'The Angels are Here, the Angels are Us': DAI Recognized by The Lab Report Dallas
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On a Tuesday evening in mid-November, dozens of cars slow-rolled, bumper-to-bumper, along Northwest Highway, queuing to turn onto Hillcrest Road. Temple Emanu-El was this year’s host for Dallas Area Interfaith’s Reimagine Dallas...The group, which consists of about three dozen congregations of various faiths and denominations, has since 1984 organized around issues rooted in justice, making sure policymakers and other powerful people follow through on their promises.
Read moreTNO Launches 'People's Transition Team' to Hold Elected Leaders Accountable For Campaign Promises
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As Mayor-elect Helena Moreno's transition ramps up, a coalition of community leaders are launching their own transition to hold the mayor-elect and other elected leaders accountable for the promises they made on the campaign trail.
The "People's Transition Team," an initiative of the nonprofit Together New Orleans, will focus on four issue areas identified by city residents the group surveyed — cost of living, public works, jobs and energy.
Read moreDAI Gathers 1,000 Leaders to ‘Reimagine Dallas: Rooted in Dignity, Rising in Hope’
“This is our moment to reimagine Dallas—not as it is, but as its residents want it to be.”
- Pastor Vincent Parker
Over 1,000 people representing over 30 congregations and non-profits from across Dallas united to “Reimagine Dallas” in 2026. Dallas Area Interfaith (DAI)’s event marked the culmination of ten months of organizing focused on transforming Dallas through action on immigration, affordable housing, and quality early childhood education.
Read moreCOPS/Metro City-Wide Accountability Session Prioritizes People over Projects
Last Sunday, COPS/Metro packed St. Margaret Mary’s Catholic Church for its Accountability Session with 350 leaders and candidates for mayor and city council. The crowd represented over 28 institutions across San Antonio, including schools, interfaith congregations, non-profits, and community/neighborhood associations.
COPS/Metro launched its Sign-Up, Take Charge campaign, pledging to sign up 50,000 registered voters in opposition of using tax dollars to finance Project Marvel, a multi-billion-dollar sports and entertainment district which has been planned almost entirely behind closed doors. Leaders committed to signing up 50,000 people in support of investing in people and local neighborhood infrastructure, and to delivering this constituency to the polls.
Read moreEast Side COPS/Metro Leaders Gain Community Investment Commitments at Accountability Session
“We are at a crossroads in our community,” said Fr. Dennis Schafer of Mission San Jose Parish. “San Antonio is the third poorest large city within the entire country. Will we be a city, a community that seeks good for the people or wants to build playgrounds for the rich who do not live here?”
Read moreVOICE Grills OK State Legislative Candidates in Accountability Assembly
It was standing room only at VOICE's Accountability Session with candidates for OK House District 88 and Senate District 46 and delegates from VOICE member institutions. All candidates publicly committed to working with VOICE leaders around issues identified in hundreds of conversations across the midtown district: mental healthcare, affordable housing, drivers' licenses for Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) holders, and criminal justice fines and fees. All candidates additionally agreed to work with VOICE on the issues raised. Leaders will follow up with the officials elected to ensure commitments made are commitments kept.
[In photo (with backs turned to camera): Marshal Gimpel of First Unitarian Church and Michele Payne-Popielec, Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma]
Candidates Focus on Variety of Community Issues in Oklahoma City Midtown District, The Oklahoman [pdf]
Texas IAF Sounds the Alarm: Chapter 313 Loopholes Will Cost State Billions
Last year Texas IAF organizations led the charge to end Chapter 313, a program that had given away $10 billion in windfall tax breaks for corporations. However, hundreds of Chapter 313 applications are being filed in the rush to get in before the end of the program, including some with projects slated for decades from now.
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“It’s like hogs at the trough,” said Bishop John Ogletree, an official with the faith-based Texas Industrial Areas Foundation, which has opposed the arrangements.
Meanwhile, lawmakers and interest groups have begun discussing how to craft a replacement during next year’s legislative session to keep the tax breaks flowing.
The Chapter 313 deals — named for their location in the state tax code — let companies slash 10 years worth of school property tax bills they otherwise would owe on newly constructed factories and energy projects.
Over the past decade the state comptroller’s office has received an average of about 90 applications annually from companies seeking the subsidy.
Since the Legislature adjourned at the end of May 2021, by comparison, records show companies have filed requests for more than 460 new tax breaks — about 400 in the past five months alone.
Typically, companies sought Chapter 313 tax breaks for projects two to four years in the future, with the occasional oil and gas facility taking six or seven years to complete. Since last May, however, companies have applied for 120 of the subsidies for facilities not scheduled to open until at least 2028. At least 10 won’t be online for a decade or more.
Despite the program’s demise, applicants “have figured out how to extend it,” said Rev. Minerva Camarena-Skeith, of Central Texas Interfaith.
Their strategy seems to be, “Just in case, let’s get 10 years of requests in in one year,” added Bob Fleming, of The Metropolitan Organization, the Houston branch of the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation. “I don’t know anybody who can forecast their needs 30 years out.”
