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Posted on 04/11/2003 3:28:05 AM PDT by ShadowDancer
6 disabled protesters arrested in Capitol
Gary Scharrer
Austin Bureau
AUSTIN -- Six activists in wheelchairs were arrested Thursday when they refused to leave Gov. Rick Perry's Capitol office at the close of the business day.
The six were among about 40 disabled Texans, including 11 El Pasoans, who parked their wheelchairs near the governor's office demanding a meeting.
The group wanted a commitment from Perry to help restore about $500 million in the state budget necessary to keep 60,000 disabled Texans from losing in-home health care.
"I want to be a productive, independent person like I am right now. I need my attendant in the morning and in the evening," said El Pasoan Myra Murillo, who parked her wheelchair in the governor's Reception Room, outside of Perry's office.
Murillo and others said they were willing to be taken away in their wheelchairs by police to make a point.
"We have to stick together. We didn't decide to be disabled. Most of us are disabled from an accident," said Murillo, who was shot in the head 11 years ago.
"A few were born like this, but nobody decided to be disabled."
The group showed up without an appointment, Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said.
The governor did not have a scheduled opening until next Thursday.
Members of American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today, or ADAPT, rejected a meeting then because it would be after the Senate Finance Committee marks up its health and human services budget today and after the Texas House approves a new state budget early next week.
Danny Saenz of Austin, who was among those arrested, said the group has tried for months "to get a meeting ... and they keep giving us the runaround."
Perry's spokeswoman said: "Not everybody who requests a meeting gets on the governor's schedule, and we get thousands of requests."
Gary Scharrer may be reached at gscharrer@elpasotimes.com
Capitol protesters charged6 in wheelchairs arrested, 19 others cited at governor's office
04/11/2003
AUSTIN – Police arrested and removed six protesters in wheelchairs from Gov. Rick Perry's public reception room Thursday after they refused to leave when the office was closing without a pledge that he would not cut services to the elderly and disabled.
Later at 9:55 p.m. as the Capitol was about to close, state troopers brought a justice of the peace to meet with 19 remaining protesters. He read them their rights and issued them court summons for criminal trespass. They then departed.
During this time, state police insisted reporters leave the building under threat of arrest.
Before police arrived, the protesters were chanting "Governor Perry, what do you say, how many crips have you cut today."
The protesters arrested earlier were charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass. Thursday evening, they were arraigned and released on their own recognizance pending May 9 court appearances.
"This [arrest] is just a small inconvenience, " said one of the six, Danny Saenz, 43, as troopers loaded his and other arrested people's wheelchairs into special buses.
"There's people here who, without attendant services, they'll have no option. They won't be able to get out of bed, they won't be able to go to the bathroom, get dressed or go out and try and make a living," he said.
The protest was organized by ADAPT, an Austin-based group that works to promote independent living for people with disabilities through community services – in-home attendants and health-care providers – that alleviate the need for nursing homes.
With the state facing a critical budget shortfall, ADAPT is asking that existing services not be cut, arguing that one-third of about 150,000 beneficiaries would lose home-care services under current budget proposals.
Mr. Perry's spokeswoman said the protesters had never asked to meet with the governor and, after they showed up unannounced, she said they refused an offer to meet with him next Thursday.
"It is unfortunate that ADAPT is more interested in publicity stunts than a serious meeting with the governor on this important issue," said Perry press secretary Kathy Walt.
Ms. Walt said that the governor's staff has met three times with ADAPT during the legislative session, and that chief of staff Mike Toomey told the group that the governor's office would work to address its concerns.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
E-mail pslover@dallasnews.com
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/tsw/stories/041103dntexprotest.1d3ea.html
Does anybody else see irony in this sentence?
Last fall my Dad was in an auto accident and I had to go out of state to be with him in the hospital and bring him back to his place in East Texas and spent about 7 weeks with him. He's all recovered now.
While I was at his place staying with him, an article appeared in his local paper. He read the article and said something about President Bush not giving the civilians a raise. 'Well at least he did give the military their cost of living raise'. (Dad's retired Air Force, and a Democrat - not a Bush fan, you see). He always thinks that he keeps well-informed by reading the front page of the paper. But he NEVER reads the whole article past that.
I got on FR a little later, found out what the scoop was, then read the article in Dad's local rag (an A/P article). And there it was buried near the end of the article - the FACTS of what Bush did. The civilians got THEIR raise also, same as the military, but they didn't get their raise based on LOCAL changes in costs, which would have cost BILLIONS of dollars, AND WHICH HASN'T BEEN GIVEN IN MANY YEARS since the legislation was passed. (Bubba, Dad's good buddy NEVER allowed it either). In other words, the headline and the first part of the article made it sound like Bush wasn't giving raises to Federal employees. In fact he WAS. The writers purposefully buried the facts deep in the story.
I pointed that out to my Dad how the biased media did that purposefully, and I think it went in one ear and out the other. I don't think it stopped and visited in between, lol ! But I find that tactic is very frequently used by the media to slant their stories.
Whoops, I didn't mean to rant. < /rant >
You live in a state with no personal income tax and no corporate income tax. Texas is only one state away from having the lowest state tax burden, per capita, in the entire nation. You have a state sales tax rate, including local and district sales taxes, that's prevented from exceeding 8.25% combined. You have no state property taxes, and your state constitution exempts goods in transit from advalorem taxation. I can't speak for your local property taxation rate, but I'll assume it's in the neighborhood of $1 per $1000 of valued property (and property values are comparitively lower in the Houston area than, say, the typical California, Florida, or New York suburb. Assuming a resident has income to report, they get to keep more of their hard-earned money than nearly anybody else in the nation.
And you're complaining about being taxed to death? Try telling that to any homeowner in the Empire State and see how compassionate they are for you.
Though most here will probably agree with me on this, there remain some who have no problems with a similar publicity stunt carried out a couple weeks ago by an allegedly conservative radio host from Houston. He threw a fit in a committee meeting over property taxes and got his publicity stunt in. The issue is important, but the way he went about it was wrong. IMHO, that act was no better than these idiots parking their wheelchairs in the governors office.
Correct. I said "Lowest state tax burden".
If you are a small business owner and own your own home, you have a very large tax burden.
That may be true - but "very large" is a nebulous term. It would help if you defined how much you consider "very large" to be.
We're being heavily taxed, and we are faced with the prospect of AT LEAST a 10% per annum hike in our property taxes.
Is that from a change in the mill levy, or from a hike in the appraised value of the property?
There are retirees in Texas who own their homes "free and clear" yet pay over $1,000 per month just for property taxes on a private home.
What's the appraised value of said home? What square footage are we talking about here? What is the collected tax monies being used for? Did any portion of those taxes/increases come up for a public vote beforehand? More importantly, did they pass the public vote?
In principle, I'd agree with you that said retiree probably shouldn't be paying any taxes on his property (assuming here that public water & sewer, police and fire services, etc aren't paid out of property taxes). To do so means the state still claims sovereignty over the property.
Oh, and I do tithe 10% to my church, give "Fast Offerings," and contribute to other charitable organizations. Less money to the government typically results in more money to help the needy.
In principle, agreed. I've argued elsewhere that a combined tax rate (*all* tax types) of 10% is not only confiscatory, but ungodly as well. I'd suggest that the majority of your fellow citizens there in TX don't agree with you or I on this point, otherwise you wouldn't have the tax burdens you do have.
I'll assume it's in the neighborhood of $1 per $1000 of valued property (and property values are comparitively lower in the Houston area than, say, the typical California, Florida, or New York suburb.
It is true that we have no state income tax, and the state sales tax rate is about average (8.25% except for some exempted items), but the property tax rate in the Houston area is about $3.20/$1000 (not the $1 rate) that was mentioned. Note that it is even higher for rental and investment properties, due to the homestead exemptions.
I have previously lived in Chicago, IL and Boston, MA. Both previous residences have state income taxes AND property taxes with a combined effect much in excess of the total tax I pay in Texas (Texas is one of the lower combined tax rate states). One of the main reasons I moved to Texas was the tax issue.
However, the property taxes in Houston (and elsewhere in Texas) are increasing at a rate approaching 10% per year. Increases in salary are not approaching this rate, and people are being squeezed out of their homes. They are doing this through "increased evaluations" through unelected county appraisers (sp). Even a proposal to cut the rate of increase (not even a real cut) was defeated in committee recently.
Taxes ARE too high across the country (federal, state, and local), is not limited to Texas, and worse in most other places. Regarding the people above, if the state wants to maintain funding for that agency, find the money from a different state program, not tax the people more to pay for it.
Ouch! Okay, Illbay, now I feel for you!
However, the property taxes in Houston (and elsewhere in Texas) are increasing at a rate approaching 10% per year....They are doing this through "increased evaluations" through unelected county appraisers (sp).
Still not sure if this is a levy increase (doesn't sound like it) or an appraised value increase, but it sounds like it's the latter. If the price paid for new/existing homes in the county have been rising dramatically in the last five years, this might account for the changes - but I would suggest that existing property owners should pay based on their original appraised value, and not have that amount changed until the property is actually sold and paid for under the new valuation. Anything else is simply presumption.
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