Many Texas counties and cities are worried that the Texas Legislature’s proposed property tax relief will leave them unable to meet their obligations.  Unknown to many, Texas’ local government (counties and municipalities) are loaded up with debt.  According to the Texas Bond Review Board, of the 10 most-populous states, only New York has more local debt per resident. The debt of Texas local governments has increased by 75 percent over the past decade, as local officials have had to pour money into public works to accommodate population growth and decaying infrastructure.  The State isn’t helping much as Texas ranks 48th in spending per capita.  As anyone driving on the streets of a large Texas city can tell you, we are falling behind.

Bloomberg reports on some of the local officials’ concerns about their ability to keep up in the face of Tea Party demands for tax relief.

Texas’s Williamson County hired hundreds of workers and ran up debt as it became home to two of the 10 fastest-growing U.S. cities. Now, state tax cuts threaten to crimp the revenue it needs to pay for the expansion.

“It scares the fool out of me,” said Dan Gattis, a [County] judge who helps oversee the budget for the county, an area north of Austin where farms gave way to congested roads as the population almost doubled since 2000. “It takes so much money to run county government. We’ve got to have some way to pay the bills.”

Williamson County is among them. An influx increased its population by almost 90 percent since 2000 to 471,000. Two of its cities — Cedar Park and Georgetown — were among the 10 fastest growing in 2013, according to the Census Bureau.  Its payroll has swelled 40 percent since 2003 to about 1,500 employees. Jail bookings are up 50 percent. Even the county’s miniature train has seen its ridership increase by more than one third since 2007. In 2013, Williamson County voters approved a $315 million bond for roads and parks.

“The state is not appropriating the money,” said Gattis, the county judge.

“Our debt is high here, I don’t try to hide from that at all,” Gattis said. “There was no way we could have built the infrastructure we needed to build without going out and leveraging money.”

Williamson County is Tea Party country.  Good luck Dan.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (TP) wants to bust the state spending cap in order to provide tax relief and pay down state debt while at the same time cutting social services.  But he doesn’t want his fingerprints on it.  The state spending cap is a complicated check on expenditures that many politicians do not understand.  Patrick has proposed a constitutional amendment to provide political cover for what might otherwise be seen as an effort to bust a spending cap that has served the state for 36 years.  The Texas Tribune attempts to explain the cap and Patrick’s proposal.

While a simple idea in theory, the spending cap in practice is a complicated measure that even some members of the Legislature have trouble grasping. The Texas Constitution says the government can’t grow faster than the state’s economy. State leaders set a growth rate of 11.68 percent for this session in December, based on the estimated rate of growth in Texans’ personal income over the next two years. 

Not all spending is subject to the cap. However, paying down state debt is. So is cutting property taxes, because it would require lawmakers approving extra state spending to make up for the loss to public schools.

Patrick proposes an amendment to eviscerate the cap so that an expected $4-5 billion surplus over the cap can be returned back to taxpayers.  Rather than simply vote to do so, Patrick has proposed a constitutional amendment to exempt tax relief and debt payments from the spending cap.  Sound complicated?  The Tea Partiers don’t want to be on record as voting to bust the spending cap for whatever reason – so they are attempting to pass the buck to the voters.

Why not keep the $4-5 billion in the state treasury as a bulwark against what appear to be rockier roads ahead.  That would make too much sense and not allow Patrick to pander to his Tea Party roots.