The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - April 16, 2021

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

This week’s “Weekly Roundup” podcast, our reporters discuss the disaster act bills, the Texas attorney general suing the Biden administration, bills aiming to ban sex-change procedures for minors, primary election delays, the retirement of a Texas congressman, property tax proposals looking to lessen the burden on taxpayers, Cruz going to bat against the MLB, a Dallas homeless ministry looking to resolve conflict with the city, and a Dallas city council race focused on police defunding.

Howdy, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here, senior editor of The Texan. On this week's edition of our weekly roundup podcast, our team gives updates on the status of the Disaster Act bills, the Texas Attorney General suing the Biden administration over the Remain in Mexico policy, hearings on bills aiming to ban sex change procedures for minors, primary election delays, this week's ERCOT scare, the retirement of a Texas congressman, property tax proposals looking to lessen the burden on taxpayers, Cruz going to bat against the MLB, a Dallas homeless ministry looks to resolve conflict with the city, and a race for a Dallas City Council position centers

around police defunding efforts. Thanks for listening and enjoy the rundown. Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell, Hayden Sparks, and Brad Johnson. We're all recording on Thursday morning, getting ready to head over to the Capitol as Constitutional Howdy folks, Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Isaiah Mitchell, Hayden Sparks, and Brad Johnson. We're all recording on Thursday morning, getting ready to head over to the Capitol as Constitutional Kerry will be heard today. So another big bill coming down the pike here in Austin. Well, you know, I think a lot of us will be over there watching what goes down.

There'll be a lot of amendments offered. I'm pretty excited. Here's the thing. I get excited for these things. I love to watch them. And the boys haven't matched my energy in terms of excitement. Oh, I'm excited for Conn and Carrie, for sure. Okay, good. Yes.

I think just watching these insane legislative days is just one of my favorite things. Yeah. Which tells you a lot about all of us. It's going to be dramatic and cinematic. It will definitely be worth watching for everyone involved. Thank you. Hayden, you know, I can always count on you. Daniel, are you also thrilled?

I am so thrilled, except I don't express my enthusiasm in the same way as other people in this office. You're telling us you don't squeal like I do? Yes. Okay, got it. That's probably for the better. Well, wonderful. On that note, Daniel, we will start with you. The Senate made moves this week in terms of responding to coronavirus and the disaster that happened in 2020. Walk us through what happened and what the House has been doing in that regard. Yes, the disaster that happened.

That is still happening. So the legislation that is going through has been offered by Senator Brian Birdwell. He put forward two pieces of legislation that go together. There's a constitutional amendment, SJR 45, and then a bill that goes with that, Senate Bill 1025. And essentially what this bill would do is if a governor issues an emergency disaster declaration for a wide swath of Texas counties, for a wide swath of the population of Texas. There's some specific numbers on there, but basically anything major that is long lasting, like a pandemic, would have to be approved for renewal every 30 days by the legislature. So under current law, the governor can just issue those renewals himself every 30 days by the legislature. So under current law, the governor can just issue those renewals

himself every 30 days and keep the disaster declaration continued in place. And then that serves as a basis for all of the executive orders that come along with that. So that's what Governor Abbott has done. He has had a disaster declaration in place for the entire state of Texas, all 254 counties for over a year now. I haven't checked, but I'm sure that he renewed it in April as well. So that would basically then put it in the hands of the legislature to have some more checks and balances there that previously have not been there. And the senate passed this legislation in a 30 to 1 vote the one nay vote uh the senate bill came from uh senator sarah eckhart uh from travis county who was previously the travis county

judge um and so she was also a little bit concerned about the restraints that this would place on county officials got it and i think it's interesting, too, to note her previous occupancy in the county judge seat, because that is the other executive, other than the governor, I'd say, that had the most power in terms of enacting or just restricting any sort of response in terms of the coronavirus pandemic. So interesting to see that kind of come up. So we've talked a lot about on the up. So we get, you know, we've talked a lot about on the podcast, we've written a lot about, and by we, I mean you,

the House version and the Senate version, how they compare, how the different chambers are approaching the same issue. Has the House made any moves on their front and quickly tell us just from a 30,000 foot view perspective, you know, which bill is a little stronger, you know, which bill is a little weaker, what the differences are. So the House bill that has kind of gotten the most attention has kind of fallen out of the limelight recently because it's been left pending in a committee and hasn't, there's been no action on it since then, is House Bill 3, Farm Representative Dustin Burroughs out of Lubbock. The big differences between HB 3 and Birdwell's legislation is that

Birdwell's legislation would pretty much entirely reform the Disaster Act itself, so that any disaster, any future disaster would be covered by this, you know, if it's that wide-sweeping amount for a long period of time. Whereas, uh, Burroughs bill, uh, focuses specifically on pandemics and it would only affect pandemic disasters. It wouldn't affect any of the other disasters under the disaster act. It wouldn't affect, you know, um, whether there's some kind of war or some kind of, you know, anything that who knows what the next disaster could be. It would be exclusive to pandemics. And that being said, the the advantage that Burroughs says HB3 has is that by focusing on pandemics, they can then have kind of this shotgun approach of getting lots of different things relevant to pandemics into the legislation. So, you know, talking about extra religious liberty protections and extra protections for firearms, things like that in the bill itself.

Whereas Birdwell's legislation really just says it is not, it doesn't get all of those ornaments, you know, in the Senate,'ve compared uh his bill to this using this metaphor of a christmas tree and he's like we don't want to decorate it with lots of different policies we're just you know this major big reform whereas burroughs bill is more like a christmas tree and puts on lots of things but it's only specific to pandemics yeah oh that was an interesting um you know analogy too but then that and that's been thrown around that's almost colloquially used in the senate in the House at this point, right? Yes.

