Call To Action: Revenue Caps On House Floor and Eligible On Senate Floor

Dear Representative,

The State of Texas relies on its counties to provide basic, essential services and implement many of the laws passed by the Legislature. Counties have no alternative revenue source, such as the sales tax, and must depend upon the property tax to fund these required services. Unfortunately, some in the Legislature may not have taken this into consideration.

The same day the Texas House passed HB 1, which depends on local school property tax revenue increasing during the next biennium, the House Committee on Ways and Means approved HB 2 to cap county revenues at 2.5% per year with a mandatory election for any further increase.

HB 2 excludes school districts – the largest driver of local property taxes and property tax increases – from the reduced revenue cap. It has to because HB 1 relies on school tax revenue increasing to balance the budget.

HB 2 contains no taxpayer protections from the state passing more required services down to be funded at the local level with increased property taxes. So current and future members of the Texas Legislature can demand local tax dollars be spent on new state services, and those new requirements will be counted against the 2.5% cap. Of course, when that happens legislators try to proclaim that they didn’t raise property taxes. That’s just not right.

The state requires local taxpayers to pay for the following state obligations:

• Defense lawyers for poor criminal defendants. Since 2001, these costs have ballooned from $91 million to more than $276 million statewide in FY 2018. Much of that increase is due to a law passed by the Legislature in 2001.
• Attorneys for both children and their abusive parents when the state seeks to take the children from their parents. And because the state does not budget for enough attorneys to represent the Department of Protective and Family Services, local county and district attorneys – paid by local taxpayers – represent the Department for free. So local taxpayers have to pay for attorneys on all sides of these lawsuits. The costs of appointed private attorneys have increased at an average annual rate of more than 5% statewide over the last 5 years to $52 million in 2017. In addition, because the state’s foster care system is in such poor shape, there is legislation moving through the process right now which will require local taxpayers to pay private attorneys for foster kids who are in the custody of the state in order to protect those kids.
• Housing and providing medical care to convicted felons in local jails until the state picks them up and transports them to state prisons, which can take as much as 45 days. The cost to local taxpayers was $94.5 million in 2017.
• Housing and providing medical care to convicted felons on parole in local jails while the state decides whether to revoke parole. On the average day, more than 2,100 of these felons are being held in local jails – all paid for by local taxpayers. In 2017, the cost to local taxpayers was $47.7 million.

In addition, counties are responsible for funding courts, elections, law enforcement and jails, public buildings, public health and indigent medical services, rural fire protection, roads and transportation, and public records. These are just a few examples of the many state costs paid by local property taxes. Some of these services must be reduced or deleted to meet the uncontrollable, increasing costs that consistently exceed 2.5 percent.

Counties continue to serve as the state’s partner in implementing those basic services our citizens demand and expect. We sincerely hope the State Legislature will restore its partnership with counties and stop trying to inhibit counties and their local elected officials from doing their jobs.

We respectfully ask you to continue working with your local county officials to reach a more equitable solution.