(download a .pdf version of the article) On November 7, Texas voters are being asked to approve $13.8 billion in new spending over the next two years proposed by the Texas Legislature. As noted elsewhere, this is because the Texas Legislature wanted to spend more money than allowed by the Texas Constitution. So instead of…
Category: Corporate Welfare
Rule by Experts: Two Approaches to Economic Development
“The conventional approach to economic development … is based on a technocratic illusion: the belief that poverty is a purely technical problem amendable to … technical solutions.” ~ William Easterly Under significant political pressure from the left and the right, the Texas Legislature last year let expire the Chapter 313 “economic development” program that allows…
Big Business Pushes for More Tax Breaks at Taxpayer Expense
Last Thursday I spent 11 hours at the Texas state Capitol in Austin. The occasion for all the fun was a hearing by the House Ways and Means committee on issues related to property taxes. It was pretty amazing to watch the proceedings. One of the biggest problems we have in America today is that…
Opportunity to Tell the Texas Legislature to Abolish Chapter 313
It was not that long ago that property tax abatements were illegal in Texas because they were considered to be theft. This historic and biblical perspective was embedded in the Texas Constitution. Acknowledging the ethical and economic problems with the government giving taxpayer money to individuals or businesses, the Constitution contains what is known as the Gift…
Chapter 312 and 313 Tax Abatements are Theft
Property tax abatements under Chapters 312 and 313 of the Texas Tax Code allow counties, cities, school districts, and special purpose districts to reduce the amount of taxes paid by favored businesses that locate or expand within their geographic boundaries. They are used by renewable energy developers in concert with state and federal subsidies to turn…
Two Approaches to Economic Development
“The conventional approach to economic development … is based on a technocratic illusion: the belief that poverty is a purely technical problem amendable to … technical solutions.” ~William Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts There are two different approaches to economic development, according to Dr. William Easterly. One is technocratic or authoritarian development, a…
Texans are Ready to End Corporate Property Tax Breaks
Following his recent speech to the Texas Oil and Gas Association, Rep. Dade Phelan, speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, tweeted that the Texas Legislature is “developing a program to replace Chapter 313,” the soon to be defunct provision in the Texas Tax Code that allows school districts to give property tax breaks to…
The Houston Chronicle Takes on Chapter 313
I don’t usually find a lot worth quoting in the mainstream media. But the Houston Chronicle as been on a bit of a rampage of late against corporate welfare in the form of Chapter 313 property tax abatements offered by Texas school districts to big businesses–especially renewable energy wind and solar farms: “As millions of Texans…
Makems and Takems
Do Takems Have the Upper Hand? The people of Sunderland in England have been building, or making, ships on the River Wear as far back as the 14th century. Since that time, their neighbors to the north in Newcastle upon Tyne have been taking the ships from Sunderland and using them to ship goods from the…
Energy Alliance analyst: A capacity market for electricity comes with ‘high costs’
By Savannah Howe (this article was originally published in the Lone Star Standard) The future of Texas’ electric grid remains up in the air as controllers, legislators and advocacy groups battle over whether the competitive market should continue. While the state has been operating on a competitive market – where consumers are offered an array of…