Biden's lifeline for red-state cities
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El Paso is being squeezed.
In 2019, the Texas state legislature passed SB2 which limits property tax increases to 3.5 percent per year. Meanwhile, most of the city's budget is based on largely unfunded state mandates. And where the state in 2008 funded 45 percent of local education costs, that's been reduced to just 39 percent today.
So even before the COVID-19 crisis hit, "The wiggle room we have to spend on projects we think are important becomes smaller and smaller," observes El Paso County Commissioner, David Stout.
El Paso, a city similar in size to Boston and Washington, D.C., is politically a blue triangle at the far end of a sea of red in West Texas â and Stout thinks politics plays a big role in the increasing limits on local spending: "The state legislature wants to stop local progressive policies from being put in place."