It's something that they just know what they're talking about. I think it got brought up in a committee hearing, and then it got brought up again on the floor. Yeah. And now, I don't know when it started, but I'm sure you love it as a Christmas lover. I do. Every time, I smile when I hear it. I think it's hilarious. In every session, there are those kind of different terms that make the vernacular. And I think it's hilarious that this

is one. Well, thank you for following that for us and covering it. We'll continue to watch what goes on. Hayden, we're going to come to you. This week, we saw some action from multiple attorneys general throughout the country, but particularly ours here in Texas. Again, going after the Biden administration, surprise, surprise, nothing new there. Walk us through this latest development. I just want the record to reflect how many times I've practiced saying attorneys general. So I don't accidentally say attorney generals, which is technically not correct. But surprise, surprise. Yes. Ken Paxton of Texas has joined forces with Eric Schmidt of Missouri, who's the Attorney General of Missouri, to sue President Biden and a host of other people in the Biden administration over what is colloquial.

I'm not going to try to say that word. What is known in the common vernacular as the Remain in Mexico policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which were implemented under Trump and canceled under President Biden, they sued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which is the federal district court system for the northern area of Texas, and the court in Amarillo. That was a really long way of saying something really simple, but they have filed this lawsuit to try to reinstate the migrant protection protocols and to force the Biden administration to continue to enforce them because according to their lawsuit and according to the public position that they've taken, these policies were working to stem illegal immigration and they need to be reinstated so numerically where are we at in terms of you know and again it's all hard to be able to trace back okay which policy changes directly affect numbers right what right what is responsible for the surge

of the border you know the border crisis is a very real thing right now but what's responsible for it right we had the biden administration, hey, we were given a pretty horrible hand here. We were dealt a pretty horrible hand by the Trump administration. And Republicans are saying, well, you took office in January and it's gone downhill since then. So there are two arguments here. But in terms of numbers, in terms of apprehensions, what are we looking at here? Well, the problem is not getting better. That's an understatement, probably.

In the most recent numbers that CBB presented is 172,000 individuals were taken into custody in March. And that's a 72% increase from the February figure, which was about 101,000 enforcement encounters in the Southwest region. That's not just for Texas, but the whole Southwest region. And that reflects a, I'm not sure they're calling it a crisis yet at the White House. Everyone else is calling it a crisis. But these numbers, like you highlighted, are jarring to the the public and right now we're still in the blame game phase the republicans are saying biden has taken over and look at what's going look at what's going on and the the white house is saying we're still trying to clean up the mess from the

trump administration and i think that's the dynamic that's going to play out for a while that argument i mean as soon as an administration takes over, that argument, at least from my perspective, usually resonates for a while that the new administration says we're trying to rebuild what the last administration broke. And they're still making that point. But because of these numbers, the Attorney General of Texas is in a position politically where it's advantageous to file this lawsuit. And he may have legal standing as well. So we'll have to see how his arguments play out. One of which is that the rescinding these policies was arbitrary and capricious. And I haven't had a chance to read all 40 pages of the lawsuit but what are you doing with your time hey come on well last night it was gambling legislation so maybe maybe um i'll pivot back to this and read the whole lawsuit we'll edit sarah

we'll have to edit the podcast to say that it ends it uh you know last night i was gambling period that's what we'll make sure to you know that's that's what I mean. I left the Capitol at about 10 o'clock last night. And I have to say the Capitol because I did not leave the casino at 10 o'clock last night. But it was so the enforcement encounters are are increasing. And that's across the board. But if the argument is that rescinding the policy was arbitrary and capricious, and that the Biden administration did not consider alternative policies, and that they did not consider the impacts that it would have on the state of Texas. And there was also an agreement between Texas and the federal government that the state of Texas

would be consulted and forewarned before certain immigration policies are changed. And the attorneys general alleged that that also was broken. So we'll have to see if it goes to trial or if there's a preliminary injunction and how it ends up playing out politically as well. Awesome. Well, Hayden, thanks for staying so on top of the border while also covering the legislature. Isaiah, we're coming to you. Speaking of the legislature, we've talked a lot about this issue, and I think it will continue to be one of the more hot-button topics covered this legislative session. But essentially, we have proposals in both the House and the Senate to ban sex change procedures or drugs for minors.

And this week, we saw those bills finally get hearings, particularly we're going to talk about the one in the Senate. But walk us through, you know, kind of what led up to that and what the bills do and how they're different. Yeah, as you pointed out, these were committee hearings, no votes yet. But there were a couple that were heard in the Senate, and we'll get to some others later in the House. The two in the Senate that were heard most recently were SB 1646 and SB 1311. The first, SB 1646, would expand the definition of child abuse in the law to include the performance of surgeries or the administration of drugs like puberty blockers to children for the purpose of gender reassignment. And originally, it was going to amend the state penal code to punish these procedures as felonies, state jail felonies.

But the author, Charles Perry, offered a new version of the bill, community substitute, that would instead let CPS handle these cases instead of charging the parents. And the second one is the same ban, but obviously they're worded a little bit differently. It bans the same drugs and surgeries. But instead of going after parents, it would revoke the licenses of doctors who carry out these procedures. Got it. And, you know, in terms of how these work down in Austin, right, a bill will be heard in a committee. The committee has jurisdiction over this topic.

