Great meeting today (TUE, 04 SEP 2018) with Rep. Drew Springer’s Chief of Staff, Jonathan Mathers on our bill to Eliminate Property Tax.
Jonathan Mathers invited us, saying, “I would love to sit down with you some afternoon in the coming weeks to discuss this issue and your bill.”
He’d responded to an email I’d sent Texas Legislators soliciting them to discuss a past bill (HR3742) to Eliminate Property Tax. Rick Cunningham, the author of that bill, attended our meeting. That was unbelievably fortunate. I thought this was going to be a cursory discussion. I was wrong. It was not.
Jonathan was not like any Chief of Staff I’d met before. He’s a Ph.D. and Government Professor teaching at the University of Texas and Austin Community College. He’s also Drew Springer’s Chief Policy Advisor. They are seriously searching for a solution and we said we had one.
We came prepared with a presentation, but let Jonathan lead instead by opening with questions. Rick Cunningham graduated as an Economist from Texas A&M and acquired his Doctorate in Jurisprudence from the University of Chicago Law. Thee decades later, he’s really at the top of his game. I thought his responses and the way he explained the plan was brilliant.
Rick and Jonathan talked for almost two hours.
Jonathan opened with questions, asking us to explain the approach we’d proposed. The meeting proceeded to range from identifying problems and explaining solutions to the challenges of implementation and some collaborative problem-solving. In the end, it was Jonathan calling out our next steps and how we would get there. I couldn’t believe it.
Jonathan ended by saying he’d recommend a meeting with Rep. Springer.
This is a solid two-base hit for us. First, we have someone seriously interested in eliminating property tax who really understands it as a liberty issue. Second, Rep. Springer is a member of the House Ways & Means Committee. It was one of my priorities to find someone on that committee interested in sponsoring our bill. That would make it much more likely to get a hearing and proceed to our next steps.
Even so, we don’t expect to see our bill going forward this next session.
When Jonathan begin identifying next steps, he proposed what we expected, a feasibility study by the Legislative Budget Board (LBB) and the Comptroller’s Office. This would be proposed in the next session. It would follow during the interim. If so, the earliest our bill could be introduced would be the session after that.
But it all depends. Can we make it to third base and meet with Rep. Springer? If so, that outcome could be our home run.
No Relief. No Reform. #EliminatePropertyTax