Houston Democrats

The amendments typically come in three varieties. First are the harmless county home rule amendments. These are the ones that say "Egypt County, fifty miles north of Amarillo, shall be empowered to combine the constitutionally mandated county offices of Dog-Poop Scooper and Cow-Poop Scooper into one single office holder." I always vote for these because it represents a slight chance that someone might save some money somewhere and because no one would ask for this if they weren't simply trying to run their local government a little better.

Two amendments we're gonna be voting on this autumn fit this category: Propositions Eight and Nine.

Second are the Republican idiocy amendments. This is a fairly new phenomenon. Old style Republicans used to believe in limiting government, keeping their noses out of their neighbor's business, and keeping government acting responsibly. But enough of my soporific nostalgia. The obvious example of this amendment is Prop Two, the anti-gay-marriage amendment. In the guise of protecting families, this invitation to Dante's Eight Circle's First Trench of Hell would damage and disrupt and complicate the lives of thousands of Texas families at the time that they face horrible personal losses such as death, hospitilization, and divorce.

This is worse than bad; it's dumb. A more obscure example of the dumb amendments is Prop Three. It goes:

Ballot Language "The constitutional amendment clarifying that certain economic development programs do not constitute a debt." "Enmienda constitucional que hace la aclaración de que ciertos programas de desarrollo económico no constituyen una deuda."

Brief Explanation
HJR 80 would provide that local economic development program loans or grants (other than debts secured by a pledge of ad valorem taxes or financed by the issuance of any bonds or other obligations payable from ad valorem taxes) do not constitute or create debt. Any provision of state constitutional law that may prohibit or limit the authority of a political subdivision of the state to incur debt does not apply to those loans or grants.

For legal reasons, they want to clarify that certain expenditures that the state makes are not actually going into debt... provided that there's no set plan (such as taxes) for paying off those expenditures. Excuse me for asking a dumb question, But if you spend money and don't have a way of paying it off and, presumedly, have to go to a bank to get the cash to actually pay your vendors, how is that not a debt? Because it's an "investment" instead? If you can't pay off expenses for a "local economic development" are you spared the humiliation of a sheriff's auction?

This redefinition may or may not be good fiscal management. But I have to wonder if behind it isn't just a bunch of Republicans trying to cover up an impending (and unconstitutional) state debt created by the short sighted tax cuts that our previous governor implemented during his term. I suspect it's paper shuffling techniques employed trying to hide debts incurred by bad past management decisions. Or "Enron" for short.

The third variety of amendments are those whose language is so obscure that I just can't figure out what the heck they mean. In those cases I call my momma and she tells me how to vote.