January 18, 2017      5:29 PM

Pauken: Here's to a productive legislative session

Former RPT Chairman Tom Pauken says fixing school finance, real property tax reform, and more should be accomplished during the 85th session

Lawmakers have convened in Austin and it’s time for them to get serious about doing the business of this state. One of the frustrations of the American people, which led to Donald Trump’s election, is that politicians are always talking about they are going to change things but nothing much gets done when they are in office.

Here are my thoughts on how to have a productive legislative session in 2017.

l. FIX SCHOOL FINANCE.

School finance in Texas has been broken for a long time. Ever since the passage of the “Robin Hood” school finance scheme in the early 1990s’ (where the state takes property taxes from the so-called property rich school districts and redistribute those monies to the property-poor districts), educational finance has been in a mess.

What started out as a $400 million transfer has morphed into a $1 billion shift of property taxes from some school districts to others. 

The complete column by Tom Pauken can be found in the R&D Department.

By Tom Pauken

Copyright January 18, 2017, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved