There have been a number of interesting issues that have flared up recently in local politics, most intriguingly the recent update to the City of Houston vehicle for hire ordinance, that I would like to write about. However, in the interest of trying to get something out (and wanting to devote time to write at greater length on some topics), I decided to post something short and sweet — about proposals for bond reform in Texas.
Briefly, Houstonians were greeted this week with the news that two local government school districts, Katy Independent School District and the Lone Star College system, are both likely to put up bond referendums on the ballot this autumn. These bond referendums come just several months after both districts held bond elections in November 2013, both of which failed. In the case of the Lone Star College system, it was a $500 million bond issue for a variety of things, while the Katy ISD bond election centered around a $70 million stadium, which some considered to be nothing more than just another temple to the sports gods.
I wrote several months ago about the democracy/consent problem surrounding the Cy-Fair ISD bond election held last May, whose outcome turned out to be that only 9,000 people succeeded politically in committing hundreds of thousands of residents to paying for over $1.2 billion in borrowing, and imposing a tax hike on the rest of the populace. What these events suggest are a need for some bond election reform proposals to keep the political classes and plundering wolves at bay:
1) A mandatory cooling off period after every bond election. If a governmental entity calls for a bond election, forcing the hapless citizenry to trudge down to the polls to vote on their latest schemes, but then fails to get the result it wants (i.e. the bond election fails), then there should a waiting period — perhaps four to six years — during which a governmental entity is not allowed to call for another bond election. This would prevent angered interest groups and government officials from turning right back around and calling for yet another bond election, demanding that the hapless peasants vote over and over again on a bond issue until they vote the right way. Don’t worry! The sky is not going to fall and the plundering classes are just going to have to make do if the bond election fails.
2) A voter quorum imposed on all bond elections, as I discussed this past May, where perhaps one in three voters must show up at an election, or else the bond election automatically fails. This would prevent sneak-attack elections, like the Cy-Fair ISD bond election from last May from happening, in which small numbers of residents succeed in using democracy to impose tax hikes and commit the rest of the populace to massive debt and borrowing obligations.
An alternate proposal to a mandatory voter quorum would be to require all bond elections to be held in November of even-numbered years, which would coincide with general elections for the Texas Legislature and U.S. Congress. It is likely that bond proposals would get greater scrutiny under such circumstances.
And…
3) Itemizing bond proposals. This would be a requirement that officials would not be allowed to wrap numerous elements and items into one big bond proposal, forcing the hapless voters to vote up or down on the entire bond package. Instead, bond issues would be required to be broken down into items, allowing voters to vote on each item of the bond issue. School districts are the most frequent abusers of packaging multiple items into bond issues, for example, including building reconstruction along with millions for laptop computers, security cameras, sports stadiums, all into one big bond issue. What this does is to wrap what might be considered needed along with the extras and the goodies. I should say that some entities already do break down bond issues into line items. The City of Houston, for instance, breaks down its bond election into line items. For instance, during the November 2012 election, Mayor Annise Parker and City Council placed $410 million in bond issues on the ballot, with one item in the bond package for parks, another for libraries, another for fire stations, and so forth. All of the items, though they were separate, passed handily.
None of this would be easy to get passed. Even proposing these reforms would set off a firestorm amongst the political classes and the finance boys in this state. But, it just might be a step in the right direction to a less indebted Texas, and more honest government.
Let’s also not forget that former fiscal conservative Ed Emmett is still trying to figure out how to waste taxpayer money on an Astrodome redevelopment boondoggle, despite voters rather pointedly telling the boondoggle advocates “No!” on their most recent quarter-billion (!) dollar proposal.
http://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/news/will-voters-be-asked-to-vote-on-astrodome-once-more/
http://www.bloghouston.com/blog/2014/07/26/former-fiscal-conservative-ed-emmett-doesnt-like-astrodome-demo-proposal-may-push-another-bond-vote/
Mostly bad ideas. Voters get what they deserve if they don’t vote, so I have no sympathy for the whiners that complain about a bond passing with just a few voters. And, the fact is that districts like Cy-Fair and Katy need to have bond elections on a regular basis to fund construction of facilities to cope with growth as more people move in to the area. I do like the idea of listing the uses in detail. I think HISD did that for the last election as well.
Emmett is between a rock and a hard place. If he goes for demolition, there are a huge number of noisy people who will excoriate him from the roof tops for destroying history. If he pushes some sort of reuse, he gets beat up by the other half of the population that want to quit wasting money on a derelict building. I personally think that the Rodeo and the Texans ought to have to pay to tear the thing down. They both make enough money slurping at the subsidized trough to cover the cost.
Though I understand Ross’s comments about what people deserve, we must also remember that voting for a bond issue in May is not convenient for everyone, especially the working poor, which LSCS has plenty of in the south (North Harris) areas. Further, the public relations/marketing for LSCS’s bond in 2013 specifically omitted information for the Spanish-speaking *citizens* of the area, thereby making the flyers sent to their mailbox useless. Students themselves were kept in the dark about the bond and most knew nothing about the election until it was after. This isn’t entirely their fault, because again the marketing was directed towards older voters and not younger voting citizens. There was minimal education available to students on campus *** during their own hours *** (LSCS students are largely working class. They’re either IN a classroom, or they’re on their way to their jobs. They don’t have time for a bureaucrat to give them a sales pitch) and so the very citizens who could have passed the 2013 bond measure were left out of the conversation.
The argument for a quorum equally makes sense, especially in a May election. We know precisely what demographics (class, age, ethnicity) show up for May elections and which ones don’t. If a legislature must have a quorum to vote on fiscal issues, then so should the common electorate. If — as you rightly argue, Ross — the citizens don’t care, then let the bond fail and then maybe they’ll care enough later. But an absent vote is not the same as a real vote.
The vast majority of the CyFair ISD bond scheme was for short-lived items. The new schools only amounted to under 1/3 the total. It is an outrage that they squandered hundreds of millions for wifi related toys.