Thermometers Burst as CTI Raises Temp of Fight Over Corporate Tax Breaks
Last summer, Central Texas Interfaith/Texas IAF leaders and nonprofit allies shut down Chapter 313 (a state tax exemption program giving away hundreds of millions of dollars per year to industrial and petrochemical companies). Since then, over 400 corporate applications flooded the system ahead of the program's expiration date at the end of this year -- more than twice as many than before. Central Texas Interfaith leaders took to every medium available to raise the alarm about the potential impact on school district budgets across the state.
[Excerpts from Austin American-Statesman]
"It's fiction," said Trenton Henrichson, a computer engineer and a leader of Central Texas Interfaith, a group that is opposed to the incentives. "If you're talking about (fabrication plants) 10 years in the future... you’re just making stuff up.”
....Leaders of Central Texas Interfaith called such applications "smoke and mirrors," saying the plans are fuzzy and local officials have no way to evaluate them. The organization helped lobby against renewal of the Chapter 313 program during last year's session of the state Legislature, saying the corporate tax breaks granted under it have decreased the amount of money available for public education in the state.
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What Could Epic Samsung Expansion Mean for Central Texas? Opportunities Savored, Concerns Raised, Austin Business Journal
Samsung Ask Texas Taxpayers To Foot $4.8 Billion Bill For Future School Taxes. Governor Abbott Endorses Biggest Corporate Welfare Deal in Texas History, Central Texas Interfaith
As Glut of Corporate Tax Break Applications Rush In, CTI Explains Opposition to Chapter 313, KVUE & Elgin Courier
CTI Leaders Take Hard Stand Against NXP's Corporate Welfare Request to AISD, Community Impact, CBS Austin, Austin Business Journal, Austin Chronicle, and Austin Independent School District
CTI Persists in Call for $22/Hr Living Wage
[Excerpt]
Henry Saenz is technically retired but has been working part-time for the city of Austin as a facility service representative at the Austin Convention Center since 2006. In that time, his hourly pay has gone from $9 an hour to $15 an hour.
Saenz lives with his 98-year-old mother and doesn’t have to pay rent, which is how he affords to stay in the city, he said. When his mother dies and his family sells the house, he’ll have to move, he said.
“I hate to leave this town, but I just can't afford to live here,” Saenz said. “I can imagine how hard it is for someone who doesn't have the advantages that I've experienced, whose money has to go to rent.”
In his role with Central Texas Interfaith, a local advocacy group, Saenz has been among those calling on the city to pay all its employees at least $22 per hour.
[Photo Credit: Kamryn Wooten]
Austin Considers Proposal for a $22 Minimum Wage for All City Employees, Austin American Statesman [pdf]
As Glut of Corporate Tax Break Applications Rush In, CTI Explains Opposition to Chapter 313
[Excerpts]
"This takes money away from children's education and gives it to corporations, and that is a nonstarter," said Mother Minerva Camarena Skeith, [Reverend of] St. John's Episcopal Church in North Austin. "The corporation was the one that would have been their responsibility as part of our community to do their fair share of investing into our children. Right? And they have abdicated that. They just don't do that. Then we have to pick up the slack."
With Chapter 313 set to expire at the end of the year, the state's comptroller office has received a record number of applications. Since Jan. 1, 2022, school districts sent in 393 company Chapter 313 applications. In any given year before this, the office received maybe 150 applications.
"If all these things get approved, like, we could bankrupt the state," Rev. Miles Brandon worried.
"Anybody who's fiscally conservative at all should have a have a real problem with the unlimited nature of 313."
State Sees Rush of Tax Break Applications as Program Soft Deadline Approaches, KVUE
Friends of the Land, Bastrop Interfaith, Oppose Dogwood Creek Solar 313 Application to Elgin ISD, Elgin Courier