The Legislative Budget Board meeting scheduled for Thursday, January 4 has been postponed to Thursday, January 11, apparently to give legislative leaders more time to chat with members about the setting of the spending limitation pursuant to the Constitution. TFR has aske
d the LBB to use growth in gross state product (GSP) instead of growth in personal incomes when setting this cap in a letter that was included in our previous post on this subject.Â
Mlevin
Texas Taxpayer Funded Lobbying & Blogging
The Galveston Daily News reported this month that the board of the Galveston Independent School District voted to pay the Austin consulting firm Moak, Casey & Associates up to $15,000 to lobby the Texas Education Agency (TEA) on their behalf. The 
specific purpose of this arrangement is to get TEA to agree to a swap between the money the district will receive to buy down school property taxes and the money they will owe the state in Robin Hood payments. Suffice it to say, the article states that some questioned why district officials just don't call TEA themselves to find out whether this is feasible.
National Report Finds Texas Has Some of the Nation’s Highest Property Taxes
The Tax Foundation has released a new report with some bad news for Texas taxpayers that many probably already knew all too well. The report, which 
focuses on property taxes across the nation, found that Texas has the ninth highest property taxes of the 50 states as a percentage of personal income.Â
Gov. Perry Readies a Christmas Present for College Students and an Accountability Lesson for Higher Ed
How do Texas co
llege students know their tuition money and the share of taxes their parents paid that go towards higher education are actually used for expenditures that enhance the education they receive? Unfortunately, they don't because the state's higher education budget is anything but transparent.  Now, columnist Clay Robison reports that Governor Rick Perry is courageously seeking to change that.
Where There is a Hill, Is There a Way for Taxpayers?
The Texas House Local Government Ways and Means Committee chaired by State Rep. Fred Hill (R-Richardson) has released its interim report. News coverage of the report has centered on its opposition to appraisal caps, which was hardly surprising since Chairman Hill has been among the most vociferous critics of such caps.Â
Howard About That! Legislator Files Bill to Fix Spending Limitation
As we reported earlier on this blog, we have urged the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) to adopt growth in gross state product instead of tot
al personal incomes as the index for measuring growth in the state's economy for purposes of calculating the constitutional spending limitation. Making this change would mean that Texas politicians could increase state spending by at least $3-$6 billion dollars less in the 2008-09 biennium than they could otherwise.
State Auditor: Higher Ed High on the Hog
Today, the Texas State Auditor released a detailed report on the number of full-time equivalent employees in state government. The central conclusion of the report is that, while state agencies have reduced their num
ber of FTE's by 8.4 percent since 1997, higher education institutions have grown their workforce by 26.1 percent over the same period. In fact, the report found that Texas higher ed institutions now have 143,044 FTE's, more than the 142,621 in all other state government agencies combined. While most colleges submitted an explanation for busting their FTE target, the Texas State Technical College in Harlingen failed to provide any reason to the Auditor.