Do You Really Want to End Taxpayer Funded Lobbying?
You voted. Or, you plan to vote on Election Day, March 3rd. You, and thousands others in your county. Maybe this will be the year when the state legislature will finally pass a law to “prohibit tax-funded contract lobbying.” You voted “Yes” on Proposition 3.
If only you could do more to help this cause…
Your Next Step – Reinforce the Republican Party of Texas Plank to End Taxpayer Funded Lobbying
Do you know about the opportunity to make your next votes really count? Where your vote could be one of just eight? Or five? In some places, just one – YOU (now THAT’S Empowerment!)
The Party Convention process begins as soon as the polls close on Tuesday, March 3. From Tuesday evening, 7PM, until Saturday morning, March 21, thousands of voting precincts across the state will hold “Precinct Conventions.”
How Can Attending My Precinct Convention End Taxpayer Funded Lobbying?
There’s power in numbers. Each Precinct Convention provides the opportunity for a delegate (YOU) to submit “resolutions” that can eventually be included on the State Party Platform. Imagine if just 10 percent of these Precinct Conventions submit resolutions to End Taxpayer Funded Lobbying. That translates to hundreds of submissions.
Count Me In! Where Do I Go, When Do I Go There, and What Do I Do?
The Republican Party of Texas has provided this great Delegate-One-Pager to provide some details.
There are 254 counties in Texas; each of them determines the date, time, and place of their precinct conventions. This information must be posted at your polling locations when you vote. You can also contact your County Party Chairman for that information. For the Republican Party of Texas (RPT), you can use the link in the One Pager above, or you can use the County Information Lookup in Grassroots Gold. We provide the County Republican Party Chair’s name, email and phone (if available), and website and Facebook page. Check it out now!
As for what you do… Submit a motion to reaffirm plank 217 on the 2018 Republican Party of Texas Platform. That plank reads in full:
” Tax-Funded Lobbying: We urge that the Texas Legislature enact legislation that prohibits tax-funded contract lobbying.”
We can keep it real simple: “We reaffirm our strong support of plank 217 on the 2018 Republican Party of Texas Platform, and urge our Texas Legislature to enact this legislation during the next session.”
That’s all you’re required to provide. If you want some “Whereas” clauses, or you need some information to provide at your Precinct Convention, consider these 4 points (and/or provide your own):
- Up to $41 million of YOUR tax dollars was spent by local government in 2017 to hire outside lobbyists to lobby state government.
- This $41 million is the same tax dollars local governments receive from our rising property taxes.
- Public agency associations sell advertising to government contractors with the income from this advertising going to pay for lobbyists.
- Professional lobbyists advocate against the very taxpayers that are paying the lobbyist’s bills.
For more information, check out our ever-expanding “Ending Taxpayer Funded Lobbying Library.”
A quick message from Grassroots Gold on the Opportunity to use the resolution process to End Taxpayer Funded Lobbying
The short audio clip below is from The Matt Long Show on The Hill Country Patriot radio, on February 24, 2020. Paul Hodson speaks about the power of the grassroots in the resolution process, and using that to encourage Ending Taxpayer Funded Lobbying.
Engagement and the Convention Process – Grassroots Gold with Matt Long
The 3 audio segments below are the entire conversation on The Matt Long Show on February 24, 2020.