Texas Local Debt Service Tops $552 Billion, and a House Panel Splits on the Remedy
Texas local governments owe $552 billion in debt service, and $330 billion of that is principal.
Texas local governments owe $552 billion in debt service, and $330 billion of that is principal.
Texas lawmakers have cut school property taxes in three straight sessions and committed roughly $51 billion of the current budget to keeping those cuts in place.
Amarillo told its residents in August that the coming city budget would raise $1,596,402 more in property taxes than last year's, an increase of 1.94 percent.
The Texas House Committee on Ways and Means meets at 10 a.m. Sept. 15 to take testimony on how local governments spend and borrow, and on whether the Legislature should cap the growth of both.
Corpus Christi's city council set its property tax rate on Sept. 8 at $0.599774 per $100 of value — the identical rate it charged last year, to the sixth decimal place.
The board of Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, the third-largest school system in Texas, is scheduled to decide Sept. 14 whether sixteen of its teachers quit without good cause — a finding that would send each of their names to the state agency that can suspend a teaching certificate.
Corpus Christi can continue holding back the fresh water it owes Nueces Bay until its reservoirs are half full, Texas environmental regulators decided Sept. 9, affirming a drought emergency order without changing a word.
Fort Bend County commissioners walked into their chambers on Sept. 10 to adopt a property tax rate of 41.2 cents per $100 of value, the rate printed on their own agenda.
Fort Worth raised its property tax rate by 3.2 cents this year.
Harris County commissioners voted Sept. 8 to advance a property tax rate for the coming year that sits at the exact ceiling state law allows them to set without holding an election, and the county’s own notice says the owner of a median-valued home would pay $86 more because of it.