And then witnesses come down from all over the state to testify either for or against, sometimes just neutrally on a bill. How is testimony divided, you know, in this hearing specifically? Well, it was interesting because we had parents of trans kids or allegedly trans kids and medical professionals, researchers, and legal folks on both sides of testimony here. So James Younger, if y'all have been listening to the podcast, you're familiar with his story. And his dad, Jeff Younger, spoke and testified there. I want to say in favor of the bills, though technically he might have just been registered on. But obviously he is an outspoken critic of these kinds of procedures for kids. So just as a brief timeline here for James' backstory,

James is a young Texas boy whose mother insists that he identifies as a transgender girl named Luna. His dad disagrees. And between them, they had a long and politicized custody battle over not only, you know, over how to raise their son. And so James, or excuse me, Jeff went and testified in favor of these bills, though might have been registered just on. We also heard from a former president of the Texas Psychological Association, who disagreed with the current president of the Texas Psychological Association who disagreed with the current president of the Texas Psychological Association on the appropriateness of these kinds of procedures for kids. say that, or assert that institutionalized medicine has changed its position on this particular issue since 2004, when the last guy was president testifying on these bills. So that's a pretty quick turnaround. And so we heard from other parents of trans children who insisted that these kinds of procedures, even before puberty and before adulthood, were necessary

to their children's happiness and well-being in their lives and there is a brief a few brief moments of interesting sparring on legal grounds between uh there was one representative from the aclu going up against brian hughes he's got a strong background in law um debating cases that that went on in england where um i believe now they a court case resolved this issue to some degree over there and they're prohibiting these kinds of procedures for kids under 16. So researchers, legal experts, parents of trans kids, and medical professionals were all kind of siding off against each other in testimony. Yeah, absolutely.

We've alluded to it, but there are proposals in the House that address or seek to address the same issue. Can you explain those proposals? Well, the one with the lowest bill number that's also been maybe the most publicized is Steve Toth's HB 68. And it's, again, the same ban. These are all very similar bills, and there's a lot of hair splitting you have to do here. But Steve Toth's ban would, again, count gender reassignment surgeries or drugs as

child abuse. One difference between his bill and Perry's, which also counts it as child abuse, is that Perry defines intersex child as a child of ambiguous sex organs under 15 years old, while Toth just uses the regular age limit of 18 in the Texas Family Code, which is an important distinction. There is also House Bill 1399 by State Rep. Matt Krause, a similar ban, and it would include the sex change procedures in the list of prohibited practices for doctors that are punishable by the Texas Medical Board. So instead of punishing these, enforcing these bans by the arm of the state, like, you know, CPS or the state police, the Texas Medical Board, which just controls doctor's licenses, would have the authority to punish and enforce the ban.

Good stuff. We will continue to keep an eye on this. And I know it will not go away anytime soon in terms of legislative discussions. So thanks for covering that for us. Daniel, we're going to come to you another big cornerstone issue of this legislative session involves uh redistricting which then trickles to the census which then trickles to election dates give us the update i don't know if it can necessarily be called a big cornerstone of this session it should have been but that's fair constitutionally it's a cornerstone whether or not it actually will get addressed as it was supposed to be yeah but um if you're not aware the census bureau had uh delayed the release of their numbers you know they're supposed to deliver it to the white house at the end of

december and then they're supposed to deliver the state data on a rolling basis uh for the first few months of the year at least by i think it's either the end of March or the end of April. But Texas usually got the numbers in February. But, you know, citing delays with the pandemic, and then I think they've had some other issues behind the scenes as well. The Census Bureau has pushed back the release of the data, and now it's not expected until late summer, perhaps even the fall. There are some other court cases going on, I think in Alabama, that could, depending on the ruling of the court there, could even delay the data even further. It's just a bit of a mess.

And so the legislature, which is required to, by law, as McKinsey alluded to, pass some redistricting bills and redraw the maps every decade. They can't do that in this regular session of 140 days. They can't do that before they adjourn in May. So what they're trying to do now is take some precautionary steps related to the elections in 2022, because right now under law, those elections would have to occur potentially before there's even maps drawn. And so the timetable for that is really up in the air. So what happened this week, the Senate passed a bill from Senator Joan Huffman, who is the chair of the redistricting committee.

And also the other committee that has something to do with the judiciary, but that's not the name of it. I'm forgetting the name. Regardless. Regardless. Yes. She's a chair in the Senate. She's got some power. Yes. That's this bill that would basically set it up so that the primary elections would be pushed back to a later date, depending on when exactly those maps are redrawn later this year, expected to be later this year.

Yes. Regardless of when that happens, it'll hopefully happen this year is what we're looking at and regardless of the timeline so in terms of new election dates what would this actually do in terms of timeline for folks going to go cast their ballot so right now the primary election uh would be on march 1st if the if the law stays the same and under huffman's bill uh that would stay the same if the redistricting maps are drawn before November 22nd. If they're drawn after November 22nd but before January 3rd, the primary elections will be pushed back to April 5th, and the runoff election date for that would be pushed back from May to June 21st. And then if the redistricting maps still aren't drawn until after January 3rd,

but before February 14th, Valentine's Day, then the primary election will be pushed back until May and the runoff election would be in July. So it pushed back quite a bit. Now, if you remember last year during the pandemic, the runoff election was pushed back. The primary election was still in the same in March, but the runoff election was pushed back. So this isn't unprecedented by any means, but it would kind of push that back. And the other thing that it would do is the filing deadline for candidates or that window for candidates to file for an office would shrink.

So right now, under law, candidates have 30 days to do that. So they have to file in between like November and December. The early part of December is when most candidates file for a position on the ballot. Under this bill, those dates could change and also the window would be shortened to two weeks. So that is probably one of the more notable differences or changes that would be under this law. Yeah, absolutely. And this could, you know, like you, like we've talked about heavily affected candidates too, right? This is something that would, I mean, we're dealing with a whole different window.

We're so accustomed to a primary and a general cycle here in Texas that is, I mean, just as in other states, the same every year. And, you know, we're dealing with a very different potential here for a filing window for candidates. Well, good stuff. Thank you, Daniel. Brad, we're going to come to you. This week, we saw another ERCOT-related skirmish. I don't know if skirmish is the right word. Scare in the news.

