ustxtxb_obs_1979_06_22_50_00017-00000_000.pdf

17 THE TEXAS OBSERVER HALF PRICE RECORDS MAGAZINES ling BIGGEST COLLECTION or 1\(W Atm USED 1300WAECOVS, AND MAGAZINES zit TVCAg. Dallas Big Main Store 4528 McKinney Ave. i t 213 S. Akard Richardson 508 Lockwood Farmers Branch Shopping Center Valley View & Josey Lane Fort Worth 3306 Fairfield Austin 1514 Lavaca s e 6103 Burnet Rd. WaCo 301 N. 25th AND 2 }VW 5140i1E8 gAts Attrostro-BY irkgr zoo 3207 EiatoADVAY . TEPIPLETowtaz f t Cowrie AuxAlito1 S. USUAL ‘WW1 DR. CAUCUS AT STARS Schedule your confe Call for resent . 727 West 23rd Stre and Associates E 502 W. 15th Street Austin, Texas 78701 REALTOR 9 Representing all types of properties in Austin and Central Texas Interesting & unusual property a specialty 477-3651 The Restaurant Where the era of fine dining is recaptured. Dinner Tuesday-Sunday Sunday Brunch Fine Wines and Bar -46 .11111. Rio Grande at 17th Sr. Austin, Texas 512/477-9948 liLept y lunch Austin’s only open-air dance floor is now open every day and night for live music and homestyle meals. Come enjoy our laid-back tropical garden atmosphere. Fine wines & beers 405 West Second Street 477-0461 4 114 acts can be viewed as consumeroriented.” More guffaws from a consumer lobbyist. “That’s just the kind of thing you can expect from a speaker who distributed money clips to members. I’m not sure we agreed on anything. I do know they didn’t like [the final product] and we didn’t like it either.” There’s little danger that the folks back home will fall for some of the really blatant misrepresentations in the report, but plenty of people might accept as fact a number of gross inaccuracies if House members rely too lazily on some sections of it when fielding questions from constituents. Take the speaker’s discussion of tax relief offered by House Bill 1060, the measure that puts into effect the “tax relief amendment” approved by voters last November. The most noteworthy thing about HB 1060, says the analysis, is that “the bill exempted intangibles from the property tax base. This exemption was greatly needed by the State’s urban areas in terms of future state support for public schools and tax relief for taxpayers.” Problem is, HB 1060 provided no tax relief that wasn’t already in force, since intangibles have never been taxed. Well, the Clayton wrap-up goes on to tout the new productivity valuation of agricultural and timberland, saying this provision is “very important to the future of the State’s farmers and ranchers.” Of course, it doesn’t let on that this provision provides the same tax break to agribusiness corporations and to Texas’ wealthiest timber barons. A few pages later, under the heading “School Measures,” comes this bit of hokum: “The House of Representatives in the 66th session has been very sensitive to the diverse needs of children in our schools.” There’s a bad case of selective memory at work here, or else the authors of the report have forgotten Del Rio Rep. Susan McBee’s infamous school breakfast bill. But plenty of church organizations and minority lobbyists will long remember that McBee, with the help of the Claytonites, steered a bill through the House thathad it passed the Senate as wellwould’ve eliminated the free and federally funded school breakfasts for most Texas schoolkids. There are parts of the report, though, that seem well-researched and more or less grounded in reality. Many of the short bill analyses at the end of the wrap-up bear a striking resemblance to bill digests prepared by the research staff of the House Study Group, chaired by the speaker’s nemesis, Rep. John Bryant.