Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

CPS and Governor Abbott

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CPS is the cause du jour of this legislative session. In January, Governor Abbott identified CPS as one of the four emergency items for this session. CPS is one of those stories that begins with good intentions and ends with really big authoritarian government. These are the bills under consideration; SB11, HB 914, HB6, HB4.

Let me start by saying I am 55 years old and going on 56. When I was growing up, my parents expected me to be out of the house after breakfast and my brother and I usually returned home after the sun went down.

As kids growing up in the 60’s and 70’s we lit huge fires and burned ourselves more than once. We had BB gun wars with the neighborhood kids, threw rocks at each other, hit golf balls at each other, and climbed anything that presented a challenge. We thought nothing of it. I have been kicked, thrown, and stepped on by a horse. My twin brother and I were fortunate that our grandfather owned a gun club. We were popular because of the gun club and it is a wonder that we all escaped alive.

My poor mother still tells the story about how I showed up one afternoon after hunting with my twin brother. My face was covered with blood. When my mother asked what happened to my face, I made the mistake of telling her that my brother shot me during our hunt. The look on her face scared me.

Although I could not see the blood on me, I could taste it and the salt in my blood was stinging my eyes. This was my immediate concern. My mom had other thoughts.

I quickly told my mother that a dove had flown in front of one of the oil storage tanks when my brother pulled the trigger. The shot ricocheted between the two tanks and hit me in the face. Somehow, at that moment, I thought this explanation was going to help his plight, our plight – it didn’t. Our guns were taken away for a whole two weeks, a lifetime at that age – oh, the humanity! These were the first world problems of my youth.

We were on a first name basis with all the emergency room staff at Methodist. They knew the Hooper twins well. As the doctor picked shot out of my face, I had plenty of time for a lecture on irresponsibility. All the doctors got to know my brother and me because my dad worked in the medical center. I remember a doctor telling me that he was going to install zippers on the knees of my jeans because of all the times he stitched them up. There was never a thought from any emergency room physician back then to call any authority. Now, it is against the law to NOT call CPS – think about that for a second.

The government keeps losing children. More correctly, CPS keeps losing children. I know Greg Abbott thinks CPS needs more funding; but, throwing money at a problematic agency will not prevent children from getting hurt. CPS is broken. The agency’s mission seems to be stopping kids from getting hurt; but, this is impossible. Being a kid is dangerous – always has, always will. Kids get hurt and sometimes they get killed doing stupid things. We used to call these stupid things accidents. Now, we call CPS.

CPS abuses are legendary and have become part of the political mainstay. CPS is a very dysfunctional organization and their attempt to serve as the parenting police has been a disaster. Exes and their kids use the system for their own purposes. True allegations and occurrences are sometimes lost in the crowd.

Leilianna Wright

There are many horrible, gut wrenching stories concerning children who were not helped by CPS. Like Leiliana Wright. Or Emma Thompson.

I serve on the board of a non-profit that provides legal services to the indigent. This week, a woman tested positive for drugs when her baby was born. CPS took her baby, and told her they would remove her three other children. Mom did not live with the father and the dad was not informed of the removal. Dad has never had a drug issue and owns a home of his own. This scenario is not uncommon. CPS made no attempt to place the children with their dad and he was forced to go to court to get his children back.

The issue of CPS comes up a lot with this non-profit. People of a lower socioeconomic class do not understand CPS – heck, I do not understand CPS. Most people seeking help from this organization think CPS is a law enforcement agency. CPS actually wants people to think that they are law enforcement because it makes their job easier.

Henry “Hank” Whitman

Every week, someone enters the office of this non-profit and says that CPS took their children. The organization’s standard response is, “No, you gave your children to them.” People hand over their children to CPS every day in Texas and the story is always the same. CPS bullies someone into a signing a document relinquishing their children to the agency. CPS has become a bully to many and, unfortunately, the poor are the most victimized because they do not have access to resources.

In April 2016, Abbott appointed retired Chief Texas Ranger Henry “Hank” Whitman to lead the Department of Family and Protective Services, parent agency of Child Protective Services. Abbott also sent over the head of child support services from the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Investigators like to investigate things and that does not always bode well for children or parents. Whitman is reaching out to church groups and ministers for the “Network of Nurture Initiative.” This is good. The church is where society turned to for many years before the government got in the way.

I am nervous because Governor Abbott has a history of creating really big government bureaucracies that serve no one well. The Attorney General’s Office grew exponentially under Greg Abbott’s tenure. The Attorney General’s Office files 80{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of all the family law cases in Texas and the legal juggernaut has wreaked havoc on parenting and clogged the courts of our state. The AG’s Office files enforcement actions against parents hundreds of times a day creating a very large bureaucracy that feeds on itself. Family courts, court personnel, lawyers, psychologists, social workers, CPS lawyers, and lawyers from the AG’s office all do this horrible kabuki dance everyday down at the courthouse. The biggest losers in all of this are families and children. The problem is magnified in large urban areas where needs are increased. The bureaucracy has become the problem and is working against families.

