TX Governor Greg Abbott Says Cities Defunding Police Should Should Have Property Tax Revenue Frozen
“Cities can’t cut law enforcement & then turn around and increase taxes on the residents they just endangered.”
It’s amazing that some American cities are still toying with the idea of defunding their police. It’s even crazier that some cities are actually doing it.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has a suggestion about this. How about frozen property taxes?
Marty Johnson reports at The Hill:
Texas governor proposes freezing property tax revenue of cities that defund police
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Tuesday that he’s all for capping property tax revenue from Texas cities that decide to cut funding from their police departments.
Abbott made the comments at a press conference in Fort Worth. His remarks come after the Austin City Council on Thursday voted to slash the Austin Police Department’s budget by a third.
“Part of our job as state leaders is to ensure the safety and security of all Texans, and we will not allow this core function to be undermined by cities that seek to defund and dismantle law enforcement agencies that have a sworn duty to protect our communities,” Abbott said.
He added: “Defunding the police puts Texans in danger and invites lawlessness into our cities, and cities that endanger their residents should not be able to turn around and raise more taxes from those same Texans.”
Outstanding.
Under my plan any city that defunds police will have their property tax revenue capped at current levels.
Cities can’t cut law enforcement & then turn around and increase taxes on the residents they just endangered.
More announcements soon.#txlegehttps://t.co/jSMj2i7QTy
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) August 18, 2020
People seem to like this idea.
JUST IN: @GovAbbott says any Texas city that defunds their police department will have their property tax revenues frozen.https://t.co/RRidBaF0yq
— NBC DFW (@NBCDFW) August 18, 2020
Awesome!
— Robin Thompson (@robnartist) August 18, 2020
Love it, great move @GovAbbott
— Carson (@_Cars0n_) August 18, 2020
Governor Abbott is an awesome leader and keep up the great work!!!
— tcubull92 (@tcubull92) August 18, 2020
Greg Abbott gets it.
Defunding law enforcement is not the answer. pic.twitter.com/nwxtUTmpF8
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) August 14, 2020
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Comments
I think any city, county, or state that enforces shut down and limited capacity at restaurants, theaters, and venues should not be allowed to collect property or income taxes.
But Abbott is making a good start.
Abbott is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and an advocate of shutting down businesses, parks, masks in public places
Don’t be fooled, I live in Texas
Let’s see. You live in Texas and so can see what the governor is doing first hand. You state these facts. For this, you get down-ticked. Looks like you tweaked a few noses of those who see Abbott ass some sort of flawless hero.
Or some people who live in Texas just think his post is a load of crap.
gonzo is a chick, I’m pretty sure
yeah, most Texans I know think Abbott is doing a pretty good job, and certainly prefer him over the dreck the other party has offered
Has he shut down your state? Decimated your economy? I’m your neighbor to the west. I’d trade Grisham for Abbott ANY day.
Meh… he “opened” Texas back up faster than most any other state. And then there was a big “surge” in cases. There are arguments on both sides about what the “surge” really means, but at the end of the day he felt he needed to dial things back a bit.
All things considered, I think he’s done a good job with his WuFlu response. In fact, if I were Joe Biden I’d ask him to stand up and take a bow.
I won’t say Abbot has gotten things completely right, but considering the challenges in front of him:
Most of the largest cities/counties have populations equal to some states and are being run by Democratic Mayors/Commissions who think of themselves as the governors equals.
Counties with populations in the millions vs counties with populations less than 5,000 people.
Major medical centers vs regional & community hospitals.
Texas just is not a one size fits all solution and there is a constant battle to balance them.
Personally, I would prefer something a little more drastic. I’m living near a community that did fire it’s whole police force several years back and then signed on with the county for LE services. That fiasco put the city several million dollars into debt that they are still paying off and the relationship with the county was damaged badly. Those living in that community are still being hit with higher insurance premiums and tax bills in order to retire that debt before insurance causes the community to file bankruptcy.
I live in Texas too. Abbott is walking a fine line. Yes, I do not agree with some of his decisions. I agree with some of them. I definitely agree with the cap on property taxes in defunded cities.
Don’t mess with Texas.
And don’t mess with Gonzo.
Seriously, it may be that Abbot hasn’t been as restrictive as other governors because people like Gonzo are right there to push back.
I live in Texas and am shocked with Abbot’s tyrannical dictates to wear masks. He not only refuses to look at the studies that say they are ineffective with any viruses, refuses to audit those who are delivering false test case results, but has created a system of counting deaths that pump up the numbers to help him continue keeping his knee in the neck of Texans. With his counting method, he claims my county to have more than twice the number of deaths than can be verified.