You have freak out here in our agenda. But regardless, ERCOT was back in the news this week. What happened? So in early mid-afternoon on, what was this, Tuesday, I think? Yeah, it was Tuesday. The ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, issued an energy conservation alert, just asking people to turn the lights off when you can, turn down the AC, that kind of thing. That in itself happens.

It's not all the time, but it's not infrequent either throughout the course of a year. And so, you know, normally that would be only mildly concerning. But after what happened in February,ary you know all hell broke loose um you know as as the baseball great yogi barra said it's like deja vu all over again oh my god oh lord um well it really was i mean everyone was was concerned that um you know this is going to usher in and uh a new five-day uh calamity basically where people's powers out and that was obviously where everyone's mind went first um but that didn't happen and in the grand scheme of things it was a relatively mild scare but obviously with the surrounding

um you know context it caused it punched above its weight. Yeah, certainly. So what caused these conditions? So every spring, a large portion of the generation fleet undergoes planned maintenance. They go offline, they don't generate, and they're preparing for the summer, which is obviously a very high demand time. It's Texas. It gets hot as heck and everyone's ramping up their ACs.

And so that usually starts to peak on a daily basis. The use starts to peak mid late afternoon into early evening before temperatures drop. And so that is about when this happened. And so you had 32,000 megawatts of generation offline. Now, they couldn't provide data on how much of that was natural gas plants, how much of it was coal, how much of it was was renewable um and so they um overall it was you know roughly 30 percent of the total capacity which is like 107,000 110,000 somewhere in between their uh megawatts of electricity generation and so the as the afternoon went on they expected ercot had forecasted demand to drop

slightly because a cold front uh was expected to come in dropping temperatures which would have created which would have uh caused people to you know turn down their acs because it wasn't as necessary but that cold front got delayed. And so the temperatures didn't drop. They stayed higher. And here in Austin, I was looking at the temperature. It was staying low 80s. And so that caused the margin between capacity and demand to drop, to shrink. And so that's what caused the main stress on the grid.

You know, other factors. ERCOT spokesman, VP of something, planning, he said that solar was underperforming by 3,000 megawatts. And on the media call, he flat out stated, if that wasn't the case, then we wouldn't be having this call right now. And so that was one aspect. Wind was also, at various points in the day, generating at lower than it was expected. And sometimes higher than expected. It kind of varied a bit. But if you look at the graph, it dropped dramatically from midnight that day. It was generating 17,000, 18,000 megawatts, which is a substantial portion of its total capacity in Texas. And it dropped down to like 5,000 at the time when conditions really, really were stressed. And so that is absolutely an aspect of this.

Now, another aspect of it is, you know, the planning of these plant maintenances by ERCOT. However, these are planned out months in advance. So even before the ERCOT or the February blackout situation happened, at least some of these plant maintenances were set. And so also you have to perform these maintenances in order to get ready for the summer. You don't want things going out of commission in the dead of August when it's breaching 105 degrees. And so it was kind of a perfect storm of just things happening yeah that both you could kind of plan for but also that you couldn't and like they can't control the weather it is what it

is and so um overall though this was nothing nothing happened we never entered in energy emergency alert which would have triggered some other ways that they can pull in generation. They just were in a conservation mode. But obviously, with the surrounding context and the political implications here, it got blown out of proportion and people were understandably scared about what was going to happen. But in the grand scheme of things, we weren't really that close to anything even close to happening like it did in February. Yeah. Was this alarm necessary? Not really. I would say that it's important to monitor these situations.

And an event like February causes people to watch it more and learn more about the process, which is good. But it also, you know, there's a lot of underlying context that the average person has no idea about. You know, I study this for my job, and I don't even know all the intricacies of it. It's such a convoluted, in- topic and so an industry so overall no it wasn't wasn't necessary but uh it happened and that's where we are got it well good stuff thanks for covering that for us back to your old ercot beat um it feels nostalgic at this point daniel the let's talk federal news for a second a congressman is retiring and uh it kind of came as quite the shock here. Why is he doing it now?

And who are we talking about? I believe the person that you're referring to is Kevin Brady, Representative Kevin Brady. Yeah, I think you're right. Now, you could be referring to Representative Philemon Vela, but that happened a few weeks ago. It's not quite as timely. I'm guessing you're referring to Brady. Correct. He is a Republican representative.

He is the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. He has been in that position for a few years now. And under GOP rules, which the Democrats do not have, but the GOP House members do have this rule, the term limits members in those top committee positions, whether it's the chair or the ranking member, depending on who's in chair or the ranking member, depending on who's in control of the house, it limits members to those positions for a limit of three terms. Now, notably, that limit was mended in 2019, I believe, in a way that would directly benefit Brady. And I think, I don't know if that's specifically why they did it, but it was definitely a part of the reason, uh, so that a half term does not count

towards that three term limit, uh, because he came in halfway through, uh, after representative, uh, Paul Ryan was elected to be the speaker of the house. Uh, that's when he moved up to ways and means. Um, so Kevin Brady will be retiring at the end of his term. He gave a speech in the Woodlands, kind of expressing optimism about the future. And yeah, that's the news. Now, Daniel, I have a very important question for you. Oh, yeah? Is this a sign of an exodus of Republicans who are terrified of the potential ramifications of 2022?

You know, that is an excellent question. Thank you. That's what everybody was crying last election cycle when we had, I think there were about six Republicans who retired. Half of those were in very Republican seats. The other half were under similar situations now where they were having – they were meeting that term limit in those committee chair positions. And interestingly enough – And almost all of them were just aging. They'd been in there for a while. Yes.

