Local Government

2025 Governments Lobbying Government: City of Austin

Every year, local governments spend millions hiring lobbyists in the hope of influencing state-level policymaking, both before, during, and after each legislative session. These hired guns generally fall into 1 of 3 categories: external lobbyists (i.e. contract lobbyists); internal lobbyists (i.e. intergovernmental relations (IGR) staff); and publicly-funded pro-government associations (i.e. Texas Municipal League (TML) ,...

February 7, 2025

Local Government

2025 Governments Lobbying Government: City of Dallas

Every year, local governments spend millions hiring lobbyists in the hope of influencing state-level policymaking, both before, during, and after each legislative session. These hired guns generally fall into 1 of 3 categories: external lobbyists (i.e. contract lobbyists); internal lobbyists (i.e. intergovernmental relations (IGR) staff); and publicly-funded pro-government associations (i.e. Texas Municipal League (TML), Texas...

February 7, 2025

Taxes & Spending

Guard the Gains

On Sunday, Governor Greg Abbott delivered the State of the State address, covering a wide range of critical issues, like border security, school choice, and cybersecurity. However, for many tax-weary Texans, his remarks on the property tax were perhaps the most welcome. As he has done on prior occasions, Governor Abbott urged the Legislature to...

February 5, 2025

Taxes & Spending

Back With a Vengeance

In 2023, the Texas Legislature passed a historic tax relief package to lower school taxes, primarily through tax rate compression and an increase in the homestead exemption. Together, these measures were supposed “to cut the average homeowner’s tax bill by roughly $1,300 per year,” thereby providing much-needed relief to those laboring under the twin ills...

February 3, 2025

Taxes & Spending

New Property Tax Report Takeaways

The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts has published a new report offering interesting insights and details on local property tax trends, with a particular emphasis on “tax rate and value information for tax years 2022 and 2023.” This information has the potential to illuminate certain aspects of the hotly anticipated property tax relief and reform...

February 3, 2025

Taxes & Spending

5 Ways to Revamp the Property Tax System

The next Texas Legislature began on January 14, 2025, giving state-level policymakers their next best opportunity to revisit property tax relief and property tax reform. The former refers to lowering tax bills while the latter speaks to keeping them down. This column concerns itself with the latter, tax reform, and offers several suggestions to protect...

January 28, 2025

Taxes & Spending

15 Ways to Fortify the I&S Property Tax

The legislative session has started, giving state lawmakers a chance to tackle both property tax relief and property tax reform. “Relief” refers to lowering tax bills while “reform” speaks to keeping them down. This write-up concerns itself with the latter, tax reform, and offers ideas on better protecting future tax relief from opportunistic local governments....

January 24, 2025

Taxes & Spending

A Good Beginning

There’s an old saying that a good beginning makes a good end. Such will hopefully be the case when the dust settles on the state budget. On Wednesday, leadership in the Texas House and the Texas Senate introduced substantially similar base budget bills that included a raft of praiseworthy elements. For instance, both proposals held...

January 22, 2025

Taxes & Spending

15 Ways to Improve the M&O Property Tax

Texas taxpayers are eager for the start of the next legislative session so that policymakers can tackle 2 big things next session: property tax relief and property tax reform. The former refers to lowering tax bills while the latter speaks to keeping them down. When considering tax reform, there are 3 major areas to take...

January 14, 2025

Taxes & Spending

Texas Local Debt Soars to $500 Billion

New data from the Bond Review Board (BRB) shows an alarming increase in Texas local debt.  In fact, according to BRB’s latest estimates, which were secured using a Public Information Act request, the total amount owed by cities, counties, school districts, and special districts grew to a combined $499.7 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2024....

January 10, 2025

Taxes & Spending

What’s the Plan, Coppell ISD?

On Tuesday, the Dallas Morning News’ editorial board shared a bit of bad news about Coppell ISD (CISD), a public school district located in the suburbs of north Dallas. According to the write-up: “Coppell school board members got a hard pill to swallow when their demographer projected lower-than-expected enrollment numbers for the next decade…[CISD] has...

January 7, 2025

Taxes & Spending

Tracking Trends: Brownsville-Area Governments

Are Brownsville-area governments treating taxpayers well? To answer that question, I recently gathered data from several different sources—including the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Estimates; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index; Texas Comptroller of Public Account’s Tax Rates and Levies; and Texas Education Agency’s Student Enrollment Reports—to determine the 5-year growth rate of population...

January 2, 2025