Opinion

Campbell's fiscal views are cause for concern

Donna Campbell celebrates her runoff victory over Senator Jeff Wentworth at the Seekatz Opera House in New Braunfels on July 31, 2012. Donna Campbell celebrates her runoff victory over Senator Jeff Wentworth at the Seekatz Opera House in New Braunfels on July 31, 2012. Photo: Tom Reel, San Antonio Express-News Photo: Tom Reel, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Campbell's fiscal views are cause for concern 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Before the GOP primary, state Sen. Jeff Wentworth expressed a good degree of fondness for Donna Campbell, one of his opponents in Senate District 25.

A few facts account for this. As the incumbent, Wentworth was on friendly terms with Campbell, with whom he shared a well-funded enemy in Elizabeth Ames Jones.

Also, Campbell was an outsider with a long-shot campaign, a newcomer to politics who'd moved into the district shortly before filing and was taken to declarations of far-right fiscal and social views.

A conservative with a bipartisan streak, Wentworth probably didn't consider Campbell a threat. Then Jones lost in the primary, and Campbell trounced Wentworth in the runoff.

She surely benefited from a surge of support for Ted Cruz, another fiscal hawk and tea party hero who beat an establishment candidate in Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for U.S. Senate.

But Campbell's victory also mirrors Cruz's in a more forbidding sense.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-San Antonio, put it succinctly.

“A conservative Texas Republican is now a moderate,” he wrote me, “and a true moderate (if you can find one) is now a socialist. Neither can survive the Republican primary.

“People will wake up, but only after they suffer the consequences of the extreme ideology of the tea party,” Gonzalez said.

Whether or not you agree that tea party ideology is a form of torture, it's difficult to argue it's not extreme.

Consider the fiscal views of Campbell, first in terms of school finance.

“Parents need choice,” she said. “Competition is what is needed, not cash, into our schools.”

After the Legislature slashed $4 billion from public schools last session, Campbell has a plan to cut even more.

She calls it a “taxpayers savings grant,” based on the notion that it costs $11,500 to teach a child for a year.

Campbell would slice that number into three, withholding $3,500 while siphoning another $5,000 to “the school of the parents' choice.”

The public school, she says, could keep the remaining $3,000.

Such a plan, of course, wouldn't fix the uneven distribution of revenue among school districts, an issue that has fueled litigation against the state for nearly four decades.

“It would be a subsidy to only a small fraction of the population of the state,” notes Dick Lavine, senior fiscal analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities.

Consider also Campbell's broader views on taxes and spending.

“One, audit all the (state) agencies,” she said. “Let's cut some spending. That's going to bring in some money.

“No. 2, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has some suggestions on if you want to get rid of property tax, margins tax, how you can make some adjustments there.”

A few facts on the property tax:

Statewide, it accounts for nearly a third of local government revenue. It also accounts for half of all revenue that funds Texas school districts.

At about $40 billion, the property tax also brings in nearly twice the revenue of the sales tax. So the rate, and possibly the base, of the sales tax would necessarily increase should Texas “get rid of” the property tax.

“Obviously,” Lavine says, “the sales tax would have to triple, or you'd have to tax a lot of things that aren't taxed.”

And the Legislature would probably distribute this revenue to local governments.

Repealing property taxes, then, would wrest funding decisions from communities, ceding this control to the state, which would tax more goods and services at a much higher rate.

If this sounds like a good idea to you, then Campbell's victory is a cause for celebration.

For anyone else, and especially for Wentworth, it's understandable now to feel something less than fondness.