Random items related to the Texas Legislature

All from the Texas Tribune:

- Long Legislative Road for Voucher Bills Begins.

A preview of the looming battle over school vouchers played out Thursday as a state Senate panel considered two proposals to provide state financial support to parents who want to send their children to private schools.

Debate focused on how to ensure taxpayer funds are well spent at participating private schools as lawmakers traded questions over whether such plans would improve education in the state.

- District Attorneys' Report: Misconduct Exceedingly Rare.

In a report issued Monday morning, an association representing Texas prosecutors disputed what they say are illegitimate claims of rampant prosecutorial misconduct without accountability.

“It’s just not true,” said Rob Kepple, executive director of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

The association spent months reviewing 91 Texas cases in which the Northern California Innocence Project in a Marchreport identified prosecutor error or misconduct. The TDCAA said it discovered only six instances “in which a prosecutor arguably engaged in deliberately dishonest or fraudulent conduct that produced unjust results.”

Kepple said the Innocence Project report was “replete with errors” and called it “really kind of embarrassing from a scholarly aspect.”

Cookie Ridolfi, founder of the Northern California Innocence Project, who researched the Texas misconduct data, said she stood by the organization’s findings.

- Ethics Bills Draw Ire of Conservative Activists' Lawyers.

Lawyers for some of the state's most influential conservative groups voiced bitter opposition late Wednesday to several proposals to reform Texas' campaign finance laws, arguing the bills would only make a broken system worse and trample First Amendment rights.

Anticipating the backlash, state Rep. Sarah Davis nodded to the tough crowd after presenting her House Bill 22, which would overhaul the Texas Ethics Commission, particularly to beef up its enforcement authority.

"I love agreed-to bills, but I have a feeling there is absolutely no change that comes before this committee that contains the words 'Texas Ethics Commission' that Empower Texans would not just immediately oppose," the West University Place Republican said, referring to the conservative group that has come under scrutiny by state campaign finance regulators. "But I'm happy to work with them."

The late-night meeting of the House State Affairs Committee offered the latest snapshot of the intense, organized scrutiny some lawmakers face as they put a renewed focus on ethics reform. Gov. Greg Abbott elevated the issue last month by naming it one of five emergency items, and some of the ideas before the panel Wednesday were similar to what he has called for.

- Senate Passes Patrick's Tax Cut Package.

The Texas Senate on Wednesday approved Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s multibillion-dollar tax relief package to cut property and business margins taxes, tossing the ball into the House's court.

"Rather than spend excess revenue, the Senate has voted to return $4.6 billion to Texas homeowners and businesses over the next two years," Patrick said in a statement.

The biggest piece of that package, Senate Bill 1, authored by Senate Finance Chairwoman Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, passed the Senate 26 to 5. The bill devotes about $2.4 billion to increase homestead exemptions from school property taxes.

- Senate's Property Tax Cut May Stall in House.

While the Texas Senate easily approved a $2.4 billion plan to provide property tax relief to homeowners Wednesday, the measure may lose momentum when it reaches the House, where leaders appear more interested in cutting the sales tax.

“We’re going to present our plan here soon, and you’ll see what we’ll be driving for,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, said. “I think it’s fair to say at this time that we’re focusing on taxes that will have a more meaningful impact on growing the Texas economy, and property tax cuts are not part of the plan.”
Bonnen said he will publicly present his full proposal for tax cuts early next week.

Earlier this month, he filed three tax cut bills, two similar to Senate proposals to cut the margins tax paid by businesses, and a third that would cut the state sales tax.

From the Texas Tribune: A Big Idea, With a Big Price Tag

In 2306 we just finished looking at tax policy in Texas. Here's a story that foreshadows a looming fight between those who see property taxes and those who see sales taxes as the best way to collect revenue. The forces opposing property taxes have been gaining steam in the state:

- Click here for the story.

Property taxes are easy to hate, and Texas property taxes are high enough to turn this civic irritation into a full-blown political issue.

So it makes news when a candidate for comptroller of public accounts — the state’s tax collector, treasurer and all-around ace of finance — is running around saying he would like to get rid of property taxes.Glenn Hegar, a state senator who won the Republican nomination for comptroller in this month’s primary, was unequivocal in his remarks about the fairness of those taxes at a Tea Party forum in February, as reported by the Killeen Daily Herald: “As long as we pay taxes we have to ask, do we really own our property?”

His opponent, Mike Collier, a Democrat, is trying to turn a 26-second video snippet of Hegar suggesting an end to property taxes into a fundraising and vote-getting machine. He contends that the Republican is proposing a sharp increase in sales taxes to offset the elimination of property taxes.

Hegar, who has been in the Legislature since 2003, is not running away, other than to say he might phase out the tax instead of ditching it all at once. “I have said since I first ran that I preferred a consumption tax,” he said this week. “I have not backtracked in any way from any statement.”

The idea of eliminating property taxes falls nicely in line with some of the original leanings of the Tea Party, which began with concerns about government spending, debt and taxation. It rolls easily from a political tongue: Kill property taxes and rely instead on consumption taxes, which taxpayers control by simply controlling their spending.

And it is not a fringe idea, unless you consider the Republican Party of Texas part of the fringe. “Abolishing property taxes” and “shifting the state tax burden to a consumption-based tax” are the first two items listed under the “State Tax Reform” heading in the party’s current platform. There’s a line at the bottom of that list to prevent the state’s real estate agents from jumping out of their seats, proclaiming the party’s opposition to “all professional licensing fees and real estate and similar transaction fees or taxes.” The party is also against the creation of a state property tax (current property taxes are local) or a state income tax.