By Robert Montoya, includes “School district debts in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio are alarmingly high at more than $7 billion. When you add these to the cities’ debts and other underlying governments, the combined debt each taxpayer must pay is $69,600. Change will only come when ‘citizen advocates’ get involved.”
By Robert Montoya, includes “Q. Truth in Accounting found Fort Worth to be a sinkhole city, meaning it would need $9,400 more per taxpayer to pay all of its debts. They found most of the problems stem from growing unfunded retirement obligations. ”
Testimony to Texas House Appropriations Committee by Steven Gassenberger and Leonard Gilroy, includes “… In short, the state is structurally underfunding a retirement plan designed to address the needs of a small cohort of public employees. ”
By Bethany Blankley, includes “Eight of Texas’ largest cities are in the red, and one – Plano – ranks ninth-best for its financial health, according to a recent study. In its fifth annual Financial State of the Cities report, the Chicago-based nonprofit Truth in Accounting analyzed fiscal year 2019 annual financial reports of the 75 largest cities in the U.S.”
By Robert Montoya, includes “… Truth in Accounting found all 75 cities have balanced budget requirements, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have balanced budgets… It goes on to list ‘accounting tricks’ used to give the appearance a budget is balanced, such as ‘inflating revenue assumptions, counting borrowed money as income, understating the true costs of government, and delaying the payment of current bills until the start of the next fiscal year so they aren’t included in the calculations.’ …”
Despite “historic declines,” state lawmakers will have more money to work with in the upcoming legislative session than Comptroller Glenn Hegar expected over the summer, he said Monday. But Hegar did not outline specifics as state coffers continue to suffer from the economic recession spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.
When public corruption by government officials is alleged, everyone typically rushes to partisan corners in defense of their allies and to chastise opponents.
In fiscal year 2019, the principal amount owed by cities, counties, school districts, and special districts totaled $240 billion. That’s enough government debt to send a $8,220 bill to every man, woman, and child in Texas or saddle a family of four with $32,880.
The 2020 Financial State of the States report surveys the fiscal health of the 50 states prior to the coronavirus pandemic. This data is released today by Truth in Accounting (TIA), a think tank that analyzes government financial reporting.
San Marcos’ total debt equals $4,994 for every man, woman, and child who lives in San Marcos as of August 2018 and not one resident spoke at the first public hearing for the upcoming budget.
Everything is bigger in Texas—including the supersized salaries of its city managers, school superintendents, state staffers, and other public servants.
It will be a miracle if Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar and his team of financial prognosticators are right about the arc of the state’s economy over the next few months.
On July 2nd, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order mandating the wearing of face masks across the state, whether indoors or outdoors, when six feet cannot be maintained between people. In the governor’s decree, he cited a rise in Covid cases, a rise in test positivity, and a rise in hospitalizations as justification to force people to cover their faces in public.
How large could the shortfall in state government general revenues be, amidst the coronavirus and related crises?
In her long and futile search for why she lost the 2016 election, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did manage to find some solace in the areas she carried against President Donald Trump.
Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday ordered Texas state agencies, public universities and other top officials to come up with ways to cut their budgets by 5% in the current biennium.
When Kathy Whitmire ran for Houston mayor in 1981, helicopters were among the top sources of municipal strife. Residents of the Memorial neighborhood were irate over the daily noise of west Houston businesspeople who opted to fly over the gridlocked freeways for their morning commutes.
It is not surprising an Illinois politician finally put in writing what economists and financial watchdogs have been warning for years: That elected officials who failed to take seriously decades of fiscal warning bells in this state eventually would seek a bailout from the federal government.
Early in every economic crisis, the people in charge turn to their financial folks to ask whether things are as bad as they seem. Answering a question like that is tricky business.
Are you a socialist if you don’t want families to get blown up in gas well explosions? Is it socialism to try to get your city to live within its means?