Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

At last night's hearing on the enormous tax increase proposed my Mayor Turner, he repeated asked Gov. Greg Abbott to have state government use part of the Texas Economic Stabilization Fund to aid Houston’s flood recovery. The letter can be viewed here.

Per Mayor Turner, and several other Council Members who seemed well-rehearsed in the "give us your money" narrative, using part of the $10 billion in Rainy Day Fund “is appropriate for response to a natural disaster such as Harvey that wreaked significant damage and caused local governments to incur unanticipated costs far beyond their budgets,” the mayor said.

In attempting to change the narrative and shift attention away from the very large proposed tax increase (that the Mayor chose to announce in the middle of recovery from the greatest natural disaster to hit our City, and, without a shred of information as to why, and if, a tax increase is needed), Mayor Turner added that without aid from the state fund, the city will be forced to increase its property tax rate on a temporary, emergency basis for 12 months to help pay its recovery bills.

The push on all of this is that the City of Houston has the resources to meet its financial obligations - without a tax increase. Attempting to point a finger at the State as if the proposed tax increase is their fault is ridiculous.

And yet, Council Members Boykins and Laster repeated the mantra over and over that the state owes the City of Houston this money. We need to remember that Houston was not the only city impacted significantly by Hurricane Harvey. In response I would suggest they look back only a few short months to see how that whole "bully the legislature" move worked out for HISD. #tb