Jenny LaCoste-Caputo of the San Antonio Express-News breaks word that the lawyer who filed the last school-funding lawsuit in Texas is preparing a new one.
“David Thompson, former general counsel for the Texas Education Agency and attorney for West Orange-Cove ISD, whose lawsuit was the subject of the Supreme Court ruling, said a second lawsuit claiming the new business tax amounts to a personal income tax, is imminent.”
LaCoste-Caputo reports this little gem in the middle of a story about San Antonio area school superintendents who are finding that the so-called funding solution passed by the lege this year doesn’t do much besides solve the state’s need to comply technically with the last lawsuit filed by Thompson.
“That’s a real concern, not just immediately but in the long term,” said one super. “We’ve gone so long without any additional revenue for maintenance and operations. We’ve cut and cut and cut some more; meanwhile our fuel costs, our utility costs, everything is going up every year.”
“Lawmakers passed this with no real understanding of what these new taxes would generate,” said another super. “There are a lot of traps in this law.”
Which is why we spend so little time on legislative shenanigans when it comes to school funding. The main purpose of the last session seemed intent to produce lying headlines, with bad faith so heavy as to crush all scales of measurement.
Here’s what Thompson told the Dallas Morning News in May:
“David Thompson, a lead attorney for school districts in the lawsuit that resulted in the Supreme Court’s ruling, said that the plan will definitely require monitoring on issues of adequacy and equity. Still, he said, the Legislature has ‘done something that is very significant, and I personally applaud them.’ “
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