Some claim Abbot is better than certain other governors, but this is Texas, not New York. You want to wear a mask, knock yourself out. But, you have no place ordering me to wear one!
Beware ,some online researchers like Phil Kerpen ,Alex Berenson ,El Gato Malo have stumbled on.a new metric CLI
Covid like Illnesses, as flu ,colds respiratory infections pneumonia are being lumped into cases .
Also lockdown deaths caused by stupid hospital shutdowns as CRD ,Covid Related Deaths .
One has been following this for a month and based on state pronoucements believe there are about 49000 to be laundered into the next couple months.
Not to mention the taxes collected to fund shutdown government offices & agencies; schools, municipal offices, libraries, public parks, and on & on
Our police are funded by millage if you cut the police you should refund the millage.
The Austin City Council is out of control. They recently passed an ordinance making it legal for vagrants to camp just about anywhere in the city. Cardboard box encampments have popped up all over the place. You drive out of a neighborhood of $1M homes and a block or two later you see a bunch of vagrants loafing around under a bridge panhandling and hassling drivers.
A group called Save Austin Now recently gathered nearly 25,000 petition signatures to force this issue onto the ballot this fall. The threshold for forcing an issue onto the ballot is 20,000 signatures. They collected nearly 25% more than required, during the WuFlu lockdown, almost all of them by mail. But the city “reviewed” a sampling of them and rejected the petition.
Then there is the council’s fascination of their toy train project. They’re constantly traveling to Portland, OR to ooh-and-ahh over Portland’s light rail system. They want so badly to turn Austin into a European city, you can just see their excitement; it’s palpable. If they love Europe so badly, why don’t they get the fuck out of the USA and go there? Why would we apply 18th century tech to the traffic problem when the transportation industry is about to undergo a massive technological shift with self-driving, low/no emission vehicles? It just boggles the mind, the fucking stupidity of it. And oh yeah, they want to jack my taxes another $1,200 a year for this toy train that nobody will ride.
Then there is the de-funding of the police department; they just gutted APD’s budget by about 1/3. Yes, 1/3. It’s lunacy. Austin is one of the safest big(ger) cities in the USA and in true prog fashion the leftist morons says “why do we need so many police?” “Why do we need so many prisons?” Crime is low, why so much enforcement? Are they really so fucking stupid that they can’t make the connection that law enforcement is THE REASON that crime is low?
Our youngest is leaving for college tomorrow. Hill Country, here we come.
Sounds like Austin has gone crazy, but should the governor really be telling cities how much to spend on police?
I’m pretty much always in favor of keeping control as local as possible.
You raise a great question; the law of unintended consequences pretty much always kicks in with any government action.
Apparently YES is the answer
The State can’t allow it’s Capitol City to go totally feral. Even if the idiots running it want to allow that to happen. If Austin won’t do basic Law Enforcement, then the State is going to have to step in and do it for them. And if the State has to pick up the cost of doing this, then it makes sense to prohibit the City from making any extra money from doing this.
But election after election Austin puts in more and worse radical lefts
I live next to Austin, their crime wave which is coming will
Directly effect me
My city use to be a haven of conservatism, too many people came for the schools and lower house costs and brought their BS liberal politics, and now Williamson county is purple
Never would have believed it.
Although “if you don’t like it here, then leave” is trite, there’s truth in it. This country was made to be different from the rest of the world. If you like the way it’s done elsewhere, then you should go there. Leave this country for those people who already live in those “elsewhere” countries, and would rather be somewhere different themselves.
This highlights the problem with a one-world government. If you don’t like it, where do you go to escape it? This is that place of escape. That is why this place must remain different, warts and all.
I love Texas and traveling all over it, but I definitely am disconcerted passing thru I-35 with all the folks camping under the bridges during the late evenings. I generally wait until Buda to make a stop if I’m going south.
How about a boot in the ass?
How about this? As well as reducing taxes for every city that defunds their local law enforcement then any city officials that receive taxpayer money as compensation for their positions have their compensation reduced by the same percentage as they reduced the law enforcement budget. And do it from top to bottom. From mayor to dog catcher. No exceptions.
And while we’re at it also prohibit any top city official from utilizing private security firms at taxpayer expense for their security needs once the violence and crime gets out of control due to cuts any cuts they’ve made in the law enforcement budget.
