Vance Ginn - Economic Consultant Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know when inflation eats up some of your some
of your money because you have to pay more for things,
And certainly that's true in Texas City's municipalities. Yes, when
you don't have the federal government writing you big checks
during COVID nineteen anymore, Yes, you can't go out and
spend that kind of money. It means you need to
shift your priorities. Doesn't mean you need to try to

(00:23):
figure out how to get more money out of the taxpayers,
but try convincing government of that. Van's again joins us
economic consultant. That's always a tough sell for government, isn't
it the idea that they've maybe they have to cut
things down a little bit.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah, that's right, Jimmy. It's pleasure with you this morning.
And that's what we're seeing across the state. You brought
it up some good points there, that they're living off
of this sugar high, that they're addicted to this extra
revenue that was coming in, whether it be from the
COVID money that was coming in from the Biden administration
or the economic growth that happened over the last couple
of years. And now some of that start to come
back to reality. And go away, and now they're like,

(00:58):
what do we do next? And so really what it
is there's too much spending and they're spending it on
things that we don't need. They are not roles for government,
and so I think we need to get back to
this idea that we need to spend less and so
more money stays in people's pockets, not jacking up property
tax and everything else, because that's already pushing people out
of their homes, Jimmy, is the major problem of overspending.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
I wonder if the voters, especially in North Texas, have
figured this out yet in the Dallas Fort Worth area,
but they've got a lot of Democrats that serve in
city and county government up there. If the voters started
to figure out yet that the reason why their budget
they're running at a budget deficits who's in charge of
the budget, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
I think that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
I think that helps.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
So I hope that's the case, because the person that's
in charge of the budgets for these governments are taxpayers
and they're being taking advantage of, I think in too
many cases of over spending by these local governments, and
so they've got to start to prioritizing what their budget is,
just like a family does, Jimmy, just like we do.
Of looking at our budgets, where do we need to cut,

(01:59):
where do we need to and that should be what
local governments do every year and instead of what's happened
is is that they've been able to increase their budget
year after year given all the additional revenue that was
coming in and expending it on extraneous item items that
they never should have spent on in the first place.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah. Well, part of the in fairness, part of the problem,
of course, is we've had so many more people moving
here to Texas. Not all of them are paying property taxes,
but their their families and their children are used in
the public school system, and they're using the public safety
system and the other things that all of us use
as tax payers. So that might be part of the
problem too, at least to a certain extent.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, maybe to a certain extent. But remember when you
have more population, you also have the opportunity for more growth,
and so they've had more sales taxes they brought in
and other revenues, you know. And two, we still have
a property tax problem. I mean, there was some bills
that were past this session. We're going to have some
things that looked at it in November on the ballot
of what whether or not homestead exemption should increase, and

(02:59):
things that nature still worried about, you know, excessive amount
of property taxes that people having to pay across the state,
and that's leading to a housing affordability issue. So if
you want more people in your locality and you want
more economic growth and the revenue that comes in from that,
you should be looking at ways to lower taxes and
lower regulations, which means lowering spending in the process.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yep, just the priorities. Vance, Thank you appreciate it. Advance
Gain Vance has an economic consultancy business at seven twenty
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