On September 16, the Texas Tribune Festival hosted the conversation “Property Taxes and the 87th Legislature” with State Representative Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) and State Senator Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston).
This report is intended to give you an overview and highlight of the discussions on the various topics taken up. It is not a verbatim transcript of the discussions but is based upon what was audible or understandable to the observer and the desire to get details out as quickly as possible with few errors or omissions.
Ross Ramsey – Executive Editor of The Texas Tribune, Moderator
Q: How are changes from last year working?
- Bettencourt – great success in middle of pandemic
- Bettencourt – thinks property tax culture has changed in State of Texas, people are now looking out for taxpayers as opposed to government
- Burrows – you measure by people involved, more tools for input on property tax
- Burrows – more people showing up to rate setting hearings, meeting taxpayers who are citizen advocates
Q: Do you think advocacy is function of time or new law?
- Burrows – both, this is a year where people need to tighten belts and government needs to tighten belts
Q: Heard of any cities or counties or other entities saying they need more than 3 ½%?
- Bettencourt – about 38 jurisdictions talk about old rollback rate but people are unhappy with that language in middle of pandemic
- Bettencourt – about 4 jurisdictions that will take vote to public, Austin will be largest city and at least 3 ISDs going for tax ratification elections up in DFW – but not much appetite as new standard is lowering tax rate
- Bettencourt – City of Dallas best signpost; 10-4 vote did not go back to old rate which signals that past is over
Q: What changes would you make or what part not working?
- Bettencourt – Would like all taxing jurisdictions covered by this bill
- Bettencourt – it changed the culture there is momentum to expand the bill
- Burrows – Largely on same page as Bettencourt on things they would like to see
- Burrows – concern are they seeing overuse of COs to pay for debt, are they seeing spike in non-voter approved debt and should they pull those payments back in
- Burrows – multiple website and addresses; can there be on central site to be educated and utilize tools
Q: Wouldn’t it be easier for a state property tax; put all in one place, to consolidate; argue rates in one place, etc?
- Bettencourt – 4k jurisdictions to divide a pot would be problematic
- Bettencourt – want top down guidelines but bottom up goal setting; example of Pflugerville City Council discussions to go below no new revenue rate
- Bettencourt – discusses importance of voters being able to weight in on taxes
Q: Can something be done at legislative level to make people happy with property taxes?
- Burrows – people felt like they did not have control or a lot of transparency; SB 2 was first step
Q: What’s next big step?
- Bettencourt – lets talk about big step with SB 2; was allowing double digit growth of counties and cities before the bill
- Bettencourt – next step is to follow the bill; beginning of standardized methodology
Q: Next tax base will see values down in some places, do you think there will lower values but much higher rates?
- Burrows – not necessarily; voters will have a say
Q: Biggest complaints you hear on property tax appraisal?
- Bettencourt – people were unhappy that values were raised because they protested, not sure how all this plays out
- Bettencourt – could be seeing commercial down in value a lot
Q: What’s next big step, Burrows?
- Burrows – Easily 10-15 things to go back through and tweak and perfect
- Burrows – Most glaring is need to tighten up language of disaster exemption; see a possible misinterpret
- Burrows – Intended SB 2 disaster language to be for physical property damage vs economic damage
- Burrows – Look at other taxing jurisdictions not under 3 ½%
Q: Do you anticipate specific follow up legislation?
- Bettencourt – putting together report right now in his committee on monitoring effect of SB 2
- Bettencourt – looks like average tax on average homeowner will be down
- Bettencourt – Wil look at top 20 taxing jurisdictions and 20 major schools districts and see what has happened
- Burrows – has covered tweaks he wants to see; big goal was to have more citizen participation and wants to look at legislation that will continue to empower participation
Q: Have you talked about further exemptions? Example of things: law enforcement?
- Bettencourt – want cities to look at priorities; clearly Governor made a quick policy call that if you defund the police we are looking at freezing your property taxes
- Bettencourt – not interested in exempting classifications; wants top down behavior that makes sense
- Burrows – understands where Governor is coming from; if question is about creating more exceptions to allow more spending, that is not where he is going no more carve outs and exemptions (gets thumbs up from Bettencourt on comments)
- Burrows – going into a session with a tight budget and will be making cuts; Republicans committed to not raising taxes but the other party in the House have committees formed to “get rid of loopholes” which is code for tax raises on other people while Republicans want to keep taxes low for everyone