Texas IAF Calls On State Comptroller to Abandon Plan to Gut Chapter 313 Subsidy Accountability Requirements
[Excerpt]
"Lawmakers have ordered Comptroller Glenn Hegar to wrap up Texas’s biggest corporate tax break program, but he wants to give companies one last gift: an end to public accountability.
Activists, corporate relocation specialists and lawmakers are scrambling to comment on Hegar’s proposal that companies no longer report key data about their progress toward meeting the terms of their property tax abatement agreements.
....
Interfaith groups that fought the corporate giveaway that hurts Texas children demanded Hegar roll back his plan on Wednesday.
....
“What is the benefit of less accountability and less transparency?” San Antonio state Senator José Menéndez asked at a Texas Industrial Areas Foundation press conference. “The taxpayer should know how their money is going to be used and what they are getting in exchange.”
[Photo Credit: Mark Mulligan, San Antonio Express News]
Texas Comptroller Proposes Covering Up Corporate Welfare Program, The Houston Chronicle [pdf]
Taylor: The Chapter 313 Monster — the Mother of All Corporate Welfare — Revives?, San Antonio Express News [pdf]
Members
COPS/Metro's strength is in its members: the religious institutions, labor locals, and other nonprofit and civic institutions that share a concern for community and are rooted in traditions of democracy. COPS/Metro is broad-based and works in the interest of our community's families, as an interfaith organization that embraces a membership of both religious and secular institutions.
As COPS/Metro members, institutions commit to building "organizing teams" or “action teams” of leaders and potential leaders to work on local issues identified by the team. By joining with other institutions that have similar goals and concerns, COPS/Metro members increase their collective power and work to achieve victories on local and city-wide issues. Member institutions pay dues to ensure COPS/Metro has a secure and independent core budget.
Current dues-paying member institutions include:
- American Federation of Teachers
- Congregation of Divine Providence
- Divine Redeemer Presbyterian
- El Carmen
- First Unitarian Universalist
- Holy Family
- Holy Redeemer
- Holy Rosary
- Immaculate Conception
- Macedonia Baptist Church
- Our Lady of Guadalupe - Helotes
- Our Lady of Guadalupe - San Antonio
- Presentation Sisters
- SA RISE
- Sacred Heart
- San Antonio Alliance of Teachers & ESPs
- San Antonio Firefighters Association
- San Juan de los Lagos
- Sisters of the Holy Spirit
- Southside Education Association
- St. Alphonsus
- St. Bonaventure
- St. Francis of Assisi
- St. John Baptist Church
- St. Leo the Great
- St. Margaret Mary
- St. Philip of Jesus
- St. Timothy
If you are interested in forming an organizing team with your local institution, contact the COPS/Metro Alliance office.