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March 02, 2020

Wingnutting at county candidate forum, though Pelosi may have earned it

I was recently at a county political candidates forum. Given that all the local races for tomorrow's primary have candidates from only one political party (guess), that party's county office ran the forum.

At the start of the meeting, party staff talked about the State of the Union address and about Speaker Nancy Pelosi tearing up a copy of Trump's address. Hey, wingers, it was neither illegal nor unethical.

Is this a constitutional issue? So they claimed. It isn't that, either.

But? Pelosi fired the first snub gunshot, arguably, not using traditional SOTU language to introduce Trump.

Meanwhile, audience-crafted questions included asking candidates if they proposed any changes in tax structure. Given that property and sales taxes are all the county has, and it doesn't have EDC or recreational development tax options, unlike cities with their two extra half-cent options, there's little they can do except vote more or less property taxes. And asking Republicans in Texoma wingnutistan to talk about more taxes is laughable. That said, while counties might not have as much need for these extra taxes, an exurban county could use some of them. So, why not give counties an eighth-cent slot for each of the above, with a cap of five-eights cent total, or a nine-sixteenths total if no special taxes were levied, similar to how cities have multiple special sales taxes they can levy, but cannot levy all of them without hitting a ceiling.

Well, Texas law would have to be changed.

Currently, residents in a city cannot be charged a maximum, between city and county taxes, of more than 2 cents on the dollar. That ceiling I mentioned above is for combined city-county sales taxes. That includes dedicated sales taxes, like for economic development, as well as general revenue sales tax. The Comptroller's office has more.

I doubt that county residents would vote to approve paying extra tax on sales outside of incorporated cities, though they could do so in theory.

So, the cap would have to be raised to something like 8.5 percent. Is that doable?

It's a matter of law, not the state constitution, so you just need a majority of both halves of the Lege plus a governor with a "sign" pen and not a "veto" pen.

But, this is Texas.

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