Metro and State News Page 01B
Governor wants tax restored for parks
Gary Scharrer EXPRESS-NEWS AUSTIN BUREAU
Publication Date : July 26, 2006
AUSTIN -- A sporting goods tax that Texas voters approved in
the early 1990s should fund state parks as originally intended,
Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday amid escalating criticism over
deteriorating conditions at the parks.
The sporting goods tax generates slightly more than $100 million
a year. But the revenue it produces for parks is capped at $32
million -- and the Parks and Wildlife Department doesn't get
that entire amount because legislators keep dipping into the
fund for other uses.
Lawmakers should fund parks appropriately, Perry said, and they
also should "be very open and honest with the people of the
state of Texas when we said, 'We're going to put this tax on
sporting goods (and) it's going to go for our parks."'
"It's
been substantially limited and used for general revenue which, I
will tell you, I'm for using it for parks," the governor said.
Perry's desire to use the sporting goods tax for its intended
purpose delighted Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, R-Kerrville.
Hilderbran has been working for years to lift the revenue cap.
"The current conditions of Texas state parks are in dire shape
-- close to disaster," Hilderbran said.
Some of the state's 114 parks "are embarrassing," he said.
Declining budgets -- from $253 million in 2004 to $197 million
this fiscal year -- have resulted in staff cuts, reduced
operating hours, deferred maintenance, old equipment and a
vehicle fleet averaging 10 years old.
To raise money, Parks
and Wildlife officials nearly sold 46,000 acres of Big Bend
Ranch State Park last year until public outrage forced them to
back down.
Perry's support should help Hilderbran win overwhelming
legislative support to increase parks funding, the veteran
lawmaker said.
Hilderbran said he's not sure whether
legislation he plans to push next year will increase the $32
million cap or abolish it and direct all sporting good tax
revenue to the Parks and Wildlife Department.
The deterioration of state parks will be a campaign issue this
year for gubernatorial and legislative candidates, said Glenn
Smith, head of the Texas Progress Council, an Austin-based
public interest group.
Smith criticized the park department's
recent transfer of 12,000 acres of the Big Bend's Black Gap
Wildlife Area to the General Land Office. Although the state
agency rejected one bid for the property, Smith fears state
leaders may eventually sell the land.
"The Perry folks are acting like a bunch of spoiled kids who
inherited a vast and wonderful estate. And rather than earning
money off the land, they're selling it off for short-term pocket
change," Smith said. "Perry is squandering Texas' resources, and
he's mismanaging those resources that he's not squandering."
Assessing the use and value of state land is a common sense
approach, the governor said, adding any notion that "no park in
perpetuity could ever be sold is bad public policy."
"A blanket statement that we're not going to ever sell any park
land is a little bit too much," Perry said.
Selling a
little-used park to help improve other parks deserves debate, he
said.
gscharrer@express-news.net
Express-News Austin Bureau Deputy
Chief Peggy Fikac contributed to this report.
E-mail:
