[This article includes an update at the end.] All too often, politicians seek to hide the cost of government from the people by levying taxes at the wholesale level or disguised as “business” taxes. Rather than force government to be more honest, legislation filed by...
Congratulations, Texas cities and schools -- thanks to you, the Lone Star State is second only to New York! Second in local debt per person, that is. Even worse, nearly 40% of that $330 billion in debt liability is interest expense. Not exactly the kind of ranking...
A proposal was put forward in the Senate this morning that would change what's counted towards the state's spending cap. Specifically, the proposed SB 15 by Sens. Jane Nelson, Kevin Eltife and Juan Hinojosa (and supported by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick) would remove state...
Reading the Houston Chronicle, one might think liberal GOP Sen. Kevin Eltife of Tyler mattered that much. One would be wrong. “Republican raining on tax-cut parade” screamed the H-Chron headline on Sunday, echoing the first line of the otherwise responsible Peggy...
On March 2, 1836, Texas’ founding fathers declared independence from Mexico because that government had “ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people.” Despite the resolute tone of the Declaration, the future appeared bleak for the cause of liberty...
Texas’ Health and Human Services Commission has an ethics problem, which they compounded yesterday by hiring a former bureaucrat from the disgraced Texas "Ethics" Commission. HHSC is in hot water over no-bid contracts that appeared to have been handed out to the...
When confronted by the Texas Senate about their unconstitutional power grab, the state's Racing Commission doubled down on arrogance. Last year, the racing commission passed a rule vastly expanding the footprint of gambling beyond their constitutional and statutory...
Two years ago, conservative lawmakers tried to direct dollars away from frivolous programs -- like the Commission on the Arts -- towards the Texas Teachers Retirement System (TRS) health plan. The reason? The plan had an enormous, unfunded future liability. One...
With Texans dissatisfied with the high level of property and business taxation, the governor and a bipartisan super-majority in the Senate are pushing for nearly $5 billion in tax relief, leaving it to the Senate's big-government Republican, Kevin Eltife of Tyler, to...
A new tax-subsidized poll from the University of Texas finds that Texas voters are "dissatisfied" with how much they are paying in property and business taxes. The Texas Senate originally proposed slightly better than $4 billion in tax relief at the start of the...