Constitutional amendment
"The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for a reduction of the limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for public school purposes on the residence homesteads of the elderly or disabled to reflect any reduction in the rate of those taxes for the 2006 and 2007 tax years."
What do you Think?
Friday, May 11, 2007
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2 comments:
A questions for you political scholars – Is it prudent to make this short term budgetary issue a constitutional issues?
This is a regressive tax break. Do we really want to reduce the money available to our schools so that Don Adam can have a tax break? If this were a needs based break, I would be all for it. Many older folks on fixed incomes deserve this sort of help. Unfortunately this amendment would provide a subsidy to the wealthy as well as the poor.
There is no doubt that protecting the incomes of our elders should be a high priority for government. One of the few priorities that is at least equal to this is the need to educate our young. Often it is suggested that it is not fair that the elderly should pay school taxes at all since they no longer have school-aged children. There are many fallacies to this argument that have to do with the nature of community, but it is also not true that investments in education do not have direct benefits to the elderly. There are two strong correlations that suggest that the elderly should invest heavily in our school systems. The first is the correlation between education levels and crime. The second is the rate at which the elderly are victims of crime.
Texas ranks fairly low (33?) in per capita spending on students K-12. We need amendments that will boost, not reduce, access to educational funding.
It's not very often, but I agree with you on this one Hugh. It's as bad as the senior tax freeze in the first place. It's irresponsible and self serving from the group who should be old enough to know better. That generation did more for our country than we could ever repay them for, but sacrificing the education of the next is not the way to try.
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