Texas Gov. Abbott Fulfills Promise, Vetoes State Legislature Funding

Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, on Friday fulfilled a promise to Democrats who walked out to prevent passage of an elections bill – he vetoed a portion of the state budget bill that funds the legislature.

Abbott's veto, reported by the Texas Tribune, comes after House Democrats walked out in the final days of the regular legislative session to block passage of Senate Bill 7, Abbott's priority elections bill that would have overhauled voting rights in the state.

The Democrats' move also killed bail legislation that Abbott had earmarked as important.

"Funding should not be provided for those who quit their job early, leaving their state with unfinished business and exposing taxpayers to higher costs for an additional legislative session," Abbott said in a statement, the Tribune reported.

"I therefore object to and disapprove of these appropriations."

...Abbott has said the legislature is expected to convene for at least two special sessions. One session, set for September or October, is to focus on the redrawing of the state’s political maps and the doling out of $16 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds.

The governor also has said he will call back lawmakers to work on the elections and bail bills, as well as other issues not yet announced.

So he's going to call them back for two special sessions - one for redistricting, and one to pass the bills that were killed when the Democrats threw their tantrum and walked off the job.

Abbot's working hard to make up for the dumb crap he did early on in the pandemic. That's a good thing for us.

It does appear that way.

In before the "but he HAD to do SOMETHING" Abbot apologists.

Fuck them. They were elected to do their job. If they don’t show, they shouldn’t be paid.

When Abbott vetoed the budget, not only are the legislators not getting paid, but neither is their staff.

Oh, well...maybe they should have stayed and voted...

I am actually happy their full employees got fucked because the legislators made a stupid move.

If they wanted their staffers to get paid, then they shouldn't have walked off the job. Pretty simple concept.

Let's see if they do it again during special session.

Meh - Some leftist group will set up a gofundme account to pay everyone.

They'll probably end up with more cash than if they had showed up for work.

Democrats threw a tantrum and left. You don't reward tantrums.

While they're at it how about  a special session on property taxes and prohibiting local municipalities from using tax money to lobby the state legislators.

Unlikely - staff members are prohibited from receiving outside funding.  I looked into buying the staffers of my Senator a gift card for fast food, but the rules were such that it wasn't really allowed.

It wasn't the staff members fault the Dems ran away, so I'm sorry to see their pay held up.  Staffers put in very long hours during the session - usually 7am to 10 pm most days, and including the weekends the last week.

Pay for elected reps is only 7200 bucks or so, so it's less than minimum wage with all the hours they put in.

I can’t remember if there was a bill or constitutional amendment to restrict local municipalities using tax money to lobby legislators, but there was something going on.

The problem with property taxes is I have seen this before, in California in the between ‘74 and ‘79 house prices skyrocketed more than doubling in a few years. Because prices went up so fast property taxes did too. A group came together and passed Prop 13 restricting property tax increases, and requiring any vote on tax increases pass by 2/3’s.

Because property taxes were restricted the legislature raised state income tax, and put addons on the sales tax, to where both are 13%. The county I lived in California added a 1/2% sales tax for free healthcare for illegal aliens.

No one is going to care about politicians (especially democrats) or their staffers.

Not enough to pay them for not working.

Well their staffers worked, regardless of if the elected officials ran and hid.

But they can't receive outside funding.

This is like the 2013 session, where the Abortion Barbie ran out the clock by extolling the virtues of partial-birth abortions, all whist pissing into a diaper.  But then Gov Perry just called a special session and passed the bill in that one.

About impossible to run out the clock in a special session - there's a very limited number of subjects compared to everything that needs to be done all in a 4 month regular session.  

Good maybe they can get real jobs. I hear MacDonalds is hiring.

Most legislators in Texas have other businesses they run, some work a job they can take off from for a few months. The staff is there full time, it the staff that makes stuff happen when you call about a problem.

Having been in quite a few legislator’s offices the Republican legistors staffs are very friendly, enjoyed seeing us come in, even said hi to us in the halls, or stopped to talk to us. Now the Democrats locked their office doors, had signs up not to enter unless you were a constituent with only an appointment, and wore masks the entire time.

There was early on but I lost track of it.


As to property taxes, i've talked to Rep before and they all want to tweak things but it's going to take a new approach or we'll end with homes people can't afford.    A quick fix would be limiting appreciation to no more than published inflation and forced disclosure of sale value for all sales including commercial properties.


A long term more fix would be to do away with valuation taxation and move to a per sq ft/acre flat tax.  The entire cad system could be done away with and this would force local politicians to be held accountable for when taxes went up.  Now they just say" sorry we didn't raise your taxes our tax rate has been flat, that's the Cad."

Fixing our property tax problems will not be an easy nibble around the edges to fix. As much as I don’t like constitutional amendments here in Texas because the public votes on them. The property tax issue needs to be handled that way, with either leave it all as is or one complete fix once and for all.

Intrinsically, property taxes are a poor way to fund government.

You're being taxed on a physical asset, your home, that you don't make money from, and usually just plow the sale price into another home until you're ready for the nursing home.

When housing prices go up, you pay more in tax, without having obtained any benefit from the higher price.

But, governments over and over have shown they are incapable of having a new taxing source brought in, such as an income tax (where at least if you pay more in tax it's offset from having made more to begin with), without abusing it and using the excess money to buy votes and reward cronies.  

No amount of promises or words on paper about what they will do with the new tax money, and how they'll shut down the old source, will be kept.

