New business tax will help pay for schools (Texas)

[Judi Lynn]

Jan. 26, 2005, 6:13AM

New business tax will help pay for schools
Pressure is on to revamp old finance system
By CLAY ROBISON and R.G. RATCLIFFE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau


AUSTIN - The Legislature will enact a new, broad-based business tax to help pay for public schools and lower local property taxes, Texas' top three leaders told a major business group Tuesday.

Although the separate announcements from Gov. Rick Perry and legislative leaders came as no surprise, and an agreement on exactly what kind of business tax has yet to be worked out, the message was a far cry from two years ago, when state leaders held firm against higher state taxes, even in the face of a $10 billion revenue shortfall.

State government's financial condition has improved, but pressure is building on the governor and lawmakers to replace a 12-year-old school finance system that is heavily dependent on unpopular property taxes.

Last fall, a state district judge declared the funding system unconstitutional and ordered the Legislature to replace it.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3009804
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[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[codswallop]

3. Schools are mere training grounds for neocon ladder climbing.

Education is important, indoctrination is criminal.

Notice how many kids are buying into 'kill all the bad guys' ethos?

Stifling of Liberal Arts has stifled education. Painters and poets starve while white collar criminals thrive.

Blame the schools for the lack of youthful indignation of our sorry political state.

[flamin lib]

5. Oh, now

that's a little harsh. The method of funding is terrible, but there are some extremely good schools. Funding tends to foster the have/have not syndrome.

Schools in rural areas that have no heavy industry get much less funding unless property taxes are extremely high because property taxes are by school district and stay there. A district with a General Motors plant can bet much better funding with a lower property tax rate because of the big industry.

Ann Richards got a compromise passed called "Robin Hood" that transferred revenue from the "rich" districts with low tax rates to the "poor" ones with high tax rates. That got the rich districts all hot & bothered and we've been fighting over it ever since. The state Constitution forbids a state wide property tax so the choices are: Income tax, sales tax, ad valorum tax or business tax.

'Course the Leave No Child Behind' funding has really screwed local homeowners. Some homes are valued for taxes at 10-15% above what they will actually sell for. It's a real mess.

[codswallop]

7. Adminsrators have prospered while teachers have suffered for decades.

Texas is a pit, educationally.

[Justyce]

12. Yes, in Beaumont,

the superintendent makes $253,938. He also got a $33,333 incentive and $12,000 yearly car allowance. And, he's seeking a 4% raise... Beaumont has some lousy schools, violent, and very low paid teachers.

[rainbow4321]

16. Dallas ISD went thru 4 or 5 superintendents in 5 yrs....

And with each new one, they had to up the salary cuz the mess just got bigger and bigger with each person in that office! Biggest one: the lady who embezzled school funds to buy bedroom furniture...yes, furniture. She did a stint in the fed pen for that. This after it was made a HUGE deal when she took office <first Hispanic female to head the district>. Should have been a clue something was wrong with her when she drove a friggin' bulldozer into her "welcome to the job" rally.
At one point, the super's salary was the highest in the NATION in order to get ANYone decent to take the job... other locals may know the exact amount but I wanna say it was well over $250,00/yr..all that was going on while teacher's were having to fork more $$ monthly premiums for their health insurance and buy classroom supplies. Created alot of nasty headlines for a long time.

[Justyce]

8. Ann Richards also got us the

lottery like she promised, which was supposed to be used to fund our schools! What has happened to all of that money?!

[codswallop]

14. Money has never been a problem in Texas.

It's the mismanagement of resources that is a big part of the problem.

Schools have become job training instead of arenas of skillfull and independent thinking. College graduates earn degtees without a real understanding of critical thinking.

It's all about jobs, and serving the system, it's not about enlightened minds.

[sweetheart]

23. perhaps as the politics are pre-paid

That anyone can say that higher education is not segregated still is
rather impressive as well. Texas A&M is the white school and
Prarie view A&M the black... no matter what the official propaganda
says, there are clear racist understandings regarding what school
skin colour dictates.