They had been in there a long time. I think some of them might have had some health problems. Different reasons. The exception to that was Will Hurd yeah but yeah um and everybody looked at that and they're like oh they're all running these are kind of competitive seats and to be fair like some of them were competitive that's where the the ones that everybody was watching in the election all of them stayed republican even the one that was expected to turn blue i think that one stayed more republican than it was expected to.

Which, to be fair, Daniel is the only one who predicted that last election cycle as well. I will give him a shout out because the rest of us thought Democrats were going to make the gains, or at least some gains that did not end up happening. I even thought that that one seat that was on the border, Texas 23, it was pretty competitive. I wasn't so sure on that, but it stayed Republican. And at a higher margin. Yes, at a higher margin than the other two, which was really interesting. So Kevin Brady's seat is north of the Houston area. It covers the big population centers in the woodlands of Montgomery County. That part of the state. There's a few other counties in there, more rural

north of Harris County. Dips into Harris County a little bit. Now, it's not competitive at all. Republicans usually win by about a 50% margin there. Like 50% ahead of the democrat opponents so um it's it's not competitive at all now how that might change in redistricting i'm sure that that will change some they might give uh some of that district over to uh representative michael mccall's district to try and shore up Republican support there. That wouldn't be surprising. But we'll see how it changes.

But that area is definitely not at risk of turning blue. Yeah, good stuff. Well, Daniel, thanks for covering that for us. Brad, we're going to come to you. We're going to get into the weeds for a couple of segments here and talk some property taxes. Oh, boy. There was a proposal this week that dealt specifically with the largest portion of how property taxes are collected here in Texas. Oh, boy. rightly want their funding and folks want lower property taxes. So it's a constant tug. But a new proposal would substantially constrain those.

So tell us about that. So school districts account for the largest share of property taxes collected in Texas. And it is the primary way that they obtain their funding. And so within the property tax rates, and this goes for localities as well, not just school districts, but they have two components. They have the maintenance and operations, which pays for exactly that.

Maintenance and operations, things like salaries, things like supplies that they need, various day-to-day expenses. And then you have the interest in sinking rate, which finances construction projects, whether it's new schools, school renovations, athletic facilities, all this kind of stuff. So those two components make up what you pay in your tax bill. And the largest share of that is the M&O rate. And so if you look at the rate

of your respective school district itself, the vast majority of the overall rate, let's say it's 1.71 cents per $100 valuation, most of that is going to go towards the M&O rate. And so a new bill by Representative Andrew Murr, it attempts to eliminate that entirely, just the M&O section. So if he gets his way, they would still be able to issue the INS rate. But that would substantially constrict the the amount paid by taxpayers and so um he does in his bill he does allow them to issue this alternative specifically very limited uh replacement tax for like enrichment stuff um that that's a broad

category it can you know probably apply to expansion of curriculum, that kind of thing. But overall, it's capped at far lower than what most maintenance and operations rates go for these days. And so the question is, what do you replace it with? Now, I wrote a piece, maybe that was last week or the week before, Representative James White wants to replace all of property taxes with a VAT tax, a value-added tax. This does not do that. It doesn't even have an alternative set. It basically tasks a commission to decide and recommend what the legislature should replace it with, whether it's, you know, a strict added sales tax, whether it's VAT, whether it's, you know,

various other methods. It wouldn't be income tax because, you know, Texas has a prohibition on that constitutionally. But, you know, that was one of the criticisms that what are we going to replace this with? And it had a massive fiscal note, like 60, say $60 billion, something like that, which alarmed a lot of people. But that was because there was no alternate route for the school districts to make up that funding. And so Merr's position is that the only way we're going to move away from property taxes here, specifically in this, you know, the M&O rate here in this instance, is by backing the legislature into a corner and

saying, you have to do this. Otherwise, you know, there's going to, that $60 billion deficit is going to, you know, fall on the shoulders of the school districts. And his position is that otherwise, you know, they may diddle-daddle around discussions about these things, but they'll never reach a resolution. And so that's his position. I'm not sure how much of a chance this has. I think with Murr carrying it, it has more than otherwise would. You know, if it was one of the,

the, the farther right representatives carrying it. But yeah, we'll see where it goes. One of the big opponents was Trey Martinez Fisher, Democrat out of San Antonio. And, you know, he was explicitly concerned about the lack of alternative,

but also that if we go towards more of a consumption tax, it's more burdensome on lower income people because they consume as well. And so whereas you have with a property tax, at least on its face, it's more on the shoulders of property owners, which are typically more wealthy people, although not wealthy by any stretch of the means in every case. And however, you know, renters still pay property taxes through their rent. And so it touches everybody. You know, property taxes, obviously, for important reasons, a talked about issue.

And Mer's attempt is to build upon the reforms of last session. And this would, I guess it depends on what they would replace it with. This would provide actual relief, probably. And, you know, I suppose it's possible they replace it with a sales tax that has an even higher burden on it, but on taxpayers, but overall, I mean, eliminating the largest portion, the largest contributor to the largest portion of property taxes collected would be a big reform. Absolutely. So let's stick on this topic. So another provision in the tax code is used to attract businesses to school districts essentially by offering property tax breaks, right? Tell us more about that and about a bill that's being offered that would address this.

Yeah. So chapter 313 in the tax code, it allows school districts to provide abatements, essentially a percentage knockoff of whatever their property is valued at. So, you know, it could be a 10% break. If your property as a business is worth, you know, a million dollars,

which usually there were far more than that, but you know, you would lose, you wouldn't have to pay taxes on 10% of that. And, you know, it would lose, you wouldn't have to pay taxes on 10% of that. And, you know, it varies based on instance. But that is viewed as a way to attract jobs to the district. research and development, clean coal projects, nuclear and renewable electricity generation and computer data centers, as well as anything that has the promises to bring in $1 billion of capital investment or more, which is a lot of money.

