Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here.

Did you know that Right on Healthcare has a newsletter?

Click here to subscribe!

Changing Education—for the Better

What to Know: What will schools look like when they finally reopen? They won’t be the same, experts say.

The TPPF Take: The coronavirus lockdown gives us an opportunity to rethink education, and to improve it.

“Creative responses are arising all around us, and many are building on trends that were already well underway before the shut-downs began,” says TPPF’s Erin Davis Valdez. “The most obvious is the shift to online education, which is now no longer voluntary for educational institutions. The shift from a model based on how long a student sits in a seat to how well as student masters the content has become mainstream—overnight.”

Saving the ‘Correct’ Companies

What to Know: The head of the United Nations says that only “green” companies (presumably, by U.N. standards) should receive coronavirus assistance from the world’s governments.

The TPPF Take: Nothing new here; taxpayer money has gone to prop up green energy and industries for years, with little to show for it.

“Energy subsidies have left a long legacy of distorting energy markets, benefiting politically-connected businesses at the expense of taxpayers and energy consumers,” says TPPF’s Brent Bennett. “As lobbying for more subsidies intensifies during the current economic crisis, policymakers would do well to consider the failures of the wide variety of energy subsidies that exist today and resist calls for more.”

Another Hit to Homeowners

What to Know: Harris County homeowners are under assault by a broken property tax system—and things are about to get worse. One media outlet recently reported that some Houstonians are seeing their “taxable property value increased by 10%.” That could mean paying substantially more in taxes if local officials don’t adopt lower tax rates.

The TPPF Take: The current crisis punctuates the need for appraisal reform and other aggressive changes next session. Taxpayers are on the ropes.

“Soaring appraisal values happening at a time of national disaster is truly tragic. This should spur significant tax reform in the next legislative session,” says TPPF’s James Quintero. “Today’s fast-rising values should also motivate local elected officials to adopt aggressively lower tax rates to protect taxpayers and encourage economic growth.”