South Galveston News

Texas state Rep. Mayes Middleton (R-Wallisville) is only one out of a growing number of politicians who have taken a stance against taxpayer-funded lobbying.

As put forward by Plano City Council member Shelby Williams, the pledge addresses growing concerns over local governments and the use of taxpayer money to lobby the Texas Legislature to increase the very taxes that fund the lobbying, according to Williams’ website.

Middleton, who also chairs the Texas Freedom Caucus, said in an interview with the South Galveston News that he first began trying to draw attention to the taxpayer-funded lobbying about four years ago.

“The Texas House famously killed the bill that limited property taxes in 2017, and it was really the speaker at the time, Joe Straus, that did that, but I was always frustrated why we couldn’t get a bunch of conservative legislation passed in the House," Middleton said. 

As he investigated, Middleton explained that he found that the lobbyists who were exerting pressure to keep taxes high were also the ones being paid for by those same high taxes.

“Your tax money is being diverted to the pockets of Austin lobbyists, and that’s money that’s not spent on teachers, roads, police or fire,” Middleton said.

Middleton stated that he thinks the practice is fundamentally wrong.

“It’s a practice that I think represents the worst of what can go wrong in government, and it needs to be abolished,” Middleton said. 

Middleton also stated that the taxpayer-funded lobbyists are being used by some cities to promote ideological efforts at the state level, with some of those lobbyists pushing for legislation that is unfriendly to local law enforcement. This also includes lobbying against efforts to reform imminent domain, and even opposing efforts to fix the retirement system in order to ensure teacher retirements are secure.

And it’s not a controversial issue for Texas voters, 94% of whom voted against taxpayer-funded lobbying in March, Middleton stated.