By East Texas Review

Improvements are on the way for several neighborhood parks, and the Longview Parks and Recreation Department is seeking feedback on the bond-funded enhancements.  A series of community meetings have been scheduled to discuss upgrades to Lois Jackson Park, McWhorter Park, Patterson Park, Spring Creek Park, Stamper Park and Womack Field. The meetings will be hosted by Parks staff and the corresponding city council member.

The Lois Jackson Park community meeting, hosted by District 6 Councilman Steve Pirtle, will take place at 6 p.m., Tuesday, June 4, at the Longview First Church of the Nazarene, 2601 H.G. Mosley Pkwy.

The Stamper Park and Womack Field community meeting, hosted by District 2 Councilwoman Nona Snoddy, will take place at 6 p.m., Tuesday, June 11, at Stamper Park Resource Center, 502 S. Center St.

The Spring Creek Park community meeting, hosted by District 4 Councilwoman Kristen Ishihara, will take place at 6 p.m., Tuesday, June 18, at IBEW Local 738, 2914 E. Marshall Ave.

The Patterson Park community meeting, hosted by District 4 Councilwoman Kristen Ishihara, will take place at 6 p.m., Thursday, June 20, at Longview Christian School, 1236 Pegues Pl.

The McWhorter Park community meeting, hosted by District 1 Councilman Ed Moore, will take place at 7 p.m., Tuesday, July 9, at Pine Tree ISD Community Center, 1701 Pine Tree Rd.

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In November 2018, Longview voters approved $24.71 million for parks improvements, some of which is being utilized to upgrade existing neighborhood parks. This series of community meetings focuses on the neighborhood parks that have been included in the first phase of bond package implementation.

For more information about the November 2018 bond election, please visit LongviewTexas.gov/Bond. For more information about the Parks and Recreation Department, contact 903-237-1270 or LongviewTexas.gov/Parks.

This article originally appeared in the East Texas Review. 

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Teachers would see a salary increase, but it wouldn’t be the even, across-the-board $5,000 originally included in the Senate version

By Richard Lee

The 86th Legislative session concluded Monday, with lawmakers delivering on a promise made by state leadership back in January: sweeping school finance and property tax reform. “In my inaugural address I said that this will be the session we enact historical school finance reform by putting more money into the classroom, paying our teachers more, reducing recapture and cutting property taxes,” said Governor Greg Abbott in a press release issued late Saturday. “… without a court order, the legislature did just that by passing one of the most transformative educational bills in recent Texas history.”

The two bills saw final passage in both chambers Saturday evening. The first, HB 3, was shepherded through the process on the Senate side by Education Committee Chair and Friendswood Senator Larry Taylor. He said it represents groundbreaking reform for an education system that has lagged behind the changing needs of Texas schoolchildren. “What we are doing here today…will move us towards continued prosperity for this state,” he said. In all, the bill would put $4.5 billion more into the classroom. This money would flow through funding formulas, and would direct more to students with economic disadvantages, those still learning English, and those with dyslexia. It would create an optional July term for eligible students and full-day, quality Pre-K programs for students from low-income backgrounds. The only outcomes-based funding in the final version would reward schools for every student they graduate ready for college, the workforce or the military.

Teachers would see a salary increase, but it wouldn’t be the even, across-the-board $5,000 originally included in the Senate version. Instead, it would create a mechanism by which teacher pay would increase whenever the legislature ups the basic allotment, the fundamental variable in school formula funding. HB 3 would raise that more than $1,000, to $6,160, of which nearly a third must go towards salaries for non-administrative public-school employees. Districts would also have the option of developing a system to identify their best teachers and pay them more, but that system couldn’t factor in results from state accountability tests. There are also incentives for teachers who are willing to teach at high-need or rural campuses. Administrators will have flexibility in how these funds get distributed, so the actual amount of increased pay will vary district to district. In all, the bill puts about $2 billion towards teacher and other public-school salary increases.

