I'm just in Dane with a brief look at the latest news in Texas politics
and policy from the Texas Tribune. Its official governor, Greg Abbott, has
signed an eighteen billion dollars tax cut for Texas property owners, sending the proposals
to voters for their approval later this year. The package puts twelve point six
billion dollars of the state's budget surplus toward making cuts to school taxes for all
property owners, dropping property taxes on average of more than forty percent for some
five point seven million Texas homeowners, and offering brand new tax savings for smaller
businesses and other commercial and non homesteaded properties. The package's marquee item is a
five point three billion dollars expansion of the state's homestead exemption from forty thousand dollars
to one hundred thousand dollars. The new exemption, combined with school tax cuts,
could save homesteaders Texans who live in a residence they own an average of
thirteen hundred dollars a year in property taxes. It also offers additional cuts for
seniors property owners with disabilities, averaging about one hundred and seventy dollars more in
savings per year. There is also a temporary twenty percent cap on appraisal increases
for properties valued at five million dollars or lower that aren't considered homesteads. That
would include second homes, vacation properties, rental houses, or commercial retail or
business properties. Targeted tax relief for the states three point seven million rent households
has been left out of proposals that have passed both chambers. A coalition of
Texas bookstores and national bookseller associations filed suit on Tuesday over House Bill nine hundred,
which aims to ban sexually explicit material from school libraries. HB nine hundred
passed in the legislature and was signed by Governor Greg Abbott earlier this year.
It states that book vendors would have to assign ratings to books based on the
presence of or references to sex. Plaintiffs in the suit include two Texas bookstores,
Austin Book People and West Houston's Blue Willow Bookshop, as well as the
American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Author's Guild, and
the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. They're suing the chair of the Texas State
Library and Archives Commission, the chair of the Texas State Board of Education,
and the Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, Mike Marath. The plaintiffs argue
that HB nine hundred violates the First and fourteenth Amendment by regulating speech with vague
and overbroad terms and targeting protected speech, and forces the plaintiffs to comply with
the government's views. The CEOs of both bookstores say it's not possible for them
to comply with the rating system required in HB nine hundred because the sheer volume
of titles they would need to rate is too much. In a joint statement
by three bookseller associations, they said that they are not questioning that content for
students should be age appropriate, but rather that they believe HB nine hundred does
not accomplish such a goal. The complaint EMPHA sizes how the plaintiffs believe HB
nine hundred will shatter small bookstores in Texas, placing additional economic pressure on them.
The law is set to go into effect September. First, we have
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Dane for the Texas Tribune. You've been briefed. Today's Brief is brought to
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at TASBO dot org. Here from lawmakers and policy leaders including Reuben Gayego,
Evelyn Farkas, Aza Hutchinson, Brad Raffensberger, Lena Hidalgo, Laura Collins,
and many others. At the twenty twenty three Texas Tribune Festival, happening September
twenty first through the twenty third in Austin, a hundred newly announced speakers join
an already stellar lineup who will debate new ideas and take on the big issues
that matter to Texans and the nation. Learn more at tripfest dot org.