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. They walked out having adopted 40.7 cents instead, a half-cent cut decided that afternoon and worth about $6.4 million in revenue the county will now not collect.
The cut moved the county back under a line that matters. Texas caps how far a local government can raise its rate before voters get a say, and the county’s own rate calculation worksheet put that ceiling at 41.156 cents. The 41.2-cent figure on the agenda sat four ten-thousandths of a cent above it. At 40.7 cents the county is below the ceiling and no election is required. The rate that would have raised the same money from the same properties as last year — what the state calls the no-new-revenue rate — is 39.5979 cents, so bills on unchanged property still go up.
The vote was 4-0. It was also the only reason there was a vote at all. Two commissioners had been staying away from the court, and both returned specifically for this item; one said on the record that he had not been sick or on vacation but absent on principle, over whether Interim County Judge Daniel Wong’s term had expired, and that he had come back because a tax rate and a budget were at stake. A member argued on the record that four of the court’s five members were what state law requires to set a rate. Commissioners Vincent Morales, Grady Prestage and Andy Meyers and Judge Wong voted yes. Commissioner Dexter McCoy removed himself just before the roll was called, telling the court he would not participate, as Houston Public Media also reported.
The question McCoy left over did not go away. On the budget, which followed immediately, the court split 3-2, with Prestage and McCoy voting no. Asked in open court what happens to a budget adopted 3-2 if Wong is later found to have lacked authority to sit, a county lawyer answered that the vote becomes 2-2 and “fails,” then declined to say more in public. The tax rate, carried 4-0, does not have that problem.
None of this is easy for a Fort Bend taxpayer to check. The county’s tax rate notices page is still headed “PROPERTY TAX RATES (2025)” and every document on it is from 2025. The four 2026 filenames that would match last year’s set — the notice of public hearing, the rate worksheet, the rate notice and the notice of the meeting to vote on the rate — all return errors, while the 2025 versions load. The county’s 2026 worksheet does exist, on a separate portal the notices page does not point to. Sixteen hours after the vote, that portal still listed the county’s adopted 2026 rate as 0.000000.
Four more of the state’s largest taxing governments decide within the next week, and their documents are now public.
Fort Worth adopts Sept. 15 at 6 p.m. The ordinance drafted for that meeting sets 70.565 cents, split into 55.815 cents for general operations and 14.750 cents for debt, up from 67 cents this year. The ordinance carries the warning state law requires in capital letters: the rate “WILL EFFECTIVELY BE RAISED BY FOUR AND ONE ONE HUNDRETH PERCENT (4.01 %) AND WILL RAISE TAXES FOR MAINTENANCE AND OPERATIONS ON A $100,000 HOME BY APPROXIMATELY $21.54.” The misspelling is in the original.
Dallas adopts Sept. 16. The city posted the agenda at 10:56 p.m. on Sept. 10, and it sets 69.78 cents — 50.75 cents for the general fund and 19.03 cents for debt service — against an estimated levy of $1,658,739,578.
San Antonio and Harris County both act Sept. 17. San Antonio’s two ordinances would set 35.138 cents for city operations and 21.150 cents to pay principal and interest on city debt. Harris County’s budget office has recommended a county rate of 41.750 cents, up from 38.096 cents, and a combined 67.147 cents across the county, the flood control district, the Port of Houston and the hospital district, up from 62.413 cents — a 7.6 percent increase in the rate. Harris County’s Sept. 17 agenda still had no document attached early Sept. 11, though 75 placeholder headings appeared on it late Sept. 10, one of them labeled Tax Rates. The court’s Oct. 6 meeting is canceled, which leaves Sept. 17 as the last date before the fiscal year turns.
The Dispatch reported Sept. 9 that Harris County was moving to the highest rate it can set without asking voters, and on Sept. 2 that three large counties chose three different answers in a single week. Fort Bend’s answer arrived from the dais, five hours before the vote.