This just in from our buddy Phil Magness:
Harris County Commissioner’s Court just voted to pull out of Texas Association of Counties. Kronberg has it up right now.
The word on the street is that one of the reasons they did it was the Williamson County lawsuit by our good friend David Rogers, ruling against counties using tax dollars for TAC’s political purposes…such as lobbying against the property tax caps.
Harris County was the largest member of TAC, so this is a huge rebuke and a victory in the property tax fight. TAC’s lobbying was also at odds with the County government, and was not serving our interests as voters. So Commissioner’s Court dumped them.
Adios, mofos!
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Politicians get one right. Don’t get used to it.
No reaction yet from TAC, but I bet their pissed. Good move by the Republicans in Harris County Govt. though.
Harris was one of the counties that came out in favor of property tax reform last session when TAC did it’s dirty work to kill the bill. Now TAC will have to do its bidding without the largest county in the state. Let’s turn this into a snowball effect and get some other counties on board.
Hip hip hooray…who’s keeping score?
Today, TAC. Tomorrow, the world!
#3 vlou
Conservatives: 1
Liberals: all the rest
Phil has it all wrong on this. Was listening to DP show 2 weeks ago when Commissioner Steve Radack called up and said he was going to get Harris County to pull out of the TAC because they oppose his bill to abolish Harris County Treasurer’s office. As DP pointed out several times, only reason Radack wants it abolished is because Orlando Sanchez holds the job and Sanchez ran against Radack’s buddy, the late Jack Cato. It’s a personal thing between Radack and Sanchez, as DP pointed out.
DP then tried to pin Radack down on supporting Patrick’s appraisal cap bill for Harris County only and Radack said he’d have to “study it.” Radack has never done anything to support appraisal caps. DP nailed him on it!
#2 Phil that’s an excellent idea. What do we do to get that done?
Radack has never been on board with us, the point is, they get the message. Whether it is the court case or public pressure, doesn’t matter, we win one.
#6 - Radack may have his own reasons for supporting this related to the treasurer bill, but I assure you there’s much more to it than that alone. If anything it is only one of several different factors involved in this decision…which is why it had the support of Emmett as well. You may also recall that Harris County Commissioner’s Court SUPPORTED property tax reform against the TAC position last session, so TAC was opposing them on several different issues.
There’s a major lawsuit related to TAC right now in a county outside of Austin. The suit pertained to the use of taxpayer funds for certain TAC political activities, and found that this was illegal. It has created a potential liability relating to illegal public expenditures in several counties. It’s definately on the radar of several Commissioner’s Courts, and you can bet Harris County was well aware of it.
Besides, on the Treasurer bill - LST’s contributers have been advocating the abolition of that office for even longer than Radack has, have they not?
#7 - I’d start out by contacting the Republican commissioners in the suburban counties near Houston. KSEV has radio coverage there and many of the voters there read LST, so they all know the issue. It’d be easier to start there than from scratch.
Montgomery and Fort Bend would probably have the biggest impact after Harris in this region. They’re also suburbanized, so property taxes are a major issue to their voters.
Here’s a summary of the Williamson County ruling to circulate to other county commissioners. They need to known that expenditure of tax money on TAC could make their counties liable under this ruling.
http://www.americansforprosperity.org/index.php?id=2340&state=tx