As I wrote in a prior post, the Texas Municipal League is an educational and lobbying association of Texas city governments.  This august body said in a recent legislative update:

FRINGE GROUP LAUNCHES ANTI-CITY JIHAD

A radical fringe group known as “Americans for Prosperity” (AFP) has embarked on an odyssey it calls the Taxpayer Trust Tour. Actually, the “tour” is nothing more than an opportunity to attack and ridicule city officials who have had the audacity to oppose AFP’s positions on legislative initiatives.

AFP has vigorously pursued legislation that would reduce the current appraisal cap, enact restrictions on local government revenue, and otherwise do serious harm to tax equity and local taxpayers. City officials, working individually and through TML, have opposed these misguided efforts. In response, AFP has launched an all-out attack on the hard-working volunteers who contribute their time and effort to improving communities across the state.

In a January 24 Quorum Report article, an AFP spokesperson said, “It’s time for local government officials to start representing their constituents.” The implication, of course, is that elected city officials aren’t representing their constituents, but instead are feathering their own nests or representing some unknown entities that exist only in the fevered minds of AFP employees.

In the San Antonio Express-News on January 25, another AFP spokesperson said the purpose of the statewide tour is to “highlight betrayals of taxpayer trust.” Baloney. Each city official undoubtedly knows much more about public trust than a truckload of AFP mouthpieces.

AFP resorts to these ludicrous attacks for only one reason: like all misguided extremists who are unable to foist their ideas on others, they wish to silence their critics.

My goodness.  Radical…ludicrous…misguided extremists—on a Jihad.  These AFP people are dangerous, no?  They want to subvert our republic or incite violent revolution?

Not quite—their “all-out attack on the hard-working volunteers” is nothing more than a call to make taxpayer-funded lobbying illegal in Texas.  Thomas Jefferson—himself a radical, ludicrous, misguided extremist to some—said, “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

The Texas House Committee ultimately recommended that taxpayer-funded lobbying should remain legal because of another bedrock principle of (Texas) government:  when in doubt, local control is better than Austin control.  In other words, if your city government is misusing your tax dollars, it is your duty to change its behavior.  Or its leaders.

But with power comes responsibility; local control does not mean we do as we darn well please.  Local control means self-control—if we wish to lobby Austin on behalf of our residents, we need to pass a resolution for each political point we want to make in the Legislature, and we need to disclose how much we’re spending in the process.