and community planner, Eben Fodor, author of Better Not Bigger, released a study last December, based on the new Census figures demonstrating that unfettered growth can actually lead to a decline in per capita income.
Rodgers’ and Fodor’s point is that you cannot stop growth, but you sure can make growth pay for itself.
The Texas Water Development Board, all Perry appointees, are looking for even more goodies for developers by pushing for a constitutional amendment for state backed bonds for water reservoirs and other controversial projects such as water pipelines — a holdover from the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) boondoggle. It is the proverbial plan to steal from Peter, like Bastrop and Lee counties’ groundwater, to pay Paul, developers who continue to build in water poor Hays and Bexar counties.
Our best guess is that about $100 million was spent pushing the TTC when Texans were overwhelmingly opposed to it. About 1.3 million Texans voted for independents Carole Strayhorn or Kinky Friedman for Governor, many based on their opposition to the TTC. But we went back into hiding after 2006 and Rick Perry got over on all Texans again. So, the real answer as to where the money went is that it went into the pockets of Rick Perry’s growth lobbyist friends.
George Washington’s farewell address in 1793 was his most important political lesson. He gave it just 23 years after the real Tea Party took place in Boston Harbor. By then, our first President was fully aware of the treachery a partisan political system that was firmly entrenching itself. He strongly warned about how it can enable “unprincipled men” to, “subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” Perhaps Texas voters are ready to pass the father of our country’s political test this year. Caution: Never underestimate the voracious appetite of a hog. They really can’t stop helping themselves.
3 comments:
"We need to reconsider the idea of solving our economic problems by “bringing in industry.”
Every state government appears to be scheming to lure in a large corporation from somewhere else by “tax incentives” and other squanderings of the people’s money. We ought to suspend that practice until we are sure that in every state we have made the most and the best of what is already there.
We need to confront honestly the issue of scale. Bigness has a charm and a drama that are seductive, especially to politicians and financiers; but bigness promotes greed, indifference, and damage, and often bigness is not necessary.
We need to give an absolute priority to caring well for our land—for every bit of it.
There should be no compromise with the destruction of the land or of anything else that we cannot replace.
We have been too tolerant of politicians who, entrusted with our country’s defense, become the agents of our country’s destroyers, compromising on its ruin"
-Wendell Berry
@Wendell Berry
You must be independently wealthy or retired. If you worked for wages you would understand that bringing in businesses large and small creates jobs for families and shopping opportunities that aren’t 50 miles away. Growth and the environment can coexist, maybe not in the pure form you wish but that’s what must happen or we will be continue to be stuck in as time warp of stagnation and decline. Without growth or tax burden will increase per capata since the insatiable school Districts will suck us dry.
I really admire the way Buda and Kyle have seized the opportunities that presented themselves. Both communities look fresh and modern, not like some backwater towns a little to the east.
Dear preceding Anonymous,
You say:
"Without growth our tax burden will
increase per capita since the insatiable school Districts will suck us dry."
1. I certainly don't accuse school
districts of being the only entities that add to our tax burden, but don't you see that it
IS growth (not as you put it
"without growth")that brings in the
children that we all pay to
educate? The parents of those
children do not even remotely begin
to pay the cost of educating their
children; we all do it in the form
of property taxes.
2. Read the book mentioned in the
main article: each family that moves to a community may pay into
the tax pool, but there are about
$25,000 in uncovered costs that come along with each family. There are roads, utilities, schools that must be built and maintained. The land developers don't provide those things -- they just rake in the money by selling the homes and
then move on to the next project.
3. The argument used by chambers of
commerce and real estate agents to
sell growth to us is that there will be jobs brought in. Where are
the jobs? Wimberley has grown, but
there are few new jobs here. A new big box store may hire a few salespeople locally (at near-minimum wage), but they also put mom-and-pop local stores out of business, adding to the
unemployment rate, to assistance
rolls, to human misery.
I am not a fanatical no-growther, but I do think we all need to examine whether we want to
avidly promote growth in an area
which has limited water resources
and which can ill afford the
$25,000-per-family cost of the
people we lure here (without usually telling them of the chancey
water situation).
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