Most places don't fit that. But it has become a much talked about issue because, you know, it's opponents say it's corporate welfare and, you know, you's opponents say it's corporate welfare and, um, you know, you're just basically greasing the palms of these companies to come, um, and create a small amount of jobs. For example, you know, in, in non-rural districts, they're only required to create 25 jobs. Um, while in rural districts, you're only required to create 10. Now, most of these places that take advantage of this, of the, the offer, they create more than that, a lot more. But it's, you know, on balance, some years they have, most years they have collectively created more jobs than they promised and they committed to.

And one year specifically, they did not in the 10 years that the comptroller had tracked but overall you know there's 15.5 billion dollars in abatement value currently active and of that 50 percent belongs to renewable energy companies which adds to the the whole energy debate going on right now especially with what happened in february so's the program. That's the line in tax code. Now as for the bill, it would eliminate completely and strike it entirely from the tax code. Representative Jeff Kasin introduced the bill and he said of it, because the taxpayer has been required to make up for lost revenue and the corporate welfare created by Chapter 313 has created little in actual job growth, the overall benefit to the state has been a net negative and so he's

obviously very much opposed to this um you know that the bill itself is um it's a swing for the fence i mean it's it's it's a substantial reform to the the property tax law. So that's where it's at. And it has not been assigned for a committee hearing yet. So maybe dead in the water, but we'll see. Hey, we'll have to see what happens. You know, stranger things have happened. Yeah. But this would be a pretty strange thing. Yes.

All that to say, Brad, thanks for covering that. Daniel, let's talk about Cruz, Ted Cruz and his his um you know he's kind of going down the the the trust busting route this week yes that's the angle we're looking at here talk to us about major league baseball and ted cruz it wasn't exactly an angle that i had expected but i'm not quite as sporty as brad um so i didn't like i don't really know a whole lot. It's the first time I've ever been called sporty. Pretty sporty. I mean, knowledgeable about sports for sure. Especially the MLB and baseball and, you know, how the whole business side of that works. Apparently under federal code, the Major League Baseball enjoys some antitrust protections that other major sports leagues like the NFL, the NBA do not enjoy.

Apparently, this is what allows them to have the limit on wages for players or salaries, the salary cap. And some other things that I'm not going to go into because I'll probably get it wrong. The bill requires them to have a salary cap. No, no. The, the protections that they have,

the antitrust protections allow them to have that salary cap in place or to keep that salary cap. Um, from my understanding now, they don't have a baseball. It doesn't have a salary cap. Or maybe it was the other way around then. Okay.

I don't know. Um, regardless, the antitrust or the trust provisions allow the status quo to stay in place yes and this bill wants to eliminate that it wants to eliminate it make it a level playing field uh for all sports leagues little playing field yeah daniel well done how am i all of a sudden praising your puns what alternate universe have we stepped into we we've been working on it for a year now. It's making some good improvement. You've worn me down.

So yeah, the bill is basically striking down those antitrust protections that the MLB enjoys. Yeah. It's obviously a reaction to recent events. Yeah, it is. The current circumstances surrounding the MLB, I was just scrolling through Twitter right now, and I noticed that Axios just released a report that the MLB's net favorability rating among Republicans was 47% in mid-March. Now that has plummeted to 12% below the NFL and the NHL to now be the, I guess, one of the lowest of all the sports leagues. Yeah.

When I was writing the piece on Greg Abbott's decision not to throw out the first pitch with the Texas Rangers, I was looking into the partisan breakdown of sports league fanhood fandoms and so uh mlb had the most parody um of you know between republicans democrats compared with the nba which was very heavily democrat um nfl which was more substantially democrat than the uh the mlb but um and so you while, at least according to this report, Republicans didn't amount to a majority of the fans, still a substantial amount, and it's obviously turning people off.

Yes. And that has to do with all this, the election legislation, the election integrity legislation that Republicans are pushing across the country. There's been a lot of corporate pushback from big CEOs, from American airlines,

from Coca-Cola and the MLB. Also I think they, whatever they pulled out of Georgia, the all-star game. Yeah. Yeah. That thing, the thing where they where they throw the ball

I don't know That's their entire product Yeah Oh man So this legislation is coming from Senator Ted Cruz You have some other pretty big name senators on there Josh Hawley and Mike Lee

You also have a corresponding House bill that was filed by Representative Jeff Duncan from South Carolina and Texas Representative Chip Roy has also helped sign on to that. This is largely coinciding with a broader effort on the right to get one over to hit back against corporations and their political advocacy. Absolutely. And, you know, we've seen other efforts to try and do this in Texas. We talked about this on the podcast last week or two weeks ago, where Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, you know,

asked if he was going to try and hit back. He said he wasn't going to hit back. But you have Republicans like Ted Cruz who are hitting back in ways that otherwise might be justified like or not justified but might have bipartisan support in other circumstances historically these anti-trust protections have been attacked by people from the left and the right but under the current circumstances, I doubt it's going to go anywhere just because you have a Democratic-controlled Congress.

Yeah. Yeah, I was listening to a podcast this morning and they were discussing, it actually had Dan Crenshaw on it, they were discussing whether this broader corporate reaction is a result of them protecting their bottom line or being staffed with ideologues within the decision-making positions of these corporations.

And I'm sure to some degree it's a mix. But also, obviously, every business is going to protect its bottom line. And whether they're correct about assessing the situation and what that constitutes is another question. But they obviously feel like this is something they need to do. And maybe they're letting a few thousand people on Twitter that are yakking at them to make their decisions for them.

