CSE Texas Activists Urge Opposition to Prop 4

VOTE ” NO” ON PROP 4

Fellow Taxpayers:

I am writing to urge you to help me defeat Proposition #4 in the September 13th constitutional amendment election.

Prop. 4 would allow water utility districts to levy taxes and sell bonds to pay for parks and parks improvements. Currently, MUDs can only use tax money for water, wastewater and related expenses. Some of you reading this might be thinking, “Gee, I like parks!” Well, so do I. But, do we really want to give another entity the right to use our money for parks? Is it not enough that the federal, state, county, and other local governments can tax us to build parks?

The people that are pushing this proposition, the Association of Water Board Directors and their big money lobbyists, are the same ones that successfully repealed the “Truth in Taxation” laws as they apply to MUDs in the 2001 legislation session as they felt telling folks about their tax rate and giving taxpayers the right to rollback the rate was just too difficult for them to do. Through the hard work of many folks, we were able to repeal the exemption and restore “Truth in Taxation” this session. And, now they are looking to get into our pocketbooks again and I am sure they are counting on voter apathy to help them.

Although this amendment would only apply for water districts and more specifically only for those in certain large counties in Texas including Bexar, Harris, Travis and Williamson Counties, all Texans can vote on the amendment. Plus, the wording of the proposed amendment makes it difficult to decipher its meaning, but the basic idea is that MUDs want to be able to expand the amount of taxes they can levy.

I urge you to vote against Prop. 4 and spread the word to other concerned taxpayers.

The text of the all the proposed amendments can be found at:

http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/voter/whatisontheballot.shtml.

Lisa Birkman, CSE activist

lisa@lisabirkman.com

www.lisabirkman.com