Oct. 16--Texas Constitution

Proposition 1

Relations between a military base and its surrounding community can be love-hate, especially when high-performance jets rattle windows during takeoffs or landings.

Tarrant County and Fort Worth in particular have enjoyed a positive relationship with the expansive base on the city's west side since the facility opened in 1941 as the Tarrant Field Airdrome. Decades before North Texas leaders started touting Dallas/Fort Worth Airport as the area's economic engine, the hub long known as Carswell Air Force Base served that role.

Now named Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, it provides crucial military training on a site surrounded by six incorporated cities: Benbrook, Fort Worth, Lake Worth, River Oaks, Westworth Village and White Settlement. If the base remains active and fully operational, the surrounding cities gain a definite economic benefit.

But the occasional clash of interests can occur over compatible land use near military bases. That's what Proposition 1 on the Nov. 3 ballot is designed to help alleviate.

Voter approval would give cities and counties another tool to encourage compatible land use: the ability to issue bonds and notes to buy buffer areas or open spaces adjacent to bases.

Encroachment is a four-letter word in Pentagon parlance. Military airfields like the one in Fort Worth have clear zones and Accident Potential Zones (APZs) that few people like to think about, but they are a reality.

The Defense Department recommends that noise-sensitive uses (for example, houses, churches and amphitheaters) be placed outside the highest-noise zones and that people-intensive uses (shopping malls, apartment complexes) not be placed in an APZ-1 area. In general, the only uses considered compatible with an APZ-1 area are wholesale and manufacturing, agriculture and public right of way.

Any development is discouraged in a clear zone, which is basically where planes take off and land.

Encroachment issues are deciding factors in the base realignment and closure process.

Naval Air Station Fort Worth is a great economic asset for Tarrant County. It would be a shame if it were ever shut down because of inappropriate development in what should be buffer areas or open spaces around the base.

That said, cities want to encourage economic development within their limits and are understandably touchy about someone else placing zoning or use restrictions within their incorporated boundaries.

Tarrant County is fortunate to have strong lines of communication between the base and its six adjoining cities, in part thanks to the voluntary formation of the Regional Coordination Committee. Representatives from Tarrant County and the six cities, along with nonvoting members from the base, the Benbrook Area and Fort Worth chambers of commerce, Lockheed Martin, the North Central Texas Council of Governments and the Defense Department's Office of Economic Adjustment, work together to promote and preserve the base.

"We work to achieve compatible development via communication," said committee Chairman Paul Paine, a former base commander and the president of Fort Worth South Inc. "We are not here to restrict development."

On Sept. 21, the Regional Coordination Committee voted to support Proposition 1. Texas voters should follow its example.

The Star-Telegram Editorial Board recommends voting for Proposition 1.

Proposition 2

Texas scrapped a fragmented property tax system in 1979, one that allowed separate taxing entities to place different values on the same piece of property and to base taxes on different fractions of that value. The new system established central appraisal districts (mostly county by county) with all taxes based on market values determined by those districts. Property owners have an appraisal appeal process, and there's a 10 percent limit on how much anyone's taxable property value can rise each year.

That's a good system. Most proposed changes would diminish its fairness by giving breaks to certain property owners and not others. That would shift the tax burden from the favored properties to the disfavored and build pressure for tax rate increases.

Prop 2 would cause just such a shift. It would require that appraisals of residence homesteads be based solely on their homestead value. It sounds good, but there's no logical reason why someone who can sell their property for a higher value (say, for a pending commercial development) shouldn't be taxed according to fair market value. The appraisal appeals process is designed to rectify special cases that fall outside of this general rule (say, the pending commercial development has flopped, and nearby property values remain unfairly high). There's no good reason to use a constitutional amendment meat cleaver to accomplish that task.

The Star-Telegram Editorial Board recommends voting against Proposition 2.

Proposition 3

Call this one the Big Government Amendment. Prop 3 says that the mostly county-based central appraisal districts have not done a good job and that the Legislature should take over. As if letting lawmakers big-foot their way through it every two years would solve any problems that the current system has.

In fact, the state has a way to correct inequities in local property tax appraisals. The comptroller's office conducts a property value study every year to ensure equitable state aid to school districts. Appraisal districts that are out of line have to correct their numbers. That's all the orders from Austin that local folks need.

The Star-Telegram Editorial Board recommends voting against Proposition 3.

Proposition 4

Texans have to be getting tired of lists that show their state ranking way behind others, especially when it comes to education. In the Nov. 3 constitutional amendment election, they have a chance to start making things right, at least in one crucial way.

Proposition 4, if approved by voters, will provide a way to help more Texas universities grow to become nationally recognized for their research, what's often called "Tier 1" among U.S. institutions of higher learning. That's important not only to provide more top educational opportunities for Texas students but because top-level universities can bring millions of dollars to the local economy through research grants, venture capital, spin-off companies and jobs.

This can happen without a tax increase. More on that in a moment, but Texans should jump at this opportunity.

Only three Texas institutions hold the Tier 1 rank: the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M and private Rice University. That's for a state with 24.3 million people.

California, with 36.8 million, has nine Tier 1 universities. New York, 19.5 million people, seven Tier 1 universities.

The Dallas-Fort Worth region, with 6.6 million people on its own, has not a single nationally recognized research university. That's a disgrace.

Universities across the state, including the Tier 1 schools, united this year to take the case for more funding to the Legislature. Texas lawmakers traditionally have big hearts but little dollars when it comes to improving higher education.

It likely would have been the same this year without an idea promoted by Sen. Robert Duncan of Lubbock. It's entirely possible that he got some help in coming up with the idea from leaders at Texas Tech University, his alma mater and a giant in the West Texas economy -- and one of the universities that wants to grow to Tier 1 status. Nonetheless, Duncan gets the credit.

In essence, he found a pot of gold. Does that sound too good to be true? Remember that this is Texas, particularly the Texas Legislature, and just about anything is possible.

About $500 million was sitting unused in the state treasury. Known as the Permanent Higher Education Fund, it was created by the Legislature in 1995 as the beginning of an endowment for state colleges and universities not already supported by the $11.4 billion Permanent University Fund. The mineral-rich fund was started in 1923 to benefit institutions in the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems.

The Legislature's good intentions were to allocate money to the Permanent Higher Education Fund every year until it reached $2 billion. Contributions waned and then disappeared, and the institutions intended to benefit from that endowment have been getting direct appropriations instead. They seem to like it that way.

Proposition 4 would abolish the Permanent Higher Education Fund and transfer its assets to a newly created National Research University Fund.