So we're stuck with property and sales taxes.  There's no logical reason a government needs the additional revenue brought in when home prices go up - it's not like city service requirements go up if you house is now worth 30% more.

State and local governments should have their budgets set within inflationary boundaries, and if more tax money than that was forecast to come in, then tax percentages decreased to have a constant flow of funds.  As has been shown over and over, there's no limit to government's ability to waste the extra money when property prices go up.

I actually think this is a good thing.
As you have stated the actual reps will continue to get paid but by hurting their staff with their childish behavior will look bad.  
And a pissed off staff may keep them from doing this again.  Heck we may even see their staff quit to find alternate jobs - thereby hurting these reps even more - goodness knows some of them probably can't tie their shoe lases without their staff.

The funding bill vetoed starts 1 Sep, so no effect on current pay.

Only the House Democrats ran away, while the funding veto, if it's not changed, affects all legislators and staff.  Elected officials only make 600 bucks a month so it's no impact on them.  Texas legislators are in that position either because they want to be, or in hopes of using the power and influence to help their other career.  

This is just political posturing, which is fine - that's often needed, to make the Democrat run away appear to be a Big Deal!  In the special session, the election security bill will be passed - it's about impossible to run out the clock in a special session, and if somehow it's done, the Governor can just call another one.  Democrats have zero ability to actually block anything, they can only stall for time.

Once passed, mission accomplished, funding bill re-passed and signed, and back to normal.

Other problem is not too many want any income taxes. One option would be a locked percentage on the price the house sells for. The property tax stays the same, until you sell your house. At least you would know what your property taxes are, but in a way you are still 'renting' your house from the goverment.

The problem is tying the taxes to home value to begin with, you'll end up with a CA style system that is dysfunctional if we lock in home values and people will find a way to get around it with things like 100 year leases etc.  Also tying taxes to values allows the taxing pols to abdicate their responsibility and is the reason we're getting run away spending at the city and local level.  

That's why I think a per sq ft or per acre style property tax would be better.  The sq ft generally doesn't change over time and you know what your taxes are from day 1 until you sell unless the local pols decide to raise their rates, then you can vote them out of office.  You also wouldn't have commercial owners trying to hide the value and/or sue the CAD's anymore because they couldn't argue that their 100k sq ft warehouse suddenly lost 50k sq ft like they claim their value is half what it actually is.  

If commercial property owners were paying the true values I guarantee this issue would get fixed real quick.  There's a reason why commercial real estate and realtors fight the disclosure laws yet realtors have no issue listing your homes sales price on MLS.....because they're required to by the contract you sign when you hire a realtor.  

https://www.texasrealestate.com/members/posts/what-non-disclosure-doesnt-mean-for-reporting-prices-to-the-mls/

Other states like FL and TN have property taxes without income taxes and their rates are much lower.  It can be done but there are some influential big money that have a real interest in the keeping the current system as is.  

That is some interesting ideas, whatever it takes to fix our property tax issues it won’t be easy and to do it right will take a lot of thought, looking forward.

Staff members might be prohibited from receiving outside funding, but we're talking about Democrats here...  They break the law at their convenience, apologize for others that do and brag about it.

These part time legislatures have bloated budgets and an excessive number of staff.  Complete waste of money.  There's a very large underground complex to house their minions and keep them out of sight.

I'm full of ideas.....getting someone to listen is the problem

So what is the per Rep / Senator budget for staff?  And to what level should it be reduced to?  

When I visited my Senator's office, his office was well above ground with all his staffers there - no secret underground goblin caves where they toil away, wasting money.

Most don’t realize how much staffers do, researching bills, researching requests from legislators, handling issues from constituents

Like doing their social media postings.

I know reps have 2 offices (one in their jurisdiction and the other in Austin) and I think staffed at about 10 folks.  I have been told the Austin offices are in some form of large complex of basements.  I understand that the pay isn't the best but some of their functions are a waste of time, especially since the legislature meets every other year.

I'm not sure what the budget is and don't know how senators operate.


ETA - I've also been told that elected officials aren't allowed to receive gifts but that doesn't prevent their staff from getting goodies.

For reference, 10 folks is about the staffing level at a Chic-filet.  

The underground facilities I saw when I was stumbling around looking for my Senator's office were various printing and other facilities offices, not for the elected officials' staff.

And whoever told you that is incorrect about staff and goodies. Under the rules I couldn't even send a fast food gift card to the staff of my Senator for their work on the pro-gun bills.  Below are the
rules that I looked over about it:

https://www.ethics.state.tx.us/resources/guides/Gofficers-employEthics.php#Prohibitions

Look I'm sure there is waste, as in any endeavor run by people.  But from my dealings with the elected officials staffers, they worked very long hours during the session, like 7 am to 11 pm, and had a tremendous amount of things they had to keep up on.  

The real money the State spends on is schools, and from the mindless drones that come out of it, heads full of commie rubbish, that's where the money is wasted.

Frankly a lot of their wealth comes the ability to trade on information that the general public doesn't know about.  If you had an intel briefing on covid would you have told your broker to let it ride or short the market?  Supposedly the practice was outlawed in 2012 but every investigation found "no evidence of wrongdoing"

ETA: I don't have an issue with staffers, legislators need help and as long as staff expenses are reasonable it's the cost of running a government.  

Just getting my information first & second hand from a former staff member but what do I know.