....by slow-walking the end of a program they said was giving away too much money to corporations at the expense of Texas taxpayers, legislators have now put the state on the hook for billions of additional tax breaks that Texans will be paying off well into the middle of the century.
[Photo Credit: Mark Mulligan, Houston Chronicle]
Lawmakers Killed a Costly Corporate Tax Break Program, but Loopholes Will Still Cost Texas Billions, Houston Chronicle [pdf]
CTI Explains How Chapter 313 Harms Texas Schools & Residents
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"This takes money away from children's education and gives it to corporations, and that is a nonstarter," said Mother Minerva Camarena Skeith, [Reverend of] St. John's Episcopal Church in North Austin. "The corporation was the one that would have been their responsibility as part of our community to do their fair share of investing into our children. Right? And they have abdicated that. They just don't do that. Then we have to pick up the slack."
With Chapter 313 set to expire at the end of the year, the state's comptroller office has received a record number of applications. Since Jan. 1, 2022, school districts sent in 393 company Chapter 313 applications. In any given year before this, the office received maybe 150 applications.
"If all these things get approved, like, we could bankrupt the state," Rev. Miles Brandon worried.
"Anybody who's fiscally conservative at all should have a have a real problem with the unlimited nature of 313."
State Sees Rush of Tax Break Applications as Program Soft Deadline Approaches, KVUE [pdf]
Friends of the Land, Bastrop Interfaith, Oppose Dogwood Creek Solar 313 Application to Elgin ISD, Elgin Courier [pdf]
CTI Leaders Take Hard Stand Against NXP's Corporate Welfare Request to AISD
When NXP sprung a request for a Chapter 313 tax subsidy before the Austin Independent School District, Central Texas Interfaith leaders decided to descend upon a meeting of the Board of Trustees to ask them to reject the request. Chapter 313 tax subsidies are 10 year tax breaks to major gas, oil and manufacturing corporations that drain $1 Billion from state coffers on an annual basis. In response to a barrage of 20 CTI leaders testifying over the phone and in person against the tax giveaway, NXP (the company requesting the subsidy) changed the number of promised jobs on their application during the meeting from the statutory minimum of 25 to 500 overall.
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The majority of community members who provided testimony on May 19 asked the board to vote against the Chapter 313 agreement with NXP. [Twenty] speakers were members of Central Texas Interfaith, a nonpartisan coalition of congregations, schools and unions that opposes Chapter 313.
“Hardworking taxpayers don’t get this kind of giveaway. Nor do small businesses, or responsible corporations,” said Central Texas Interfaith leader Trenton Henderson. “We want our money to go to public schools, but not to pay the bills for corporations shirking their responsibility to public education. Without a Chapter 313 agreement, NXP would have to pay their full share of school taxes.”
Austin ISD Moves Forward With Semi-Conductors Agreement, Faces Community Opposition, Community Impact [pdf]
Austin ISD Considering Proposal That Would Help Lower Recapture Payments, Faces Opposition, CBS Austin [pdf]
NXP Seeking Up To $140 Million in Tax Breaks for School Districts, Austin American Statesman [pdf]
Chapter 313 Incentives: What They Are and Why They're Suddenly the Talk of the Town, Austin Business Journal [pdf]
Oped: Don't Ask Texas Schoolchildren to Fund Your Corporate Expansion, Austin Chronicle [pdf]
AISD Board Meeting Broadcast, Austin Independent School District [calls begin at -2:33:30, in person testimony at -1:52:30]
Central Texas Interfaith Opposes Chapter 313 Tax Subsidy to NXP
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NXP Semiconductors, which is based in the Netherlands and has two fabrication plants in Austin, is seeking tax breaks from the Austin Independent School District under the state's Chapter 313 incentive program for proposed expansion. An initial presentation to the district's board Tuesday night didn't specify the amount, but previous incentives agreements from Texas school districts for similar Chapter 313 deals have been for tens of millions of dollars.
The Chapter 313 incentives program — which is named after a portion of the tax code — has been controversial. It's set to expire at the end of this year because state lawmakers declined to renew it during last year's legislative session, although deals struck before then won't be affected....
Under the Chapter 313 program, school districts are reimbursed by the state for the corporate tax breaks they agree to provide. That attribute has made Chapter 313 controversial among critics who say school districts have no reason not to grant them, and that the program siphons money from taxpayers statewide as handouts to corporations.
“There's no such thing as free money," said Doug Greco, lead organizer with Central Texas Interfaith, a group that opposes all Chapter 313 deals and has worked to help end the program.
“It's money that is being drained out of the state budget that could be going to schools," Greco said. "When you add these (deals) up, it's just a drain on the system that we can't sustain. Let's stop the gold rush here."
[Photo Credit: Mark Matson, Austin American Statesman]
Chipmaker NXP Considers Austin for $2.6 Billion Expansion, Up to 800 New Jobs, Austin American Statesman [pdf]