Monday, July 25, 2005

Have You Heard Of The Texas Parent PAC?

What is it you ask? Well here's how they describe themselves:
Parents of Texas schoolchildren have reached their boiling point.

Time and again, they've watched the Legislature attempt to overhaul the state's public school funding system. Time and again, the legislators have come up short.

Fed up, the parents are taking a page out of the politicians' playbook and forming a political action committee of their own. The goal: to oust old guard lawmakers they say don't support public education.
Hmmm...Does anyone know a couple of legislators that fit that description? The longer this drags on the worse it seems to get for our current state leadership. It's just bad public policy they are trying to push through the legislature. It seems like many, many people are starting to recognize this current "plan" for the sham or scam that it is.

This article I found, Mr. Representative: Whom are you representing from Waco Tribune-Herald. It's calling out Rep. Jim Pitts for not honoring his commitment on his promised vote pairing with Rep. Dawnna Dukes a couple of weeks ago. Refresh your memory here, Dukes Trades Horses With Rustler. It also calls him out for blaming his change of heart on his constituents:
Pitts backed out of a deal he had with State Rep. Dawnna Dukes, D-Austin. Dukes was going out of state and made an arrangement with Pitts pursuant to a tradition called “vote pairing” on House Bill 3, the school finance bill. Dukes opposed HB 3. Pitts supported it. Since they would cancel each other out, Pitts agreed to vote “present” rather than “aye.”

But when the tally was razor-tight, Pitts backed out of his agreement and voted, giving HB 3 the margin it needed to clear the House. To charges that he caved to Speaker Tom Craddick, Pitts countered, “My constituents put the pressure on me.”

Baloney, wrote Sandy Manning, editor of the Ennis Daily News.

“HB 3 has been vilified by every teacher and administrator caucus, association and group in the state of Texas,” she wrote.

HB 3 “punishes the Ennis ISD and the other districts in Pitts' district by granting wealthy districts like Plano and Highland Park a huge per-pupil income advantage.”

Yes. HB 3 carves away at the revenue sharing now benefiting low-property-wealth school districts under the “Robin Hood” system.

The Equity Center, which represents low-wealth districts, estimates that roughly 90 percent of Texas school districts and their taxpayers lose out in the bill that oozed from the House.

Those taxpayers, Equity Center director Wayne Pierce said, would “pay a property tax rate 25 percent higher than the state's wealthiest districts so that their children can have less spent on them. How in the world can anybody pass that?”

Which constituents, Mr. Representative, are pleading to come out on the short end of tax equity and for their schools to come out on the short end of funding? Are these real constituents or perpetrators of identity theft?

1 comment:

Amerloc said...

I just wish they had a way to contact them on the website.... Hope that's coming in the near future.