I do not think that we should spend one dime to “improve” CPS. Instead, upgrading the agency’s technology would be much more cost effective. Investigators leave the CPS offices everyday with files crammed full of papers off to investigate another case. Wouldn’t it be nice if all that paper was on a tablet? The tablet could contain all the information needed for all their cases with access to volumes more information, if needed.

At the non-profit, our office is paperless. It is paperless because we know that every time someone touches a piece of paper, it costs money. Going paperless also prevents important documents from being lost. The non-profit went paperless because the money saved went to help more indigent people. We saved 30{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of expenses by making this simple change. A technology upgrade at CPS would solve one of the biggest criticisms of the agency, which is being able to track custodial homes for children.

CPS policies and procedures are setting up parents for failure. All of the hoops set up for parents to jump through make it difficult, if not impossible, to reunite parents with children. Parents must attend parenting classes, drug testing, psychological evaluations, and home visits while maintaining a job. Parents are told to report for drug testing when no appointment is on the books, which wastes their time and money. Working parents are forced to take off work multiple times to submit to all the services designed to help them be reunited with their children, but which actually sabotage their success. The policies and procedures of CPS are not working and we can do better.

Republicans need to get this right. The goal should always be a balance of the best often-competing interests of children. These interests include children wanting to go home, needing safety, and being with siblings. Creating large, inefficient, unresponsive bureaucracies harms families and children. Throwing money at the problem and adding more CPS personnel is unlikely to make the system more responsive to the needs of children. Director Whitman, come visit us and learn what it is really like trying to help children maintain a loving relationship with both parents. A group of conservatives do it every day in Houston and we want to help the state save money while maintaining safe and happy environments for our children.

Raul Torres: 85th Texas Legislative Session has begun, now what?

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raul torres
Raul Torres

With the start of the 85th Texas Legislature, the State Comptroller announced on Monday that lawmakers will have $104.87 billion in state funds to prepare the new two years state budget, which is about $8 billion less to spend than the 2015 Texas budget. Liberals are already crying “foul” and the Republicans are saying “Oh well, we must live within our means!” Neither of these responses will resolve both our short term and long term financial needs for the State of Texas.

Instead of complaining, both the Democrats and Republicans, along with Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Speaker Joe Straus, should seriously consider adopting the many principles found in the book, “Texas Tomorrow: An Economic Plan for Texas in the 21st Century.” The reason is simple: a projected cost savings of $20 billion or more every budget cycle!

As a practicing Certified Public Accountant and former candidate for the office of Texas Comptroller, I believe that it is time to reform how Texas does the Texas budget. I firmly believe that the proper way to govern is to combine three things into the decision-making process:

  1. Identify the true needs of the state (often the state’s Constitution identifies these needs);
  2. Prioritize spending based on a “cost-benefit analysis; and
  3. Legislators and voters must apply some good old common sense in making decisions that impact the State of Texas.

Just like the hard working families all over Texas, state government must learn to live within its means. While Texas is a balanced budget state, it has a long history of not living within its means. State and local governments have a habit of splurge spending during times of economic plenty and finding many creative ways to continue its spending appetite such as the use of public debt during times of economic troubles. Let’s take a look at spending in Texas during the past 20 years.

According to a Policy Brief released by the Texas Public Policy Foundation titled, Update: Trends in Texas Government State Government Spending, in 1990, the entire budget for the state of Texas was $23 billion. This level of spending supported all of the major operations of government: administration, health, education, judicial services, legislative activities, and capital projects. Today, the state’s core functions are largely the same, but the number of programs and activities carried within those functions has increased greatly, contributing to an increase in the cost to provide these goods and services as well. For the fiscal year – FY 2012 Texas taxpayers approved $94.3 billion in total state spending, an increase of 310 percent since FY 1990. Then in the 2015 Texas Budget, the total spending budget was $110 Billion! The bad news is that we continue to have in Texas is an obvious spending problem, not a revenue problem.

Some might argue that demographic changes or economic considerations justify this level of spending growth; however, when the growth of the state’s budget is compared with meaningful measures such as population and inflation, we can see that spending growth has far outpaced what was needed to keep up with the growth in population. This is the result indication there is a spending problem in Austin.

