VROOOM! Taxpayers don’t need to be subsidizing Formula 1.
By Jon Cassidy | Watchdog.org
Gov. Rick Perry has until Sunday to decide which line items in the budget he might want to veto. We’re offering suggestions.
As a general rule, any government body with the word commission in its name could probably get the axe and not be missed. Here are two commissions and a fund that really deserve to get chopped.
The Comptroller’s Major Events Fund
In November, Comptroller Susan Combs wrote a $29.3 million check to the group that staged a Formula One race in Austin.
Apparently, the group is going to be getting a check like that every year.
All sorts of sports organizers are eligible for the subsidy. I totaled up the checks that have been cut over the last two years and got $211,674,135.07.
I don’t know if there’s any way to stop this with budget vetoes, although I sort of doubt it since the comptroller collects taxes and puts cash straight into a trust fund, but if there is, Perry should do it.
Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, sponsored a bill to rein in and study the program, which is an improvement over the status quo. It’s now on Perry’s desk. Just killing the fund would be better, though.
The Commission on the Arts and the Historical Commission
Killing this one would save $9.6 million, according to the Lone Star Foundation, which argues that “(p)romoting the arts is an improper function for government to be performing with any amount of taxpayer funding…This agency should be converted totally to a 501(c)(3) entity that accepts private donations where donors receive the charitable deduction for their donations on their state and federal tax returns.”
We’d add an aesthetic argument. Art flourishes under oppression. It’s questionable whether government-funded art even deserves the name. Make it hard, and the ones who will make it are the ones who couldn’t possibly do anything else.
The Texas Transportation Commission
As with the Comptroller’s major events fund, the way to take this body apart isn’t really through the veto process.
The Department of Transportation needs a strong leader to set its direction, not a five-member commission that acts, my colleague Mark Lisheron found, as “as a conduit for outside political pressure on the department.”
“The Texas Department of Transportation can replace top management night and day and never become a transforming agent for transportation in Texas unless it is able to withstand tremendous internal and external political pressures,” said Howard Wolf, chairman of the council to reform the agency.
In an interview with Texas Watchdog, Wolf stressed that without paying for and installing an outside management firm to direct change from within, even a strong new management team at the top could falter in what is a deeply entrenched agency employing 11,000 people statewide and operating with a budget of $9 billion a year.
Wolf’s point about outside management is a diplomatic indictment of the commission, which is appointed by the governor with approval by the Senate. The reason Wolf couldn’t very well criticize the commission is that it was the commission who hired him.
So, how about crossing out the funding for these positions and see if anybody still wants to fill them?
We’ll offer a few more recommendations tomorrow, presuming Perry doesn’t sign the budget before then.
Contact Jon Cassidy at jon@watchdog.org or @jpcassidy000.
<!–
–>