Republicans should know you can't have it both ways

As traffic and the number of school age children increase cities all over Texas struggle to address the needs of their citizens. Down the road in Cibolo the elected leaders believe that in order for the city to develop in an economically sustainable way it needs extend FM 1103 which currently runs from I-35 to FM 78 so it goes all the way to I-10. In fact this idea has been around since at least 2006 but state funding hasn’t been available and city leaders have been told it will be at least another 20 years if then before money might be available.

Rather than give up and wait a generation or more for the state to find the money Cibolo’s city council decided to investigate the possibility of partnering with a toll road operation to build the extension. Now some members of the community are up in arms over the idea of tolls and spurious claims of using eminent domain to allow an outside company to as they claim “take property a bargain basement prices”.

I was a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission that reviewed the cities options for financing the extension and recommended that working with a toll operator be explored. I was one of the skeptics on the committee and while I’m no fan of toll roads we agreed that there aren’t many options to finance this project. I reluctantly agreed that the city council should explore a toll road so it can be built.

Now here’s what I have trouble making sense out of, many of the folks objecting the loudest to the idea of a toll road are also staunch low tax Republican voters. When you are a low tax state you must also be a low service state in order to balance the budget. In Texas the city can’t even legally raise taxes to the level necessary to pay for the road and still maintain its other responsibilities. Rather than blaming city council members for taking an action they don’t like; these folks ought to be calling our state representative John Kuempel and state senator Donna Campbell to tell them to raise taxes enough to do the job that state governments are supposed to do.

While they’re at it they should also remind our state legislators that funding public education is required by the Texas constitution and they’re doing a pitiful job of that too. The legislature still hasn’t fully restored the funding cuts from they made in 2011 when thousands of Texas teachers were fired and more kids were jammed into each classroom.

Republicans are funny; they don’t want to pay taxes but they expect to get high quality services like good roads and great teachers. Most of us know that you get what you pay for; I just wish Republicans understood that.

In education as in life "you get what you pay for"

We’re all familiar with the old adage “you get what you pay for” but Rick Perry and the Republican controlled legislature seem to think it doesn’t apply to public education in Texas. It should be no surprise that with Texas education funding lower per student than 45 other states we have high failure rates and many of those who do graduate from high school aren’t really prepared for college. Now District Judge John Dietz has ruled that state funding is so low as to be unconstitutional. The Republican leadership wants to drag things out by appealing the ruling to the state Supreme Court even though the ruling is consistent with what the Supreme Court said in 2005.

The Comptroller’s office has now reported that it has collected $8.8 billion more in taxes than projected in 2011 which could easily cover the $5.4 billion that the legislature cut from education funding in the last session but the Republican leadership is holding up using those funds with claims that we should wait and see what the Supreme Court says about Judge Dietz’s ruling.

Most school districts in the state have had to request waivers of the student to teacher ratio rules because they don’t have the money to hire enough teachers. Every year we delay adequate funding of public education we damage the children of Texas and their futures. Call you state legislator today and demand that they address education funding like the critical issue that it is.