Don’t stop there. If teachers unions insist on keeping schools closed while getting paid or demanding additional (battle) pay if they open, refund their pay to the taxpayers.
Here in CA, schools account for more than half of the entire state and local budgets. I imagine it’s about the same in TX. If teachers are non-essential yet insist on keeping the schools closed, they should not get paid. Taxpayers are due a refund.
The teachers can collect their $600/week unemployment checks like the rest of the “non-essential” citizens who have been thrown out of work by our politicians.
Reagan had the right solution with the striking air traffic controllers.
I think our school tax situation may be even worse than yours… here we have the “Robin Hood” funding mechanism which ensures that a very large portion of the school taxes I pay in Travis County (Austin) go to other parts of the state.
“No income tax” sounds great, but in practice we still get screwed plenty hard.
Hmmm … Abbot and Trump could also make clear that any city that defunds police (fire and rescue) will not be eligible for state and federal emergency aid of any kind. From Abbot – aid will not be requested – from Trump – aid will not be granted.
Gov. Abbott has better ideas and more balls than all the blue state governors added together.
But no power. The TX governor is probably the weakest political office in America. How much balls does it take to be a constitutionally weak governor?
because it was designed that way. We also only let our legislature meet for 6 months every other year with a very tight timeline for passing bills, which helps slowdown passage of “headline laws” for every public outrage.
Yes, I did say “constitutionally weakest”. He still has the bully pulpit which he doesn’t use in fighting for his causes. He is the top politician to be elected by statewide vote. He does have power that he refuses to use. He’s just another milquetoast governor like “W”. Sanctuary cities, wide-open, borders,… plenty of issues he could be hammering away on. Why doesn’t he?
Um, rebate anyone? Insurance companies will start raising premiums in cities that defund police. A cap isn’t going to provide anyone any relief. A refund or rebate is in order. Why we are even talking about this absolutely bat-shit crazy topic is mind boggling. Vote ’em all out.
As they sow, so shall the reap.
Have patience. This is all very new. Once those in favor of such ideas get a taste of what it leads to, they will either flee the cities themselves (leaving only sensible voters behind) or they will change their minds and vote more sensibly in the future.
Defunding the police is a fad that will soon be defunct. It is a self-correcting problem.
I think you’re right, but the “self correcting cycles” typically take decades. And there is always the chance that the city goes into a death spiral from which it can never recover.
Look at what happened with New York City and the horrible crime problems it has in the 1970’s. It took a couple of decades of sensible leadership to turn that around. Then the city flourished for 2-3 decades and now they’re headed back into the gutter. Cities like Detroit and Baltimore never bounced back.
Defunding the police is a fad that will soon be defunct. It is a self-correcting problem.
I doubt it. It’s the opening salvo of the latest Stalinist campaign. Nobble the police, then when crime skyrockets, blame it on guns. Then we’ll be deluged with draconian anti-gun laws which far too many people will think might be a good idea, but to have any chance of making it stick they must keep the violent crime levels up; so maybe they’ll nobble the police even further. And after that? They’ll think of something, I imagine.
Your “salvo” comment is spot-on. I don’t disagree.
But crime problems don’t usually have a cause as plain as “defunding” the police. Most people are already against it and there will be converts come the next election cycle or three. So long as people can vote, this will self-correct, and will do so quickly.
As for gun control – I think defunding is the worst thing for gun control. Rising crime AND an obvious cause (defunding) will not lead to support for gun control. People are wising up. A government solution to a problem caused by government, with such an already obvious solution as “refund the police” is a dog that won’t hunt. The Hegelian dialectic works most of the time, but not all the time.
As usual, the Dems have over-played their hand and done more damage to their brand than they realize.
Police are usually funded with a milage, to the degree that that money is not expended on police, and any other service is defunded, governments should be forced to make refunds to taxpayers.
born and raised in austin–remember when a guy selling flowers at lamar & barton springs rd got elected to city council, then mayor–figured at the time that most of the council were perpetually stoned/baked–over the years, as more of the west coast yahoos moved to town the city leaned more and more liberal–even back then, being liberal was expensive(in some cases and neighborhoods extremely so)–but nobody seemed to worry about the direction austin was headed–yet, here they are–moved away in the mid-90s as simply couldn’t endure any more liberal bs(though we still live under the lone star)–liberals/progressives/fascists have literally ruined my hometown and, unfortunately, it seems to be continuing on a downward spiral–an abject example of the consequences of ” woke ” policies
good on governor abbott for resolutely dealing with the bs