The Texas House passed a bill aimed at punishing cities that choose to defund their police departments.
“Let’s support public safety in this state. Let’s support our police. Let’s back the blue,” said Republican State Rep. Craig Goldman, the bill’s author.
The bill, which passed by a 90-49 vote, defines “defunding local government” by comparing how much money and personnel was allocated to law enforcement against the previous year. If approved, it would punish jurisdictions that make cuts by capping property tax rates in the city and cutting the funding from sales-tax revenue that the state allocates to the jurisdiction’s law-enforcement budget.
A movement to defund police departments has swept the country in the wake of the death of George Floyd last May, with many jurisdictions around the country moving to reallocate funding away from law enforcement.
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But critics have also blasted the movement, blaming it for a spike in crime seen in many of the nation’s major cities.
The Texas bill would only affect cities with a population above 250,000. Texas has 11 cities that meet that criteria, including its capital city of Austin, which has come under fire from Gov. Greg Abbott for cutting its police budget by $20 million.
Abbot has promised consequences for jurisdictions that cut their police budgets, and his office worked with Goldman on the language of the bill.
But Chas Moore, the executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, urged the state to stay out of the business of local governments.
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“The state is just all politics,” Moore said. “It’s frustrating to be able to do something on the local level and then to have the state come in and say, you can’t do that.”
