Sleepless in Midland

Building a bigger wall - Gov Abbott expands list of excluded visitors to those arriving through border with Louisiana

Texas Governor Abbott is still at it. Last week Executive Order No. GA-11 mandated quarantine for travelers arriving at airports in Texas from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut or New Orleans.

He closed the roadway loophole with a new executive order GA-12 which expands the uninvited list to include the following:

Every person who enters the State of Texas through roadways from Louisiana,or from any other state as may be proclaimed hereafter, shall be subject to mandatory self-quarantine for a period of 14 days from the time of entry into Texas or the duration of the person’s presence in Texas, whichever is shorter.

Furthermore, his Proclamation of 3/30/2020 expanded the previous air travel order to include people arriving from the following cities and states:

State of California;
State of Louisiana;
State of Washington;
City of Atlanta, Georgia;
City of Chicago, Illinois;
City of Detroit, Michigan; and
City of Miami, Florida.

Don't mess with Texas.

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2:32 PM 3/30/2020

Build a wall -- Texas Governor orders people flying in from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut or New Orleans subject to mandatory 14 day quarantine and face fine or jail time for violation

This is huge.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Executive Order No. GA-11 relating to airport screening and self-quarantine during the COVID-19 disaster which subjects airport entries to possible quarantine.

The press release can be found here: Governor Abbott Issues Executive Order Mandating 14-Day Quarantine For Travelers Arriving From New York Tri-State Area, New Orleans. Excerpt:

Those entering Texas as their final destination from the designated areas will use a form from DPS to designate their quarantine location. DPS special agents will conduct unannounced visits to designated quarantine locations to verify compliance. Failure to comply with this order is considered a criminal offense that is punishable by up to a $1,000 fine, up to 180 days in jail, or both.

And get this:

Each person covered under this order to self quarantine shall be responsible for all associated costs, including transportation, lodging, food, and medical care.

Don't mess with Texas.

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1:17 PM 3/29/2020

Texas Governor Abbott wants to alleviate property tax pain

Property owners in Texas were hoping the 2017 legislature would do something about property taxes, but they didn't come through.

Governor Abbott is still on the case. See Abbott wants to limit local jurisdictions' ability to raise Texans' taxes.

Here in Midland, Texas, the city council hikes taxes every year. It seems inevitable. And t citizens' complaints at the council meetings are usually accepted politely. But the citizens are usually wasting their time.

So it's nice to hear that the governor listens.

The above mentioned dallasnews.com article links to this document purporting to be Governor Abbott's plan: Titled Texans for Greg Abbott 2018 Property Tax Reform Rollout. Here are the bullet points:

- Cap property tax revenue growth at 2.5% per year;
- Prohibit legislated unfunded mandates;
- Require appraisal district directors to be locally elected;
- Improve property owners' rights to protest;
- Improve property tax transparency;
- Improve transparency and use of local debt; and
- Require 2/3 vote to issue new local debt.

Let's hope the next legislative session will deliver.

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2:42 PM 1/19/2018

State law should preempt local traffic ordinances re texting while driving

Ordinarily I'm all for federalism, local rule, and all that the founding fathers envisioned. But they couldn't have imagined how fast we could travel in the future. And given how widely Texans travel in their own vehicles, the prevalence of local laws that vary from the state law merely set up traps for unwary drivers -- like speed traps of old, which were merely revenue raising devices mainly targeting non-locals. And the most horrendous part of most traffic laws is that a violation requires no intent whatsoever. Common sense should tell us that traffic regulations should be uniform to the extent that they don't create some undue burden due to some unique local situation.

So it's nice that Texas Governor Abbott has included in the current extended session a request that the new state law against texting while driving preempt local ordinances. Will they hand the preemption bill over to the governor for signing? With only a few days left in the special session, we should know soon.

While we can still vote with our feet and move to a jurisdiction with laws we like to live under. Local traffic laws give municipalities to much capacity to become highway-robbers targeting travelers. I would like to think our founding fathers would approve giving the state priority.

