EVERYONE SHOULD HELP COVER THE COST OF PUBLIC EDUCATION
How would you like to find out that you have been paying for your neighbors water bill for the past year? This is how the state’s current funding of public education works now. It is mostly funded by property taxes, the rest which is not much is between bonds and donations. The lottery has helped some as well. Since about 40% of Texans rent, the other 60% of Texans are paying for the majority of public education.
There are two bills before the Texas congress now that propose to restructure the funding of public education. They want to increase and expand the sales tax and cut property taxes to cover the rising cost of public education. Now of course as with any thing from congress, either state or federal, nothing is that simple. I downloaded a copies of the bills and got a severe headache about six pages into it.
I began this thinking that I want to persuade you adopt this bill, but there are some problems with it. I want encourage you to educate yourself on what your reps are doing down in Austin. I want to encourage you to contact your rep and tell him or her that you are for the idea that everyone needs to help cover the cost of public education. And there might be some items in the bill that you disagree with, that is OK. Let the people down in Austin know that too. Say I think you have a great idea here, but I do not like this one part of the bill. Maybe you can ask them why that part was put in, or why another part was taken out.
The key is that this is a move in the right direction, and while most of the items are OK, there may be some that you take issue with for many reasons. Whatever you think I want to encourage you to let your rep know.
I am going to give you some of the proposed details of the bills known as House Bill 3 & 4, or HB3 & HB4. Under these bills, the sales tax would be increased to 7.25% or up one cent. It would also be expanded to cover bottled water, car washes, auto repair. Groceries, medicines and diapers would remain exempt. And there would also be a snack tax, on such items as chips, sodas and cookies and other unhealthy foods. They would raise the cigarette tax by one dollar and increase the liquor tax.
They would also increase the taxes for car and boat sales from 6.25% to 7.35%. And elective cosmetic surgeries would have a 7.25% sales tax.
And a part of the bill that proves how out of touch with everyday people the politicians are is they are proposing to increase the gas tax.
The property tax would decease by 1/3 of its current rate.
I think that you can agree that we all don’t want to pay more taxes. But this plan does not make it to pay more, but to try and spread the burden equally. We all are going to have to pay taxes, that is one of the two certainties in life, along with death.
There was a case in Ohio were that state’s supreme court found that a property tax to fund public education was unconstitutional. It was biased and resulted in inequalities among the school districts.
While this plan is not perfect and also not set in stone, yet. It is a move in the right direction. I am a firm believer that nothing that comes from congress can be perfect. But they do try, and ultimately we are the ones responsible for putting them there in first place. They have to answer to us. If they do not we can vote them out next time.
I want to encourage you to right, e-mail, or contact in some way your rep. And tell him or her what you think about this bill, and even other concerns that you have. I am going to give you two web sites one is for looking up who your rep is and from there you may contact them, thru the website. And the other is to look up the bill HB3 and HB4.
HB3 is 71 pages long and though an interesting read, my headache came back.
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