When North Texas leaders mulled how best to convince the Legislature to authorize local officials to call sales tax elections to pay for rail expansion, they finally decided to give up their long (and losing) fight with businesses who had opposed sales taxes from the beginning.
Bowing to pressure from those business interests, members of the Regional Transportation Council got behind a new bill that would give counties the right to call elections asking voters to raise all sorts of fees or taxes, though not sales taxes, to pay not just for rail but for other transportation needs as well. They call it a local-option tax bill.
Despite a powerful sponsor in the the Senate in transportation chairman John Carona, and Rep. Vicki Truitt’s backing in the House, prospects for passage haven’t gotten better with the gathering economic storm clouds. And on Friday, the Texas Public Policy Foundation blasted the proposal as ill-timed, and sent letters to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker Joe Straus urging them to kill the bills.
… [visit site to read more]