[Excerpt]

Chapter 313 was one of the country’s worst examples of crony capitalism, funneling billions in Texas taxpayer dollars to out-of-state interests. The program still costs Texas taxpayers over $1 billion a year in tax breaks to major oil, gas and manufacturing companies — money that could go to educating our children.

Dallas Area Interfaith, the Texas IAF, allies and a bipartisan group of legislators killed the reauthorization of Chapter 313 in the 2021 legislative session. Rather than leaving the program in the grave, industry groups are actually proposing to resurrect Chapter 313 this legislative session and make it worse in the form of House Bill 5.

Less than a day after a bill that would raise the age to legally purchase semi-automatic rifles unexpectedly passed through Committee, Texas IAF leaders learned that Representative Guillen (from Rio Grande City) appeared to be actively suppressing House Bill 2744 from being heard on the floor.  Delayed submission of the Committee report resulted in the bill missing a crucial deadline for it to put on the Calendars schedule for Thursday -- the last day to hear new bills. 

Leaders from across the state held an emergency press conference calling on Guillen and the Texas House Speaker to allow the bill to be heard, and for Calendars.    

[Excerpt]

A coalition of more than a dozen organizations such as the Network of Texas IAF Organizations, the Texas Campaign for the Environment, the Texas State Teachers Association and the Texas AFL-CIO wrote a letter to lawmakers Thursdayopposing the bill and any efforts to revive Chapter 313.

“We urge you to support alternative policies that promote fair and transparent economic development, adequately fund our public education and ensure a level playing field for all businesses in Texas,” they wrote.

State lawmakers and Huston Tillotson students announced their intent to form Texas' first Historically Black Colleges and Universities Caucus to help provide the state's HBCUs with "necessary resources and support to thrive."  This effort is an outgrowth of a three-year partnership between Huston-Tillotson University (HTU) and Central Texas Interfaith (CTI), involving leadership education and preparation of students studying political science.  Fannie Akingbala, a leader from Ebenezer Baptist Church, co-chaired the press conference.      

[Excerpt]

“Speaker Phelan and Chair Hunter, and the multinational companies that will benefit from HB5, need to get their hands out of the pockets of Texas taxpayers and off the backs of Texas schoolchildren,” said Rosalie Tristan, a leader with Valley Interfaith of the Texas IAF. “Over the past month we have seen them use every lever of the House, every carrot and stick, to bully members to sign on to renew a worse version of the failed Chapter 313 program. We call on House Members to stand up and say ‘no’ to HB5. They should put that same energy and our tax dollars into increasing the basic student allotment that funds teacher salaries and our public schools.”

[Excerpt]

"HB5 takes the failed and destructive Chapter 313 corporate giveaway program and makes it worse: worse for taxpayers, worse for schools, worse for workers, and worse for the environment. It is shameful to think that the Legislature might pass an expansion of a failed and corrupt program that benefited multibillion-dollar multinational corporations to the tune of now $31 billion at the expense of Texas taxpayers and 95% of the students in the state. Rather than creating a real economic development strategy, industry lobbyists are taking crony capitalism to its greatest heights in the form of HB5. House Republicans and Democrats need to stop it in its tracks. Texas taxpayers and voters will be watching." - Jose Guerrero, CTI [Central Texas Interfaith] leader - Austin Business Journal

[Excerpt]

With little more than five weeks left in the legislative session, the House is contemplating passing something worse — House Bill 5, a less transparent and potentially far more costly tax incentive program than Chapter 313, which forfeited tens of billions of dollars in school property taxes in order to lure new businesses to local school districts....

[Excerpt]

Texas economic development evangelists speak of this program – once known as Chapter 313 but now House Bill 5 – with almost biblical reverence. It may not turn water into wine, but they argue it will at least turn our school property tax dollars into new jobs for years to come.

Dracula from Transylvania (played by Everett Lunning of Central Texas Interfaith) testifies that he loves HB 5 because it has risen from the grave to suck the lifeblood out of the Texas public and economy.     

A stunning legislative success in 2021 is being targeted by oil, gas, and big business interest groups in 2023.  But Texas IAF, and a grassroots left-right coalition are working to block legislation and the forces behind it that are trying to move Texas backward.

[Excerpt from Houston Chronicle]

In the name of jobs and economic development, a 2012 tax code trick called Chapter 313 essentially funneled state money, via school district property tax breaks, to private companies doing new industrial construction. The school districts that granted tax breaks under Chapter 313 were reimbursed — and many still are being reimbursed — by the state, meaning we as taxpayers reimbursed them. It was the ultimate insider game of channeling public benefit to private companies.

The [Texas] Industrial Areas Foundation cleverly brought a man dressed as Dracula to its rally to dramatize how Chapter 313 unfairly drained school districts of funds and that reviving this bad economic development deal would be akin to raising the undead.