Biennial Structural Deficit

Most people are unaware that there is a beginning structural deficit of approximately $6-8 billion at the beginning of each new budget cycle. This represents money which the State Comptroller certifies can be spent, yet, no actual funding is ever provided to pay the actual bills when they come in for payment. Approximately $1-2 billion of this deficit is due to the reduction in property taxes a number of years ago that has not been successfully offset by the Margins Tax and the other $5-6 billion are funds that are sitting in a large number of Higher Education dedicated accounts which are for the most part dormant and inaccessible to the Legislature. The money in these accounts is used to certify the budget, but the funds cannot be withdrawn to pay for operational budget expenses. Lawmakers have known about this for a very long time, yet it is not fixed. Call it what you will, voodoo economics, smoke and mirrors, tricky accounting, or just plain foolishness that is the way the budget process in Texas work and it is in itself part of the problem. So how do we begin to solve these kinds of problems? Here are my recommendations.

Incorporate needs analysis in budget process

First and foremost state lawmakers should incorporate a true needs analysis as part of the budget process. We do it in private business and in our family budgets why not in state government? I believe that government entities of any kind have lost their way as to the role government should play in everyday lives of the citizens they serve. Government tries to please way too many people and in many cases spends money it either doesn’t have or shouldn’t spend. Take for example a recent case a few years ago in Corpus Christi. The City Council approved a study at the cost of $250,000 so it could better understand what the citizens thought of a proposed new tax, they called a “street fee.” Imagine that! I don’t know about you, as for me this is a perfect example of what is fundamentally wrong with politics and government in our world today. I don’t need a study to tell you that raising taxes of any kind is not a popular option. As far as I am concerned this kind of spending is totally unnecessary and inappropriate especially when the city finds itself facing a budget shortfall.

Priority based budgeting

Second, the best way to allocate the funds to the state budget is to prioritize what money is spent. As governments at all levels struggle to meet basic needs with even more limited resources, policy makers seek new ways to balance budgets without raising taxes. Economists agree that higher taxes do not spur economic growth and they understand that stalled economic growth limits revenue available to policy makers. Deciding how to spend that revenue, or what the state wants to “buy,” has become more important than ever.

Taxpayers must demand that state lawmakers better explain how tax dollars are being spent, and why and how policy makers are making those decisions. In recent years there has been called for greater transparency of government spending as well as a call for greater transparency of the decision-making process that precedes spending decisions, yet the response has been lukewarm at best. Unfortunately, the state’s response was to spend millions of dollars to flood the public with data and information that is meaningless to the average taxpayer.

States use a variety of methods to create their budget such as zero-based budgeting, program based budgeting, budget by strategy, and performance-based budgeting just to name a few. Up until the mid-1970’s Texas budget was based on the purpose of the expense which told policy makers what the money was spent on, but not where it was spent. In the mid 70’s the state moved to program budgeting which told policy makers where tax dollars were being spent but not how they were spent. Then in 1991 Texas moved to performance-based budgeting which told policy makers how the money was being spent and tied agency performance to the budget. In that year agencies were required to develop strategic plans so policy makers could gauge the performance of state agencies. While the current system is not perfect, it does position Texas to move to the next stage of its budget evolution.

That next step is Priority Based Budgeting. Priority Based Budgeting allocates funds based on core functions of government, and whether or not a program provides a return of investment the taxpayer makes in it. While the current process serves Texas well, it can be modified and improved upon to provide better and more meaningful information to policy makers. As Texas continues to face difficult economic times policy makers must make better decisions and have a process in place that provides timely and accurate information.

Voters must use common sense

Finally, the last item of importance is the use of good old common sense. I say this in applying this principle in two ways. First, it should be applied to every Texas citizen. We must learn to use our common sense as we consider the effort, work, and results of our elected officials. Needless to say, too many voters are unaware of the facts or they fail to see through slick talking politicians who use smooth words to convince the voter to re-elect them year after year, thereby perpetuating the environment we find ourselves in today.

Summary

Texas policy makers and budget writers should make use of cost-benefit analysis, a tool that every business uses when deciding on the effectiveness of programs. Our state government must learn to do a much better job of identifying the state’s real needs and prioritizing its spending. This approach has been used for the past 20 years in states and local governments across the nation with great success. Even though Texas’ economy is much better off financially than many other states, there is still much room for improvement in the areas I have identified in this report. Unfortunately, our Texas Legislators will continue to conduct business as usual just as they do in Washington, D.C. because that is what happens when career politicians run the show. They hate change even if it is for the benefit of the very people that elected them. The sad irony in all of this! May God bless Texas!

For Liberty and freedom,
Raul Torres, CPA

Raul Torres, CPA is a former Texas State Representative ( District 33- R) and candidate for Texas Comptroller in 2014. He is the author of two books, “Texas Tomorrow: An Economic Plan for Texas in the 21st Century” and “Winning Now: A Playbook for Good Government.” Both books are available on most online bookstores.