The prison system overwhelmingly incarcerates blacks for drugs crimes
far beyond any demographic norm... and the "blacks do more crime"
excuse is still used ! in texas... sadly.

Beaumont/galveson and that toxic land in between is an environmental
disaster.. .its no wonder the houston republicans want to end any sort
of class action lawsuits before their beloved petroleum and chemical
dumps are charged with local birth defects and health issues.

Like you say, its all about jobs, serving the system and unenlightened
minds.... considering the populations attening those southern baptist
churches... very unenlightened minds.

[codswallop]

24. True. There's so much weird bigotry disguised

as civility and political correctness and narrow-minded money-grubbing...Cash (and power) is king in the Lone Star State. Praise the Lord.

How do you know so much about Texas, sweetheart? Shouldn't you be invading Ireland, or something?

[sweetheart]

25. Gig'em aggies

I've spent some years in ol' college station.

I'z seen that racism up close... and done my own battles with corp turds
and whatnot. I've sat in the large church congregations hoping to
get lucky with religious nutjobs who wouldn't sleep with anyone who
din't attend their church... and i've met some really chilled out
roughnecks where we's shared a good cool brew on a sweltering
east texas summer night.

I've shroomed across fields after a spring rainstorm and seen assholes
drive all the way to houston to pick up gays and beat them up on
saturday night. After being able to see kyle field for 20 miles driving
towards bryan college station, i realized i was living in a place wholly
too flat to support developed civilization and beat feet out of there
as soon as i could.

.. i'm an immigrant to scotland... california born, and well travelled.
I like the panhandle deserts and big bend park... texas has so many
climates... and just the east gets under me skin.

[codswallop]

26. Very interesting...thank you for that bio.

Shrooms are the saving grace of that dank corner of the world. You are not Scottish after all? I don't know if I should be relieved or disappointed, but I think I am a bit of a kindred spirit.

[sweetheart]

32. I left in 97

to attend graduate school at edinburgh and later oxford. I was sooooo
blown away by oxford, with its origins being monks by the isis river
preserving "knowledge"... and it brings tears to my eyes every time i
go near the campus. I must have worshipped it in a past life. ;-)

Unfortuately my higher mathematics were not recently tooled to oxford
calibur so i did not stay long... (probably fortunate for me,
considering half my class was from aurthur andersen learning tricks
how to bullshit risk management voodoo in higher mathematics.. and
all got fired not too long after)

Still i love universities, and just made a bad call taking a scholarship
to A&M... shoulda taken the UCLA option... just i was so desperate to leave
home and get away from the parents, (and i lived in a zone where UCLA
would not have given me housing forcing me to live at home... no way).

Somewhere in there i discovered the magnificent beauty of the sottish
highlands, and got a small farm up here. Its a great place for
writing, a place where i am not intimidated by the bush nazi imperial
police state and its global fear brownshirts. And somewhere in there,
I've worked a year in seoul, toronto, 10 years in new york city, 3
years in london... i'm sick of big cities, hatred and mean people.

So it hardly makes me scottish, or anything else, except a travelled
outsider. It does oblige me, to speak against the bush nazi's as i've
seen their heart of darkness close up, and to not speak up is the
crime. The moon is bright, and i can't sleep with it shining through
the skylight, so i write this now, all of that personal history
just as well forgotten... yet i do remember it. Writing from the
scottish empty lands is like being living dead, an invisible voice
from the present, writing in a virtual past.

namaste,
-s

[codswallop]

34. You've got it

knocked.

[Mikimouse]

28. It is the best example of adhereing to the letter of the law,

but pissing on the spirit of the law. The Texas A&M SYSTEM is racially balanced, which means that the individual campuses do not necessarily have to be so. One of my students wrote a paper about it back in 2000.

