It’s become a Texas tradition for lawmakers to try to take a wrecking ball to municipal finances.
Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, has filed a bill that would be a wrecking ball to municipal finances.One front-runner in the long list of the 88th Texas Legislature’s bad ideas is a proposal that would decimate San Antonio’s budget.
If this bill were to pass, and we are skeptical it will, the city would have to significantly cut basic services. The bill’s author, Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, said, “It’s not a ban on transfers. This is certainly an area that a lot of municipalities get great benefit from. I just don’t want excessive transfers. That’s the genesis of this bill — an inappropriate transfer that overly burdens utility ratepayers, by enterprising city councils that want to utilize the utility as, basically, a piggy bank to fund whatever they want in their general fund as a city.
Schwertner, an orthopedic surgeon, tried to make the case that some city councils are using utility transfers to boost city coffers, but he offered little evidence and no witnesses testified to such problems at a March 21 hearing.Utilities can request rate increases and city councils can deliberate and vote on them. San Antonio’s City Council last approved a 3.85 percent rate increase in January 2022.
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