Chasing the Wind

First, our Texas government says they have more money than ever. In fact, they have too much.

[Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton] Strayhorn estimated legislators will have $64.7 billion in state revenue to spend in the upcoming two-year budget — $6.4 billion more than they had in January 2003.

Then they say they need more:

[Texas municipalities] do not want new laws that erode municipal powers. They do not want any legislation that requires them to spend more money. And they do not want lawmakers capping property tax rates.

Emphasis mine. Why is the Texas legislature awash with cash? Because they get a free bump in property taxes every year when property values go up. Citizen groups like C.L.O.U.T. and AppraisalCap.com formed a couple of years ago to combat this; when property values go up, the taxes go up, too, and price you right out of your own home.

Imagine you bought a house for $150,000, and stretched yourself financially thin to get into it. 7 years later, your house is worth $200,000. Are you in good shape? Absolutely not – your taxes have now gone from $4200 a year to $5610, or $117 more each month.

What if you were a little old lady with a tiny house in a newly popular section of town like West University? Your property value may have tripled or more, but you’re on a fixed income. Where are you going to get the hundreds of dollars more you need just to pay taxes?

C.L.O.U.T. is trying to cap the appraisal rate growth, which can go up 10% each year. At that rate, your taxes can double every 7 years. C.L.O.U.T. isn’t even concerned about the actual tax rate, they just want to cap how fast it goes up, to 3% a year to more or less match inflation. Yet the sinister Texas Municipal League (funded by our tax dollars to campaign for more taxes!) opposes any cap. “More taxes!” they keep screaming.

Do you know how much it bothers me that I pay 50% more property tax than when I bought my house 5 years ago, knowing that my taxes are funding an organization that wants my taxes to go up even more? That ought to be illegal.

The state legislature is going to vote on this again this year, having voted against lowering the appraisal cap rate the last 2 years. After that, the whole lot of them should be voted out of office and replaced with a black hole that sucks in everything around it with no escape. That would be a lot more efficient.