[sweetheart]

30. Taxpayer paid segregation is goin' strong...

... in the school with a library named after the nazi president.

Seems the media are just plain absent, when any invesigative reporter
could embarass the hell out of texas by merely getting some university
demographics.

[flamin lib]

19. Uh, sorry but

the lottery for schools was a myth from the git-go. Never was promised for schools as it wasn't a good idea to earmark it with such specificity. Nobody knew how much it would bring in and everybody knew that the novelty would wear off and revenues fall. The only way to use the revenues were to put them in the general fund and disburse them from there.

It was a widely publicized urban myth.

[callous taoboy]

11. Gee, thanks Cod!

I work my butt off as a teacher here in Texas.

[codswallop]

13. I'm supportive of good teachers

My criticism is of the overall milieu.

Nothing more noble than good teachers.

[flamin lib]

21. Good for you, it's a noble

profession and in my estimation done very well with what you have to work with.

I really get tired of the Cons saying that spending has nothing to do with education. Follow that to the logical conclusion and $0 will be as well as $1,000,000. Makes no sense.

The new funding is proposed to come from a "business tax" imposed on professional services. Yeah, they talk about taxing Lawyers, but it will also come from accountants, hair dressers, Realtors, and anyone not a bona fide employee of some other business.

As a Realtor I don't oppose such a tax. Hey, somebody's gotta' do it. I just hope they put a floor on the income so hair cutters making $25k a year aren't hurt.

[salin]

4. Another bush affliated GOP governor has to propose to raise taxes

yet no correlation, in either case, to the problems associated with the bush policies (sending less $ back to states, driving the states into higher deficits; economic policies that failed to bring the level of growth needed to help states "grow out" of their fiscal problems...)

[Judi Lynn]

6. They'd nearly rather be tortured to death in Abu Ghraib than admit it. n/t

[DrGonzoLives]

9. I'd love to see this pass

I'm sure the oil companies won't spend millions more than they would pay in taxes to make sure this doesn't go through.

[Sterling]

33. Sarcasm?

nt

[sweetheart]

10. Read my lips: "No new Texas."

HA! They can just keep the churches and bulldoze the schools. That
is the corporate way.

[codswallop]

15. They should bulldoze all of them.

And Scotland too. :}

[sweetheart]

17. Why do you want to bulldoze scotland's schools?

I was making an ironic point that likely, given the memory of
"no new taxes" and the bush-41 loss, that this will never happen
and that the schools will be further undermined and "bulldozed"
metaphorically.

Scotland has the highest percentage of young adults attending university
in the UK... I'm curious your intonation.

Given another generation of american education, people won't be
able to find scotland on the map, and will bulldoze korean schools
by mistake. :-)

[codswallop]

18. Not Scotland's schools...SCOTLAND

I'm just kidding. I was going to make a string of absurd responses, but I give up. You are so right. America could learn a great deal from Scotland. But Scotland could learn to make better tacos.

I heard a statistic that 1/3 of Americans can't find Australia on a globe. Just shoot me.

[sweetheart]

20. You managed to find a taco in scotland!

Ha! Perhaps in the central belt.. Fish and chips.. no problemo at
the local chippie. Deep fried sausage... no problemo as well, nor
a curry.... but a taco! THAT would involve a taco bell! :-)

[codswallop]

22. You haggis shaggers need good tacos.

I heard an Aussie (living in Scotland) use the term 'haggis shaggers' in his diatribe of 'minging gingers', on the Redheads are Neanderthals thread. I've been biding my time for a window of opportunity to use it. Thanks.

No offense, mate.

[AP]

29. A Scottish Taco: baked beans on toast.

That's the veggie taco, of course.

[Demeter]

27. Yeah, Sure. I Believe That. THat's What You Call Faith-Based Politics!

[w4rma]

31. Haha, I bet it'll be a tax geared towards gouging small buisnesses with

lots of loopholes for big ones.