Proposed legislation would boost funding to keep Texas State Railroad on track
By CHRISTINE S. DIAMOND
The Lufkin Daily News
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Legislators who learned of state park funding shortfalls too late last session have filed legislation they hope will help remedy the park crisis.
“If Texas is going to grow, we need more state parks, not less,” said Rep. Jim McReynolds, D-Lufkin.
When the former Boy Scout troop master learned Texas state parks were laying off employees, reducing hours of operation and planning to close some facilities, McReynolds said called Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, chairman of the House Culture, Recreation and Tourism Committee during the 79th Legislature.
“For us who live in more rural parts of the state, state parks are economic development,” McReynolds said. “We rural people want our parks funded. Period. It brings dollars to these areas.”
State parks, he was told, were receiving less than a fourth of the revenue generated by the sporting goods sales tax created by Legislature in 1993 to fund the 114 state parks in place of the tobacco tax — a declining source of revenue.
Legislators, however, set a limit on how much revenue generated by this new tax would be given to state parks at $27 million, and the cap was increased in 1995 to $32 million. The difference was diverted back to general revenue.
Of the revenue appropriated to state parks, half goes toward local park funding.
Then in 2006 when sporting good tax revenue had near