Rick Perry Still Doesn't Get It

Rick Perry Still Doesn't Get It

Posted by Chris Bell on March 29, 2006 - 10:15am.

Today Rick Perry is unveiling his latest tax plan, and though it has some merit, it has two fatal flaws that require more than a little fix. After six years on the job, after three special sessions on school finance, after his handpicked panel toured the state, and after the all-Republican state Supreme Court said that Texas schools were heading towards inadequacy, Rick Perry still doesn't get it.

Schools, which after all are supposed to be the point of school finance reform, need more money. Perry's tax plan would provide no new investment in classrooms. Zero. He's proud that it's a revenue-neutral plan. I have said since I started this campaign that a school finance plan that does not include new investments in classrooms just rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic.

A badly needed teacher pay raise is only the most obvious example of why this is painfully true. Texas has a legitimate crisis in teacher retention with most teachers leaving the profession within their first five years on the job. Right now, we have more certified teachers out of the profession than we do in classrooms, and part of that is because our system of Enron-style accountability treats them like glorified test monitors, but their low pay also drives them out of classrooms and into better-paying jobs. I have proposed an across-the-board, $6,000-a-year pay raise to bring them up to the national average. Rick Perry won't even let the legislature debate a pay raise until they pass his tax plan that wouldn't raise enough money to pay for a pay raise in the first place. It's an obvious contradiction that perhaps only he does not see.

Another fatal flaw of Perry's tax plan is that it cuts more in property taxes than it raises in business taxes, forcing a $1 billion raid of the surplus. Meanwhile, Perry is lecturing his Republican colleagues to avoid using the surplus to achieve a quick fix, bringing up another contradiction and placing him in the indefensible position of arguing for a smaller version of what he says he opposes.

Using non-recurring revenue (a budget surplus) for recurring needs (school finance, property tax relief) is just asking for trouble, both with the Supreme Court and with voters. Raiding the budget surplus to buy down property taxes is a fiscal sugar rush that neglects our pressing need for a steady balanced diet to sustain our public schools.

Rick Perry might have us headed into a ditch, but at least his tax plan is pointed down the right road. A broad-based business tax to raise money from the business community more fairly is something I have talked about for more than a year. With a small minority of Texas businesses currently paying the franchise tax and lobbyists running the show in Austin, it just makes common sense to spread the tax out fairly and squarely so everyone is paying their share.

And make no mistake, I support and have called for a property tax cut. As a member of the Houston City Council, I helped pass the city's first-ever property tax rate cut by helping pull together a bi-partisan coalition. But using a billion dollars from the surplus leaves Rick Perry's plan a billion dollars short of inadequate, which is what a revenue-neutral plan would be. It's a bad way to achieve a bad solution. Fundamentally, Rick Perry will never reach our goal because he does not share our goal: well-funded public schools that get the next generation ready to compete in the 21st Century. If Rick Perry can't find the moral courage to embrace this common sense goal, then we need a new Governor to get the job done right.

http://www.chrisbell.com/blog/032906_billion_dollars_short