This week, the Harris County Commissioner’s Court met to discuss the possibility of raising taxes next year. The reason? “People need more of us,” according to Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Judge Hidalgo is partially right—people are in need. The government lockdown and oil market chaos has unleashed a wave of human suffering. Consider that...
As if Texans don’t have enough to worry about with the current pandemic and labor market woes, some cities are threatening to make things worse with massive tax increases. On July 14, the Pflugerville City Council passed a resolution directing the Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector “to calculate the voter-approval tax rate of the City of...
Millions of Texans lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet some large, liberal cities are dangerously close to raising taxes in a big way—possibly in violation of state law. In the 2019 session, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 2 which limited how fast local property tax revenues could rise without voter approval. Property...
Texas’ largest cities are drowning in debt. The latest data from the Bond Review Board reveals that Texas’ five most populated cities owe a combined $57.7 billion. Here is how they compare individually. Big City Debt Austin: $10.5 billion Dallas: $7 billion Fort Worth: $2.7 billion Houston: $20.2 billion San Antonio: $17.3 billion There are...
Despite the current economic crisis, Dallas ISD is poised to ask for voters to approve a $3.7 billion bond. While the timing is rather alarming, there are more concerns than meets the eye. While DISD is considering building at least 10 new schools and 14 replacement schools, its enrollment numbers have seen a steady, long-term...
Even though there’s a pandemic happening, Dallas ISD is asking voters to support to a jaw-dropping $3.7 billion bond to fund campus improvements, new schools, and security and technology purchases. This request comes just five years after voters approved a $1.6 billion bond in 2015 for similar projects. The sheer magnitude of the district’s proposed...
Despite ongoing economic carnage (the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic), Dallas ISD appears poised to ask voters to support a mammoth $3.7 billion bond package—“the largest bond request by any type of taxing entity in Texas history.” The district hopes to use these borrowed billions to build “[n]ew and more efficient security technology, 14 new...
No one likes to diet. It’s hard and takes an awful lot of willpower. But sometimes life doesn’t give you a choice. Recent unemployment data from the Texas Workforce Commission has set off alarm bells and revealed some brutal new realities. For April, the state’s unemployment rate jumped to almost 13 percent as “the Texas...
With government asking citizens to show remarkable restraint by preventing them from earning a living and supporting their families, it is not too much to ask for the same restraint in our legal system. However, a Dallas judge took the extreme step of jailing Shelley Luther, who refused to close her hair salon, thereby exposing...
Answer: Almost $600,000! According to the Texas Education Agency’s Superintendent Salary Reports, Point Isabel ISD’s superintendent took home $589,400 for the 2019-20 school year. That amount excludes pricey perks too, which oftentimes include things like performance and retention bonuses; housing, car, and cell phone allowances; health insurance; a defined benefit pension plan; retirement contributions; membership...
For years, city halls around the state spent like drunken sailors, acting as if Texas’ economic expansion was without end. And then the crisis came. Now cities are weathering a deluge of bad budget news, with some expecting the worst. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said recently, “We work on the budget year round, and we anticipate even...
Both of these things can be (and are) true: Paid sick leave is a wonderful employee benefit, particularly during a pandemic, when we’re all worried about our family’s health. And government has no business mandating paid sick leave policies. A new Austin American-Statesman editorial calls on the state of Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott to...