When the next Texas Legislature gets gaveled in and hears the bad news about the ten-figure budget shortfall it will have to deal with, remember that at least one Republican involved in the budget-writing process this year says we won’t be able to cut our way out of it this time.
Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, said a faltering business “margins tax,” the state’s population boom, the awful drought and Texas’ need to improve transportation and water systems will force state leaders to change their fiscal approach.
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Darby repeated the GOP leadership’s assertion that in this year’s session, it put more state funds into public schools than in the 2009 session. (Last time, federal stimulus money was substituted for $3.2 billion of what otherwise would have been state money in the two-year schools budget.) He said lawmakers this year “lived up to that trust” in avoiding the shunting of spending burdens to cities and counties.
“But I can tell you Texas is like every other state positioned here today: We’re going to have to start looking at our revenue side,” he said, ticking off all the challenges.
“We can’t just look at the cutting side.”
Darby may have said that before the lawsuit against the margins tax was filed. All I can say is that the odds of this approach being taken are inversely proportional to the number of teabaggers in the Lege in 2013. But at least we have it on the record.