Restrict power of Legislature to mandate requirements on local governments

Amend the Texas Constitution and statute to restrict the power of the Legislature to mandate requirements on local governments.

Under current state law, the Legislature is permitted to impose requirements or mandates on local governments that provide additional fiscal burdens on those governments. At the same time, while requiring local governments to do more, the Legislature, at times, does not provide enough local funding to meet those requirements. This can sometimes force the affected local to raise taxes, reduce services, issue new debt, or, more typically, the local government is forced to absorb the cost of the new state mandate using existing resources.

For example, the Fair Defense Act, which sets forth specific standards relating to the entitlement and appointment of counsel for indigent defendants in certain criminal adversarial judicial proceedings, cost counties about $165 million in fiscal year 2010. According to the Texas Association of Counties:

Since passage of the Fair Defense Act, indigent defense costs have increased 127 percent from $91.4 million in 2001 to $207.5 million in 2012. However, state grants distributed by the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, and derived from dedicated funds, have covered only a small proportion of those costs. In FY 2012, the state funded only about $28.3 million of the total statewide indigent defense costs, while counties contributed approximately $179 million (about 86 percent of the total costs).

A constitutional amendment should be passed prohibiting the Legislature from imposing any mandates on local political subdivisions that impose additional costs without, at the same time, providing the appropriate funding — effectively prohibiting future unfunded mandates on political subdivisions.