Chuck DeVore - TPPF Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Not used in the woodlands or sugarland or all sorts
of places that you might want to live. Here in
the Greater Houston area, it's a great place to live.
I've been here almost eight years now. I love it.
I get angry with myself on a weekly basis that
it took me so long to get here for goodness sakes,
but I'm glad i'm here. Chuck de arr is also
whether it's he's with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, we

(00:25):
are among the fastest growing areas in the entire country. Chuck,
that I guess that doesn't really come as a surprise.
You know, it doesn't, and there's some good things about that,
But there's also some bad things about that, because we
don't always do a great job, especially with infrastructure, on
keeping up with population growth. How long before you think
we run into some problems because of that, Well, it all.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Depends on the nature of the growth and how quickly
that happens and the location. So you know, the infrastructure
is a broad topic, right, I mean that includes roads,
includes water water treatment, which is always can be difficult
and expensive. But you know, it's always better to have
the problem of growth than the problem of you know,

(01:10):
contraction or de growth because that place, of course havoc
with schools and tax bases and everything else. So it's
a good problem to have.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Well, and you mentioned you mentioned schools. I mean, that's
that's an expensive problem to have, because we're constantly building
new schools and filling them up, and having to build
more new schools and filling them up. And it's not
a cheap proposition.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Well, it's not a cheap proposition, and especially the way
we do it now. I mean, if you look at
American education in general, and Texas is just not an
exception for this. Unfortunately, you find that administrative costs just skyrocketed,
whereas the number of teachers that has gone compared to
students really has been fairly static. In other words, we're

(01:55):
spending a lot of money on things that don't actually
teach children, and of course, in tech were known for
are fairly opulent school campuses and especially sports facilities. So yeah,
I mean, the growing pains are tough, but again it's
a good problem to have. And one of the reasons
why we're having it, of course, is that the business climate.
I mean, you know, you look at the headlines from

(02:16):
just a year ago, Chevron relocated its headquarters to Houston,
and that was the twenty fourth Fortune five hundred company
to establish its headquarters in Houston. And of course that
comes with growth.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Yeah. The other thing that's growing, which also is a
bit of a problem is government. Even here in Texas,
government continues to grow. And for those of us who
are small government and I consider you one of those people,
small government types, that can be a little bit alarming.
And I'm not just talking about state government. I'm talking
about local government, including Harris County government, which continues to

(02:51):
grow an alarming rate in the city of Houston and
to the point where they're operating under a deficit.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, and that is something that I've been following for
a while. There's something that only those of us that
think tanks could really love. It's called the Census of
Governments and it's something that the US Census does and
they publish this report generally, it's on an every other
year's cycle. And what you see is that Texas is
more decentralized and it's spending than a place like California,

(03:21):
where I came from thirteen years ago. And you over
half of the public spending in Texas happens at the
local level in California, it's well over half at the
state level. And so then you drill down a little
more and you say, Okay, how's that spending going compared
to the population growth and inflation at the local level.

(03:43):
And what you find is that local government in Texas,
as you suspected, is growing faster than the rate of
inflation and population growth, and sadly, it's growing faster than
out in California. Now at the state level, it's reversed.
Right the state level, you see that our state lawmakers
are doing a relatively decent job, and of course compared

(04:05):
to California where they're more profligate svendors. But when you
think about it, if most of the spending in Texas
happens at the state level or part of me at
the local level, not the state level, then it looks
like we need to do something to maybe restrain local spending.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yep, these are said than done, But I think you're right.
There are those who think that we will be at
least the third largest city, maybe the second largest city
by I want to say, like twenty forty or twenty fifty.
You think that's reality, You think that's going to happen.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, I certainly do. And at the very least, of course,
you know, there's the largest city, and then there's of
course largest metroplex. So you know, Dallas Fort Worth is
a little larger than Houston from a metroplex standpoint, at
least it was the last time I looked. But insofar
as the city, yeah, Houston still got a lot of
room to grow, and you look at places like Chicago

(04:57):
and Los Angeles, third growth is pretty much there.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
You go, Chuck, always a pleasure, sir, have a great day.
That is Chuck de Vour for the Texas Public Policy Foundation,