A new report released by the Texas Public Policy Foundation earlier this week examines the growth of taxpayer-funded lobbying by local governmental entities across Texas, with as much as $111.5 million being spent on the practice during the most recent legislative session.
The practice of local governments using taxpayer dollars to hire lobbyists to influence state legislation and to join organizations with active lobbying operations has been the subject of intense criticism from some Republican lawmakers and conservative activists in recent years. According to the report, taxpayer-funded lobbying spending has more than doubled over the past decade. The report also identified 1,080 registered lobbyists who represented at least one taxpayer-funded client over the past decade.
“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund lobbying efforts that work against their own interests,” said Jose Melendez, Government Reform & Oversight Coalition Director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “This research confirms what many Texans already suspect: government entities are weaponizing taxpayer dollars to protect and expand their own power, often at the expense of the people they’re supposed to serve.”
Legislation to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying passed the Texas Senate last year, but failed to advance in the Texas House. The last time a bill to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying was debated on the floor of the Texas House was in 2019, when Senate Bill 29 failed by a vote of 58-85. Some of the opposition to the bill came from rural Republicans who expressed concern that such a ban would harm the ability of their communities to have their concerns adequately heard in the legislative process.
The issues that local governments lobbied on often put them at odds with conservative leaders who sought to reduce the tax and regulatory burdens on Texans.
“Publicly funded advocates now account for roughly 1 in 6 lobbying dollars and engage consistently on issues that implicate the powers and prerogatives of local governments, often in direct opposition to legislative proposals aimed at limiting taxes, expenditures, or local regulatory authority. The evidence shows that taxpayer-funded lobbying efforts have been especially concentrated against bills dealing with property tax reform, local regulatory preemption, education finance and parental choice, and even legislation intended to restrict the practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying itself. In these respects, the empirical patterns align closely with critiques raised by opponents of the practice: government entities have utilized tax dollars to protect and expand their own authority, frequently at odds with policies championed as taxpayer interests,” the report concluded.
Governor Greg Abbott has previously expressed support for a ban on taxpayer-funded lobbying, having placed it on the call for the second special legislative session last year.
