Where's The Tax Relief

TylerPaper.com | Roy Maynard:

“The architect of property appraisal reform says he's disappointed a powerful committee chairman is blocking all but a few cosmetic changes to the system. ... 'I don't think appraisal reform is dead yet, but I'm very, very concerned,' Pauken says. 'Rep. Fred Hill has made it very difficult to get anything done. You can't talk to him. He's very hard-headed on this issue. For all practical purposes, he's become the spokesman of the Texas Municipal League and the Texas Association of Counties.' ... For his part, Hill tells the Tyler paper he's not completely opposed to tweaking the system. 'But I am against revenue caps, which restrict the abilities of cities and counties to do their jobs,' Hill says. 'And I'm against appraisal caps, which don't do anything except distort the market.'”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Hooray for Rep. Fred Hill (R-Richardson) for standing up to Tom Pauken's mischaracterization of the issue and TylerPaper.com's obliging story.

The headline asks "Where's the tax relief?" but Tom Pauken's task force was not called the Task Force on Tax Relief or the Task Force on Capping Local Government. It was called the Task Force on Appraisal Reform. Yet, getting fair and accurate property appraisals has taken a back seat to handicapping local government. Mr Pauken only used rising property values as an opening to achieve his real aim, capping local government revenues and expenditures.

Roy Maynard sets the stage by introducing Mr Pauken as the "architect of property appraisal reform" (read white hat) and Rep Hill as "a powerful committee chairman" (read black hat). He allows Mr Pauken to throw ad hominem attacks at Rep Hill, calling him hard-headed and hard to talk to, without asking for evidence that Mr Pauken has ever listened to anyone himself. His task force's road show around the state in 2006, supposedly seeking citizen input, ignored inputs from cities and counties. His goal of putting arbitrary caps on local government - revenues, expenditures, appraisals - was predetermined and comes through loud and clear in the task force recommendations.

Rep. Fred Hill of Richardson is now standing up for local government, for city councils and school boards and the voters who elect them, all those who weren't listened to by Mr Pauken in 2006. Mr Pauken paints Rep Hill's responsiveness to his constituents as a bad thing. All Texans are first residents of their towns, cities and counties. It's about time they had representatives in Austin who stand up for them. For Tom Pauken to paint Rep Hill as a mere "spokesman" for the cities and counties we all live in shows how little regard Mr Pauken has for local government. Mr Pauken himself appears to be nothing more than a spokesman for Governor Perry, for Austin, for state control of local government. An unelected spokesman at that. Hooray for elected representatives like Fred Hill.