Fudging Facts on the Titty Tax

If someone's suing you, it's probably a good idea to know why they're suing you, as Rep. Ellen Cohen, D-Houston, may just have found out.

This evening, Cohen was laying out House Bill 2070 to the House Ways and Means Committee: That's her attempt to reform last session's HB 1751, the infamous and legally-contested "titty tax." The problem, Cohen told the committee, is that the old bill split the cash between the sexual assault program fund and indigent health care: "It is this diversion of funds to uncompensated health care that is the basis for current litigation that prevents the over $11.2 million raised from being spent on these vital programs like rape crisis centers, sexual assault nurse examiners, and rape kits."

To re-enter broken record territory, that's simply not true. No matter how often Cohen tries to claim this was just about the money, Judge Scott Jenkins found (as Texas Solicitor Gen­eral James Ho was pushed to admit by Ways and Means Chair Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville) that HB 1751 was a straight First Amendment violation. "For some reason, the state skips past this in lots of their argument," Stewart Whitehead, attorney for the Texas Entertainment Association, dryly commented.

Oliveira's attitude to this bill might be indicated by the fact he told Cohen he would not accept the first seven pages of the substitute, because it was statistics to back up her argument about the link between strip joints, booze, and sexual assault. "I don't necessarily disagree with any of that or the case law cited," he said, "I just don't think it belongs in legislation."

It is a tragedy that sexual assault programs are not funded in this state. As Ways and Means heard, one in five women and one in 20 men in Texas have been the victim of sexual assault. But taxing 175 strip joints isn't going to solve that problem, it's not going to provide the revenue required to provide real services, and ignoring the unconstitutionality of the law is no way to solve the legislature's unwillingness to properly and sustainably fund these programs.