No wonder he only got 39% of the vote
January 15, 2007
This one left me with my jaw hanging open and rereading the paragraph to see if I got it right.
But spending all of the sporting goods tax on parks represents “a substantial amount of money,” the governor told reporters.
“And my question is, if we drop $100 million on Parks and Wildlife and say, ‘Go spend it efficiently and effectively on your parks,’” maybe they can’t, Perry said. “So finding the appropriate amount of money to spend on the parks to get them updated, upgraded and maintained appropriately may not take all that money.”
Let’s see, maybe they would spend it on making a dent in critically needed repairs?
The department needs between $140 million and $200 million in critical repairs and up to $400 million in total repairs, said Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville, author of House Bill 6.
Never mind that Perry said that all of the sporting goods sales tax should go for parks.
Running for re-election, he embraced a plan to use all of the sporting goods sales tax for its intended purpose: state and local parks.
After all, that’s just politics. The question is, what is he getting out of changing his mind now? It’s not like he’s running for re-election and is trying to make nice with the voters. But wait, the voters wanted the money spent on the parks. Did somebody at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department piss him off? Could he be that petty? What other possible explanation is there?
Technorati Tags: Texas Parks and Wildlife, TPWD, Texas, Rick Perry, Sporting Goods Tax, Parks funding, Harvey Hilderbran
Posted in Harvey Hilderbran, Rick Perry, Sporting goods tax, TPSD, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Uncategorized, parks funding, texas
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January 15th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
He’s not changing his mind. His earlier position during the last few months of the campaign was the anomaly. He’s just reverting to form now that he’s not under pressure from the voters any more.
I’ve posted quite a lot about the state parks issues over the last year at B and B. Perry only “got religion” on the parks in July when they got a lot of public attention. Prior to that, he couldn’t have cared less, and was even inclined to sell off parklands. This, of course, is the default GOP position … they try to privatize everything they can.