Agriculture fee hike plan meets resistance
State legislative group asks commissioner to slow process down.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller rejected a request Wednesday from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to slow a plan to increase fees for the agriculture sector, gas stations and supermarkets, among other areas.
“One thing I cannot do is put this thing on hold,” Miller told the American-Statesman. “I have to stop the bleeding. We are still losing money every day.”
Patrick’s letter came days after 70 members of the Texas House, led by House Appropriations Committee Chairman John Otto, urged Miller, a Republican who describes himself as a fiscal conservative, to reconsider his plan, which would generate millions of dollars in additional revenue for the Texas Department
of Agriculture. The legislators, nearly half of the House members, signed a letter to Miller that said they had “deep concern” about the planned increases.
“I’ll listen to anybody,” Miller said. But the process of boosting the fees is too far along to stop, he added.
Patrick, a fellow Republican and leader of the Texas Senate, said that he had asked Miller to explain the potential effects of fee increases on Texas ranchers and farmers before the new fees take effect Dec. 1.
“The senators and I have more questions than answers,” Patrick said.
Miller, a former legislator who was elected to the top post at the Department of Agriculture a year ago, blamed the Legislature for putting him in a position to raise the fees when lawmakers rejected a request to increase the agency’s budget by $50 million. He had to choose between cutting services or raising fees — some of which haven’t changed since 1996 — because the Legislature slashed the agency’s budget by so much in 2011, he said.
“This is the last thing I want to do,” Miller said.
In Miller’s second week in office, the leaders of Legislative Budget Board, a permanent joint committee of the Legislature that develops budget and policy recommendations, told him that his agency was $8 million in the red, Miller said.
The increase in fees would affect businesses and individuals who work in the egg and poultry industry, seed sales, livestock brokering, gas stations (the agriculture agency is responsible for inspecting gas pumps) and supermarkets (the agency regulates their scales and scanners).
State Rep. Larry Gonzales, R-Round Rock, one of the signers of the letter, said that he saw Miller’s action as a wasteful effort that would lead to duplicative services, giving the agency extraneous state investigators, new prosecutors and a border protection unit.
“He’s trying to empire-build around the Agriculture Commission,” Gonzales told the Statesman.
Miller said he is “not trying to create any new programs or hire any new employees that are not authorized.”
Further, Miller insisted that the fees can only be used for their intended purposes, and any extra money raised would go directly back to the state.
Gonzales, who heads the House’s subcommittee with budgetary authority over Miller’s agency, said Miller’s attempt to raise several fees is a “gross expansion of government.”
Otto, R-Dayton, said in a Nov. 6 letter to Miller that the proposed increases could have a “dire effect” on the agriculture community and on consumers. He also said the need for the increases was questionable.
Russell Boening, the Texas Farm Bureau president, asked Miller to extend the comment period by 30 days to allow the public and agriculture community more time to consider the effects of the proposed increases.
“We question the need for these increases in fees,” Boening said in a letter. “TDA has not demonstrated that the increases will result in an increase in services provided. An increase in fees with no increase in service or benefits is difficult to justify.”
Increase would affect poultry, seed and livestock interests, gas stations and supermarkets.