FORT WORTH:  Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley always thinks locally.

But with his vocal opposition to Gov. Greg Abbott’s proposal to take away the ability of local governments to raise property taxes, Whitley is emerging as an alternative voice for Texas Republicans.

On Wednesday, during his annual State of the County address, Whitley called for the Fort Worth business community to embrace his fight. He asked members of the Fort Worth Chamber to call their elected representatives to say they want local elected officials — not state leaders — to determine tax rates.

“For the last 10 years, there has been an effort to take local decision-making out of the hands of local officials, and I don’t think that’s right,” Whitley told attendees at the Worthington Renaissance Fort Worth hotel. “The Legislature has tried to take a broad brush and paint every city, county and independent school district with that broad brush, and we just don’t fit that way.”

Abbott has said that, when the state Legislature convenes early next year, he will propose limiting local governments’ ability to raise property tax rates by more than 2.5 percent in a given year. Conservative groups such as Empower Texans are likely to pressure lawmakers to support that proposal.

Now in his 12th year as county judge, Whitley, a Republican, is increasingly becoming an advocate of overhauling government funding of health care and education.

He urged Tarrant County voters to approve an $800 million bond measure on the Nov. 6 ballot that would make it possible for the JPS Health Network, which is the brand name of the county’s hospital district, to expand its mental health, surgical and other services.

The hospital district, which would match the bond revenue with $300 million to $400 million in cash reserves, would build some of the new facilities near its existing campus south of downtown, but also would build several new neighborhood clinics.........Read full article by Gordon Dickson here

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to the 1st Annual KE Andrews school supply drive benefiting our adopted school, located in Rockwall ISD. The teachers were thrilled!

As many of you know, our school is a Title 1 school, which is a designation based on the number of low-income students who are considered at-risk for school achievement, and as such, many students flow in an out throughout the year. According to the Principal, last year over 70 students started school after Sept. 1, and NOT ONE had school supplies.

This year with your help, KE Andrews stocked the Teacher School Supply Closet so that all teachers could pull what they need for all students, without spending their own money to do so. Most of the journals have been handed out to students already!

Your generosity has given a child a sense of well being and confidence, ready to start their new school year prepared for success! THANK YOU!

 

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ned Lamont’s plan to spend $400 million on a property tax relief plan is much less grandiose than his GOP rival’s pitch to end Connecticut’s income tax.

But while Lamont maintains it’s the only realistic plan, it remains unclear whether the state could deliver this tax cut — while facing multi-billion-dollar deficits — and sustain it in an age of surging pension costs.

“Decades of fiscal mismanagement mean we can’t afford pie-in-the-sky promises, so I’m proposing a smart, achievable commitment to responsibly give middle class families the tax relief they deserve,” Lamont wrote this week in a campaign white paper on his tax relief plan.

Hoping to reverse nearly a decade of erosion to Connecticut’s chief income tax credit for low- and middle-income families, Lamont pledged to:

• Increase the property tax credit within the state income tax from $200 to $300, starting with his second year in office.


• Implement an existing state law that allows households without dependents to again receive the credit starting in the 2019 tax year. [The 2017 legislature suspended eligibility for this group for two years to help balance the budget.]


• Create a new “targeted relief” credit that provides a supplemental credit for households that dedicate 6.5 percent or more of their income toward property taxes. The average credit would be just under $700, though some households could receive as much as $1,200. This would start during the third year of the next gubernatorial term......read entire article by Keith M. Phaneuf here