The bill would also reduce local school property tax rates by an estimated 13 cents per $100 valuation by 2021, providing more than $5 billion in property tax relief within 2 years. It also seeks to rein in rate growth by requiring districts to seek voter approval if they wish to exceed a 2.5 percent rate increase in any year. SB 2, by Houston Senator Paul Bettencourt, would create a similar limit for most municipal tax rates, at 3.5 percent. That bill also includes a number of transparency and taxpayer education provisions. If voters approve no rate increases above these new limits, it would save an estimated $980 million in property taxes statewide by 2024. “This is astonishing tax relief,” Bettencourt said of the two bills.

Following passage of both measures, Lt. Governor Patrick thanked the Speaker of the House, the Governor, and both chambers for working together to accomplish a landmark session. “This is truly an historic evening,” he said. “It’s going to save taxpayers a lot of money, give teachers more money and change the way we educate students and finance and make us number one in the country to lead on education reform.”

The Legislature is scheduled to reconvene again in January of 2021, when lawmakers will see how well these education and property tax reforms worked over the 19-month interim. Until then, the Senate stands adjourned sine die.

This article originally appeared in the East Texas Review. 

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By Joshua Axelrod

Two senators just introduced a bill designed to shield veterans’ disability benefits from debt collectors.

When a disabled vet declares bankruptcy currently, the law allows debtors to count a veteran’s disability benefits as disposable income, allowing them to seize the benefits.

Yet Social Security disability benefits are exempted by law from being lumped into a person’s disposable income in bankruptcy filings, and disability benefits in any form aren’t taxable and therefore generally not considered disposable income.

The Honoring American Veterans in Extreme Need (HAVEN) Act seeks to create the same immunity in bankruptcy cases for benefits provided by the VA and Department of Defense to disabled veterans and their surviving spouses.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced the bill, which has already been endorsed by 10 Republican and 10 Democratic senators. It has also earned the support of organizations like the American Legion, Disabled Veterans of America and the American Bankruptcy Institute, among others.

“Right now, veterans and their families are forced to dip into their disability-related benefits to pay off bankruptcy creditors,” said Baldwin during an unveiling event for HAVEN in her Senate office. “And that’s not right. This reform will protect veterans’ disability benefits when they fall on hard times.”

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Supporters of the legislation say it’s unfair that veterans may be forced to give up their disability benefits when declaring bankruptcy, while the general population receiving similar benefits through Social Security does not.

“The effect is to shove veterans out of the protections that every other disabled American gets,” said Holly Petraeus, a HAVEN supporter and former assistant director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “We knew that was not right and were sure that was not intended with the original legislation, but that was the effect that it had.”

Matthew Shuman, the American Legion’s national legislative director, felt similarly.

“So often we find that veterans and service members and their families are exempted because they do great things,” he said. “It’s not often that we find the other way around.”

Baldwin and others involved with HAVEN say the bill could also help veterans’ mental-health issues by easing their financial burdens. John Thompson, a veteran and bankruptcy lawyer with the ABI, brought up “startling statistics” surrounding veteran suicides.

“We know that one of the single greatest contributing factors to that is financial distress,” he said. “And this is going to go a long way to easing that financial distress for many American veterans.”

A few of the bill’s supporters made the point that bankruptcy isn’t inherently a bad thing and, in fact, can allow a veteran to start over financially.

Jay Bender, an Alabama lawyer and ABI member, said that the fear of losing their disability benefits to creditors might deter veterans from filing for bankruptcy.

“There’s benefits to going through bankruptcy, to get the fresh start,” he said. “We should remove the impediment that currently exists that restricts this access for disabled vets.”

Baldwin agreed, adding that fewer barriers for veterans to file for bankruptcy creates more opportunities for them to turn their lives around and resume their contributions to the economy.

“When somebody has financial woes that are so significant that they have to declare bankruptcy, if given a second chance they have a much more promising path to becoming taxpayers again,” she said. “If not given that chance, people are not necessarily going to resume a productive job. We like to create new taxpayers.”

Shane Liermann, Disabled American Veterans’ national legislative director, highlighted what’s truly at stake for veterans who face the prospect of having their disability benefits snatched away by debtors in a bankruptcy scenario.

“Disability compensation for many of our veterans is the difference between being able to provide the necessities for their family and not,” he said. “The notion that disability compensation can be considered disposable income is outrageous.”

This article originally appeared in the East Texas Review.

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