But it's clearly causing a rift in the country, especially in this case with what's supposed to be America's pastime. And they're just, as we saw with the NFL a couple years ago, they're causing a lot of people to just write it off completely and quit baseball. And so, you know, as someone who's a fan of baseball, that is discouraging to see because it already has a generational problem with just the nature of the game. It's slower. And now they're doing this, and we'll see what happens. Yeah. Well, good stuff. to see because it already has a generational problem with just the nature of the game. It's slower.

And now they're doing this and we'll see what happens. Yeah. Well, good stuff, Daniel. Thanks for covering that for us. And Brad, thanks for the color commentary. Always appreciated. Isaiah, we're going to come to you. Let's talk about a homeless ministry in Dallas and some roadblocks that they've run into in terms of, you know, actually operating their ministry.

Give us a timeline of what went down between this ministry called Our Calling and the City of Dallas. Sure. So they're a Dallas-based homeless ministry called Our Calling. And in the winter of 2017, the cold months, they found a homeless man frozen to death outside their gates, which were locked. And so from that point on, they kept a policy to keep their doors open all through the night on these cold nights in Inquilent weather and other instances. So the following year, the following winter in 2018, they actually got a ticket for that from the city of Dallas because it violated some kind of land use code ordinance law that the city had to keep their doors open all night.

So they claim, in part because of their advocacy, Dallas passed a new law in 2020, or a couple of new ordinances that allow them to authorize groups like our calling to be temporary inclement weather shelters, T-A-W-S's. And so basically what this means is that the city can give them permits to operate as shelters only during times of emergency. And the proviso that happens in this law, though, that slipped in in a late amendment is that it creates this buffer zone, which is how the legal counsel framed it. And basically, within a half mile of downtown Dallas, there can be no temporary inclement weather shelters except in the convention center and other like other city-owned facilities so in other words our calling since it isn't a city-owned facility cannot operate because it's within this half mile radius of downtown as an emergency

shelter they say that this is a violation of their religious freedom because they have this faith based policy of keeping their doors open all through the night when it freezes. And so when the February freeze happened, they implemented this policy. And to Dallas's credit, I didn't read anything in the letter that they sent or hear anything from our legal counsel about getting a second ticket. So I don't think Dallas really cracked down on them. But there is nonetheless a law in the books that would enable them to do that. And so no lawsuit is pending yet, but they sent a letter to the city of Dallas asking them to address this issue.

Got it. So what's the city side of the story? Well, the city side of the story is that when they passed this ordinance setting up the buffer zone, it was controversial. This wasn't a unanimous vote. Pro-Tem Mayor Adam Medrano said that the purpose of it was to spread shelters throughout the city. So in his words, he said, we're listening to our constituents. We have enough shelter downtown. We do. This was supposed to spread it throughout the city. And interestingly enough, one Dallas City Councilman, Lee Klanman, actually came to Austin recently to speak against a number of bills. Ooh, excuse me.

One Dallas City Councilman, Lee Klanman, actually came to Austin recently to speak against a number of bills that are meant to keep churches and other faith-based organizations open during times of disaster like the pandemic. And it was interesting. He was the only city representative or government representative to show up. And we wrote about this recently, probably talked about it on the podcast. Kleinman from Dallas was the only one to show up and oppose these bills meant to keep them open in disasters. But when Dallas voted on this ordinance, he was actually a very vocal opponent to the buffer zone that's now keeping this faith-based organization, Our Calling, from operating as an emergency shelter during times of disasters downtown. Very good stuff. Well, thank you for covering that for us, Isaiah. We're going to stick in Dallas here for a second. Hayden, let's talk about, it's very actually interesting. We just talked about this exact seat in the previous segment, but walk us through a little bit of what's happening up there with an open seat in a race for a Dallas City Council spot. There are term limits on Dallas City Council seats and the District 11 incumbent, Lee Kleinman, is not eligible this cycle to run

for reelection. So his is an open seat. And I spoke with a couple of the candidates last week, and one of those candidates, Barry Wernick, promised that he would fight any effort to defund the police. And he is focusing his campaign on public safety. He spoke to the current leadership and said that due to messaging from current members of the council, there is not a unified message of support for the Dallas Police Department needs is the support of the people. And I think at a time when public sentiment seems to be against the police, we need to change that around and show the police how much we, the people of Dallas, support the police and need the police. So he's focusing his campaign on making sure that there is morale in the police department and that they have what they need. Mr. Wernick is a film producer and an attorney. And I had a chance to look at a case that he worked on. It was actually his wife's sister who unfortunately passed away. She was she was murdered. And he opened his own investigation,

as I understand it into his wife's deceased sister's death and filmed a full-blown documentary on her death. And he is running his campaign on public safety. So he has sort of centered his career on this issue in many ways. But he's the only candidate in the race who is endorsed by the Dallas Police Association. But he's not the only candidate who is supporting public safety. Good stuff. So in terms of, you know, other candidates in the race, give us a little bit more background on who they are and what issues that they're, you know, touting specifically. Well, I also spoke to Candy Evans, who is one of his opponents. And though she is not endorsed by the Dallas Police Association, she also prioritizes the

police. And she told me that she would not have voted for the $7 million cut to the Dallas Police Department's overtime budget. And for those who don't know, after the summertime race protests last year in Dallas and elsewhere across the country, the city council chose to cut 25% of the police department's overtime funding for the current fiscal year. And that caused a great deal of controversy in Dallas and is they're now facing criticism for that decision.

