Remember how the first Texas legislative special session ended without agreement? The second session just started.
It’s déjà vu all over again in the Texas Legislature on the first day of the second called special session ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott to deliver property tax relief, continuing a month-long stalemate that itself followed a months-long standoff.
On Tuesday, Abbott ordered a new special session after time ran out on the first one — this one to focus solely on property taxes.
Both chambers moved quickly on their respective blueprints, which are almost identical to the way the first special session concluded.
The House advanced the same bill by Rep. Morgan Meyer (R-Dallas) that passed one month ago: 16.2-cent rate compression using the entire $12.3 billion to buy down school district Maintenance & Operations rates. The lower chamber referred their plan to committee and then stood at ease until Friday morning. The Ways & Means Committee then voted out the bill and constitutional amendment unanimously.
Over in the Senate, the initial plan for this special session is almost entirely the same as what it passed last week during the first — $12.7 billion to combine compression, a $100,000 homestead exemption, an increase in the franchise tax exception, and a reduction in the school district voter approval rate.
The only alteration in the bill comes in relation to local option homestead exemptions (LOHE) — a mechanism that allows taxing units to establish an up to 20 percent homestead exemption off the top. Bettencourt said this was in response to Pasadena ISD’s cancellation of its 10 percent LOHE, something the school district did in anticipation of the Legislature raising the homestead exemption.
Prefacing this passage, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Tuesday evening, “We will pass the same bill that we passed to the House last week that cuts school property taxes for the average homeowner by nearly 43%, almost double the tax cut one would receive with only compression.”
Patrick also said that the upper chamber will continue to insist upon a homestead exemption and again threw cold water on the suggestion by Abbott that property taxes could be eliminated in Texas.
“[T]o do so would require increasing the sales tax dramatically, which clearly has no support from the legislature or the people,” Patrick said, building upon his statement from a month ago that the idea was a “fantasy.”
“The only other pathway is using current sales tax dollars, which can never be achieved. The Governor mentions that cutting the tax rate is a lasting tax cut. It is not. As soon as sales tax flattens or declines in any year, property tax rates would skyrocket. The only tax cut that is lasting is a homestead exemption, which is locked into the Texas Constitution.”
There should be an obvious compromise here of somewhat lower compression with a bigger homestead extension. This is why you need conference committees. Last session, of course, the House passed its own property tax relief, then Speaker Dade Phalen adjourned, eliminating the possibility of a conference committee. I don’t blame Patrick for failing to fold in the face of that power play.
One significant change tacked onto the Senate’s constitutional amendment is language providing for a supplemental payment to teachers — $2,000 to urban teachers and $6,000 to rural teachers. The addendum came after an hour and a half of deliberations by the senators while the body stood at ease.
Yeah, I don’t like teacher’s raises being shoved into a property tax relief bill. Teacher raises should be paired with anti-SJW/anti-CRT/anti-tranny legislation for best effect, just to make teachers unions come out against pay raises for teachers….
There’s a clear path to coming to a compromise agreement on lower Texas property taxes, but Abbott, Phalen and Patrick have to walk it.
Tags: 88th Texas Legislative Session, Dade Phelan, Dan Patrick, Greg Abbott, property tax reform
OT: Meanwhile Putin is doing his post Wagner coupe purge right now by arresting General Sergei Surovikin and his deputy. He’s literally one of their last competent commander left. He’s the one who lead the Kherson withdrawn, where they may have left a ton of vehicles and supplies, but preserved much of what was left defending that city. He’s also responsible for build up the defensive lines that AUF is currently trying to break through. Guess his video appeal to Prigoschin to stand down wasn’t enough to alleviate Putin’s paranoia.
Just last week went through protesting my property taxes, moderately successful. The appraiser (Polk County) said that their day begins with an update on what’s going on in the legislature, and said they themself wish the lawmakers would make a decision so that the people that had to do it would have a clue. (The actual phrasing had something to do with “get off the pot”.)
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