Paxton’s lawsuit a cruel stunt to snub poor as rich get richer

Let’s play a game. It’s called, “Which taxpayer-funded giveaway is ‘unconstitutional?’ ” with your host, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Behind Door One is Samsung, the South Korean Big Tech behemoth. The company wanted to add nine facilities to its 1,260-acre site in Taylor, qualifying it for a $4.8 billion property tax abatement. Taylor ISD and Williamson County rubber-stamped that giveaway. While Samsung claimed the expansion “could” create 8,200 jobs, the specific tax break they applied for only required them to create a maximum of 25. Either way, they’d still pocket millions in tax savings that would otherwise fund Texas’ public schools.

Behind Door Two, we have a $20.5 million pilot program in Harris County offering monthly payments of $500 to 1,928 low-income households for 18 months. The program is bankrolled by the federal government using funds from the 2021 American Rescue Plan. Participants must be at least 18 and a U.S. citizen, green card holder, refugee or have been granted asylum. They must have household incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level and live in one of 10 high-poverty ZIP codes. They can’t use the money on anything illegal or criminal or on products that would cause harm to others or support terrorist entities.

The program will be evaluated by a third-party nonprofit which will report on participants’ financial and health outcomes.

So which violates the Texas Constitution? If you guessed Door Two, you’re the big winner! Tell ’em what they’ve won, Ken!

Well, it ain’t a new car. In fact, it’s a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent Harris County from implementing its guaranteed basic income program two weeks before participants are set to receive their first check.

“There’s no such thing as free money — especially in Texas,” Paxton wrote in his petition to a Harris County district court judge. That would be news to Samsung. We wish we could say we were surprised by Paxton’s stunt, but he long ago dispensed with the illusion that he is a dutiful and fair enforcer of the law. He’s proven time and time again if there is an opportunity to poke the Democrat-led Harris County in the eye, he’ll be first in line to take a swipe. Yet even by his standards, this latest maneuver reeks of hypocrisy and selective prosecution.

Harris County is one of several Texas jurisdictions with some form of a guaranteed income program. Austin’s pilot program offers eligible participants $1,000 per month. Dallas gives 500 recipients making $14,000 per year a $250 check every month. From 2020 through 2022, San Antonio gave 1,000 low-income families $400 every quarter for two years. El Paso County in December approved its own guaranteed income program, providing $500 a month for roughly 130 families.

These programs have apparently eluded Paxton’s interest. Paxton argues these cities are protected by their “home rule” designation, but Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee told us Paxton’s legal argument doesn’t make that distinction. Paxton claims the Harris County program “plainly violates” a constitutional provision which states the “Legislature shall have no power to authorize any county, city, town or other political corporation or subdivision of the State to lend its credit or to grant public money or thing of value in aid of, or to any individual, association or corporation.”

Yet Menefee told us, “This constitutional provision, the gift clause that Paxton is relying on, it bans giving public funds from multiple types of local government entities, including cities and counties.”

If Menefee’s interpretation is accurate, any conscientious judge would see through Paxton’s gambit and rule accordingly.

There are certainly reasonable policy critiques of Harris County’s guaranteed income program. There will always be a segment of taxpayers skeptical of handing out no-strings-attached checks to people without setting work requirements or strict rules on how that money should be spent. Yet there’s also evidence that it can tangibly improve people’s lives. When President Joe Biden experimented with monthly direct cash assistance through a one-year expansion of the child tax credit, child poverty dropped to its lowest level on record. Heck, even Paxton’s hero Donald Trump understood the political value of direct cash assistance when he doled out stimulus checks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Most disturbing about Paxton’s legal argument is the assertion that local governments must spend taxpayer dollars only to “benefit all citizens.” If that were true, then virtually any government voucher program — whether to help tenants pay their rent or to help low-income students afford private school tuition — could be deemed unconstitutional because they apply to people who fit specific criteria.

There is, of course, value to tax incentive programs that reward the private sector for economic development. The Biden administration just awarded $6.4 billion to Samsung to subsidize its chip factories in Taylor, a down payment that it believes will kick-start domestic chip manufacturing. Even in Texas, where property taxes are notoriously high, abatements can help spur capital investment.

But do “all citizens” benefit from massive property tax breaks? Hardly.

In fact, that property tax revenue is the only dedicated funding source for our state’s public school system. The Chapter 313 tax break Samsung qualified for — which has since expired but was revived under a different name — became such a boondoggle that it cost the state more than $1.1 million in tax breaks per new job, according to the state’s own metrics. It created a stratified system where a small portion of Texas school districts attracted corporate investments and larger urban districts, such as Houston ISD, were robbed of tens of millions of dollars in revenue due to the state’s education funding formula known as “Robin Hood.”

Paxton is the opposite of that famed medieval do-gooder. He’d prefer to deny a relatively tiny group of poor people in Harris County of $500 per month while allowing fat-cat corporations to pocket our public school dollars. He may despise “socialism,” but he seems to have no problem with corporate welfare.

The attorney general is the opposite of famed medieval do-gooder Robin Hood