Thanks to Tarrant County for setting the bad example.
The Tarrant Appraisal District’s recent changes to local tax policy might violate Texas law, according to a state lawmaker.
“I don’t believe the actions they’ve taken are legal,” Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said at a Senate Committee on Finance hearing in early September.
Bettencourt is the architect behind a constitutional amendment that reshaped the way taxing districts are governed in Texas. The amendment approved by voters in November gave residents the power to elect some appraisal district board members for the first time in history. Now, the lawmaker is concerned about the legality of the Tarrant Appraisal District’s subsequent shift in direction, which included major changes to its reappraisal plan — and he’s not the only one.
The Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, which explores the tax and fiscal impacts of proposed legislation, published a report detailing the ways in which Tarrant’s actions could violate state law. The district’s actions, the report states, “raise concerns about equal and uniform taxation, the scope of a (board of directors’) legal authority, and the integrity of the property tax system” should other taxing entities follow in Tarrant’s steps.
But legal concerns haven’t stopped other county appraisal districts from doing just that. Several counties have followed the lead of the Tarrant Appraisal District by enacting changes to their reappraisal plans, including moving reappraisals to once every three years, requiring a new level of evidence to raise property values, and freezing values after a successful protest.
Such changes are a few examples of the way that appraisal districts across Texas are grappling with the unforeseen consequences of a paradigm shift in the way county appraisal district board members are selected. The May elections largely flew under the radar; in Tarrant, they attracted only 6% of registered voters, and turnout rates were far lower in many less populous counties.
Since then, newly elected board members have taken action to address statewide frustration with the property tax burden faced by homeowners. Residents who fear being taxed out of their homes have praised efforts to change reappraisal plans while school districts have derided them, arguing that changes to how properties are assessed will wreak havoc on school finances.
Brent South, chief appraiser for Hunt County and the legislative chair for the Texas Association of Appraisal Districts, said the association didn’t really know what to expect when voters first approved the new elected positions. The association has always taken the position that politics and appraisals don’t mix, and the elections represented a fresh injection of politics into the system.
“And so there was some concern,” he said. “You don’t know the sky is falling until the sky is falling, and while I’m not saying the sky is falling, appraisal is a science.”
South said messing with that science — which is mandated by Texas tax code — could spell trouble.
“If boards of directors are dictating that the appraisal district should no longer appraise at market value, it kind of creates a conflict with what we’re required to do and what the local boards are expecting to be done,” he said.
There’s a lot more, so read the rest. One aspect of this that this story covers but I don’t recall seeing anything about before all the elections was that the Bettencourt bill/amendment largely undoes a signature law from 1979 (called the “Peveto bill” after its author, then-Rep. Wayne Peveto) that created the central appraisal districts and was intended to de-politicize the appraisal process. I like to say that you can’t take the politics out of an inherently political thing, and one can certainly debate how successful the Peveto bill was by its own standards.
But however you look at it, the Bettencourt bill was a huge change from that, one that got basically no debate and no public information beforehand. What it did get was slates of candidates like the three who were elected in Tarrant County (the story also looks at Johnson County, which went further than Tarrant, and Bexar County, which was a lot more modest in its changes) who came in with an agenda and bulled their way through it. And now not only does even Paul freaking Bettencourt think they may have overdone it (thanks for your concern, dude!), but cities and school districts are worried about what it all will do to their finances going forward.
At least here in Harris County we narrowly avoided that fate, thank to Kathy Blueford-Daniels’ win in May. That will only hold if Annette Ramirez wins the Tax Assessor race in November, so don’t get complacent. Maybe Bettencourt will try to clean up his mess a little in the next session. There will be November elections for these positions going forward, though as far as I can tell they will still be conducted as non-partisan races, which will give the zealots some cover. Go read that story and see what we thankfully missed out on, this time. Next time, let’s try to give ourselves some more cushion. Reform Austin has more.