House Ways and Means to Weigh Deeper Property Tax Cuts and Curbs on Local Debt

The Texas House Committee on Ways and Means will gavel in at 10 a.m. Sept. 15 to take invited and public testimony on whether Texas can cut property taxes further and on how local governments borrow and spend the money those taxes secure. Anyone planning to submit written testimony or handouts must email them to committee clerk Ryan Marquess by Sept. 10 — a deadline that falls days before the hearing — and public testimony at the microphone will be limited to two minutes. The committee has also moved rooms: a revised notice puts the hearing in Capitol Extension room E2.014.

Rep. Morgan Meyer, R–Dallas, chairs the 13-member panel — seven Republicans and six Democrats — with Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D–San Antonio, as vice chair, according to the committee’s page. Ways and Means holds jurisdiction over every bill that raises state revenue, levies a state tax or touches the Tax Code, along with oversight of the Comptroller of Public Accounts and the Multistate Tax Commission. It is the committee where the House’s half of any 2027 tax package will be written.

The monitoring charge covers two laws that took effect Sept. 1, 2025, both of them written by members sitting on the dais. House Bill 103, authored by Rep. Ellen Troxclair, R–Lakeway, with Meyer, Rep. Cody Vasut, R–Angleton, Rep. Eddie Morales, D–Eagle Pass, and Rep. Hillary Hickland, R–Belton, creates a searchable database of taxing unit bond, tax and bond-related project information and provides a civil penalty. House Bill 148, by Rep. Chris Turner, D–Grand Prairie, tightened the qualifications for appraisal district board candidates and the training required of members once seated; this committee reported it 13-0. Both are now in their second year, and both feed the transparency argument members will make on the next two charges.

The property tax relief charge asks the committee to build on what the 89th Legislature did. Senate Bill 4 by Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R–Houston, raised the school district residence homestead exemption to $140,000, and his Senate Bill 23 raised it to $200,000 for homeowners who are elderly or disabled. What that bought is now measurable: Bettencourt, who chairs the Senate Local Government Committee, told that panel on Sept. 1 that 39.23 percent of Texas homesteads now owe no school property tax at all, and 61 percent of homeowners 65 and older or disabled owe none. Members are directed to weigh the cost and benefit of compressing school district tax rates against a further exemption increase, to judge whether the appraisal system is working as intended, and to assess whether state revenue can sustain the relief already promised — a question that runs through the comptroller’s monthly collections reports, the latest of which put August sales tax revenue at $4.62 billion, up 7.1 percent from a year earlier.

The local government spending charge is the sharper of the two. It singles out certificates of obligation, the debt instrument that lets Texas cities, counties and districts borrow without a bond election unless residents petition first. The Dispatch reported in June on a single example of the arithmetic: Marshall’s city council took up $35 million in certificates for water and sewer work carrying an estimated $68.58 million in combined principal and interest and a final maturity in 2056. Members are also asked to examine fees and other non-tax revenue local governments use to expand spending, and to recommend limits on that growth. Some limits already bind: the Dispatch reported that scores of Texas cities entered this rate-setting season barred from raising property taxes.

The agency oversight charge, brought under Section 301.014 of the Government Code, reaches the Comptroller of Public Accounts and the Multistate Tax Commission. Comptroller Don Huffines has spent the year remaking the office, launching a Taxpayer First Project to overhaul state tax administration and pressing local governments to lower their rates, putting the agency’s own conduct inside the property tax debate.

Because this is an interim hearing, the committee will take no votes and no legislation is before it. What members hear will shape the panel’s interim report and the tax bills filed for the 90th Legislature, which convenes in January 2027.

Meeting at a glance

Committee members

• Rep. Morgan Meyer, R–Dallas (HD-108) — Chair
• Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D–San Antonio (HD-116) — Vice Chair
• Rep. Diego Bernal, D–San Antonio (HD-123)
• Rep. Angie Chen Button, R–Garland (HD-112)
• Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R–Southlake (HD-98)
• Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, D–San Antonio (HD-120)
• Rep. Hillary Hickland, R–Belton (HD-55)
• Rep. Sergio Muñoz Jr., D–Mission (HD-36)
• Rep. Candy Noble, R–Lucas (HD-89)
• Rep. Vincent Perez, D–El Paso (HD-77)
• Rep. Ellen Troxclair, R–Lakeway (HD-19)
• Rep. Chris Turner, D–Grand Prairie (HD-101)
• Rep. Cody Vasut, R–Angleton (HD-25)