Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Grits for Breakfast

Criminal Law

: Grits for Breakfast

2011 Budget Blues: Close prison units to shave 2.5% at TDCJ

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst says Texas state agencies must reduce their budgets by 2.5% in each of the next four years to account for declining tax revenues, Jason Embry at the Austin Statesman reports ("Legislative leaders eye spending cuts to deal with looming budget hole," Dec. 20), providing an excellent short summary of the underlying source of the state's budget woes:As compared with a year earlier, sales tax collections were down 14.4 percent in November, and those kinds of returns have hastened budget-cutting talk. But what's really driving the conversation is a decision that lawmakers made in wealthier times to put property tax cuts at the top of the state's permanent priority list.In 2006, facing an order from the Texas Supreme Court, lawmakers passed a one-third reduction in school property taxes for operations, committing the state to spend $7...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on December 20, 2009 (boomark / email).