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2:05 PM 8/4/2017

Misleading headline -- Gov Abbott didn't joke about shooting reporters

The print edition of the morning paper had this headline over an article: "Texas governor jokes about shooting reporters after signing gun bill."

It's an article from Texas Tribune. And the headline is the same at the Texas Tribune site. But Abbott didn't joke about shooting reporters.

Reporters are hypersensitive these days after Montana´s U.S. Representative elect, Greg Gianforte, jostled a pesky reporter. So maybe they are looking for any way to make themselves victims of Republicans. Thus the trolling.

Abbott's joke was that he should carry around the target, not shoot anyone. Here's the quote from the article:

Following the bill signing, Abbott tested out a few guns at an upstairs shooting range.

"I'm gonna carry this around in case I see any reporters," Abbott joked while holding his bullet-riddled target sheet.

Huge difference. Texas Tribune knew that. But they ran the misleading headline anyway. Poor guys must be desperate for business now that they are no longer partnered with the New York Times.

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2:52 PM 5/27/2017

ACLU advising people not to go to Texas -- not bad advice for card carrying members of ACLU

There was a time long ago when the ACLU might have been counted on to defend classical liberal values:

Classical liberalism" is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade.

Those days are gone. Lately the ACLU has gone all-in for the lefty agenda. And now their boogeyman is the Texas law prohibiting city governments from passing ordinances that would prohibit police from inquiring about immigration status of suspects, i.e., the infamous sanctuary city law recently signed by Governor Gregg Abbott.

But ACLU's advice to people to stay away from Texas may not be such a bad thing. There has been an influx of folks moving to Texas from failing Democrat held states. And the fear is that they don't understand what made the states of their former occupancy so bad. And they might bring their politics with them -- a desire for a big state government with high taxes, heavy regulations, and oodles of freebies.

So anyone in the ACLU's audience who thinks that way should probably heed the advice and not mess with Texas.

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10:39 AM 5/10/2017

Proposed in Texas -- no property tax hike without voter approval

We touched on this yesterday when talking about a sales tax vote in Midland, Texas, last Saturday that got rejected by voters.

This time it's the movement to require voter approval of property tax hikes without them having to navigate through the obstacles set up by the legislature.

EmpowerTexans.com tells us about it in Legislative Priority: Give Voters A Say On Excessive Tax Hikes. Currently, only the school districts are required to seek voter approval of a tax hike over the rollback limit. For the other taxing entities, EmpowerTexans.com says this:

Under current law, taxpayers only have one option—a burdensome petition drive.

In both rural and urban areas, this onerous process requires that taxpayers collect an overwhelming number of voter signatures over a very short period of time – and hire lawyers to protect their validity – before a public vote on the proposed tax increase is triggered.

Politicians routinely instruct their staff to fight and discredit these efforts. They also spend taxpayer money on lawyers to resist holding public votes, forcing citizens to file expensive lawsuits.

Upon closer review, it becomes obvious that state laws pertaining to the citizen-petition process were designed to thwart voters in favor of money-hungry governments. These petition requirements should be replaced with automatic elections.

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott is very much in favor of property tax reform. Here's part of his State of the State where he talks about it in this Youtube video. In it he refers to Senator Bettencourt who can be found here.

Other advocates of giving more power to voters include Sarah Davis of Houston who has introduced several bills on the topic. One is HB 1144 which, if passed, would extend the restrictions on the school districts to all taxing units for proposed increases over the rollback tax rate.

"Rollback tax rate" -- weasel words, as that rate is set by the legislature which has its own budget challenges, and one might fear that they would be sympathetic to other entities dependent on tax revenue. But Ms. Davis proposed two other statutes which would peg the rollback rate to the consumer price index during the year preceding the proposed tax hike. That would be HB 1146 and HB 1147.

Other legislators have proposed similar statutes. Go to the list and do a page search for "valorem" to see them all.

All that having been said, hundreds of bills get proposed in each Texas legislative session, and only a fraction of them get passed. So we'll have to wait and see what they do with these important issues. Having Abbott on board certainly can't hurt.