In fact, in another race, Paula Blackman is coming under fire from her opponent, one of her opponents for her choice to cut funding. Lee Kleinman actually did not, he did not vote for the budget and he did not vote for the he voted did not vote for an effort to restore that seven million dollars i got my votes confused but he he did not vote for the budget because he didn't feel like the reforms went far enough the police reforms went far enough and he also supported cutting that overtime funding. And Mr. Wernick criticized current leadership for repeating slogans like no justice, no peace, and for not standing with the police department. The other candidates in the race have views on police, they've stated publicly that are more focused on infrastructure. The other

candidates have stated that they want more, or at least one other candidates, Schultz, she said she wanted more street lighting, and that that would support or that that would be conducive to public safety. And the other two candidates are Janie Schultz and Hosanna Yamaru. They are vying for District 11 on the Dallas City Council. I like it. Well, Hayden, thank you for covering that for us. Always interesting to know what's happening up in the up in the great north of this state. The great north, the great north, the vast expanse of North Texas of the Metroplex. Wonderful. Well, good stuff, team. I want to talk to you today as we transition to our fun topic.

The April 15th tax day, a delightful day in and of itself as we continue to dole out money to pay for just our citizenry here in the country and the state. But it also is the day that our founder and CEO was born. And so I figured, hey, let's talk about Connie Burton. Let's tell our favorite Connie Burton story. I have a hard time thinking about even what I can share here. But I think honoring her today would be a fun topic. So, Connie Burton, people. First of all, for the fact that Connie Burton was born on Tax Day,

I think is one of the biggest trolls of all time. I think it's a fantastic, just, it's perfect. It's absolutely perfect. I can't think of a better day. No, I really can't.

It was, it was God's gift to mankind that Connie Burton was born on tax day. Um, but yeah, let's, let's talk about KB. What, when she walks into the office,

do you see her first or do you hear her first? You hear her. Yeah. What do you hear, Daniel? I usually, since Sarah and Michelle were sitting in the office and we're used to sitting in the front, it would usually be laughter. Yeah. Some form of laughter. Yes.

Do you ever hear this hello like that oh yes yeah yeah now that you say that rings a bell in her in her funny voice yeah and she never heard this you've never heard her say hello i don't think i've heard her make a funny voice you've never have i mean i've heard her normal voice oh it's kind of funny i feel like you just need to i feel like you just need to pay closer attention. Oh. Because one of the things she does, I think, most often is make funny voices. Like, all the time.

Hayden, have you heard it? I'm not sure if I've heard any of her funny voices. What? I maybe have not spent enough time around her in person to have heard one of her funny voices. Yeah. She's quiet. I will say last time she came in the office, she,

um, was kind enough. She stopped in West Texas and, um, got some kolaches. She got some kolaches, but what she said, um,

here's some kolaches if y'all want them. And I got really excited and, I opened the box and i did not know that what was in that box could be referred to as kolaches they were diplomatic i thought i to me they were more like jelly donuts i thought that's what they were uh because to me a kolache is like a pig in a blanket style yes with and sometimes a cheese and jalapeno that's what i think of when i think of kolache. So I learned something new that day.

I did not know that. And they weren't jelly donuts, but they were like, they were, they were similar to them. Yeah. Cream cheese, cream cheese,

kolache. So I expanded my, yeah, my definition of kolache that day. Wow. Look at this. Connie's teaching us all the things about Texas. Um, although there is, there is there is some you know uh discrepancy on what actually constitutes a kolache but regardless

some some debate i i would say that there are sweet kolaches like what she brought then there's the savory kolaches which is what hayden was referring to the one with sausage um but that has been disputed here by some people. Yeah. But I'm on the side of Connie, so therefore I'm right. I like it. Well, as this office's resident dang Yankee, I have absolutely no idea what the hell a kolache is.

I've been here for two years and I still don't know. Y'all don't have Czechoslovakians up in Ohio or the rest of the world? No, we have a lot of Polacks. I see. Yeah. Of which I am one. A similar language with lots of Cs in it. Yes.

Yes. So I have nothing to offer on this kolache debate. I just wanted to say that. I like it. I'm Switzerland. I like it. But Connie, I feel like you probably have some good... One of the things I love seeing Connie do is we go to the ranch and they have us out

there and spend some time with them ranch Connie is an entirely different Connie right she's got her boots on she's got a camo jacket she's out there she's got a tractor she's driving a tractor just for fun yeah they've got a tractor for fun yeah well mowing the grass

Connie will just be out there in her tractor I think it's one of Phil's favorite things is when Connie drives the tractor but i love that version of okay um i mean there's a running joke in the office that connie and i are the same person because of get off your lawn we get irritated by the exact same stuff yeah um i cannot confirm nor deny that. Although we have been seeing the same room at the same time. Yeah. So I don't know how that works, but yeah,

there's gotta be some, some kind of illusions. Yeah. Yeah. So magic or something. Um, that might be my favorite thing about Connie is just, we're on the same level with what pisses us off.

And you know, we're, we're both in spirits, angry old people and And you know We're We're both In spirit Angry old people And you know Get off my Like you said Get off my lawn

In spirit and in truth Well this reminds me Of another important Anniversary Of you know Of Brad Starting at the Texan Oh yeah

That's right Today's two years to the day Yeah I don't know why That was just brushed over Yeah Man who's It's cause Mac knows

Knows who pays her Oh oh she can make and break brads all day long oh my gosh unreal that's true though brad is our our long-standing reporter here at the texans this is two-year anniversary so happy two years brad oh thank you yeah thanks for being here a long ride thanks yeah it's been fun it has been quite a ride throwing a wrench into the entire main uh meat legacy outlet you know environment right quite a time yes yes uh no sparks or fireworks whatsoever going on at all um well gentlemen thanks for thanks for uh all your work thanks for humoring me folks thanks for listening we'll catch you next week thank you all so much for listening if you've catch you next week. age of disinformation. We're paid for exclusively by readers like you, so it's important we all do our part to support the Texan by subscribing and telling your friends about us. God bless you,

and God bless Texas. you