this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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Privacy

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[–] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, but one of the main ways a city can drive revenue is to increase the cost of property. Fines like that are small and short lived. Plus the people they're targeting are unlikely to ever be able to afford to pay them. It's not like speeding, red light, parking, or HOV tickets where rich people just consider it pocket change and just the cost of having a car and so they don't change their behavior like poorer people might. So revenue is often steady. Plus targeting neighborhoods of fixed assets that most people will never actually even see is way different from targeting vehicles that could belong to people outside the community and generally people keep a little nicer since they are much more publicly visible. It's much more obvious who is forced made to pay, and it's much more obvious those people can't and so there won't be revenue, only an excuse to arrest, evict, or whatever other punishment the law allows when people accrue too much debt from the fines.

And property taxes are the primary tax revenue in Texas since there's no state or local income tax and relatively lower sales taxes. I lived there for a while and the property taxes were nearly as much as the property I now own in another state that is valued at about 8 times as much.