February 27, 2015 5:01 PM

Local governments steel for a fight ahead of tax debate

“It’s about local people making local decisions.”

Local governments in Texas are fighting state government for control this legislative session, and could suffer a serious defeat in the Senate as soon as next week.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, filed Senate Bill 182 earlier this year, which reduces the rollback tax rate from 8 percent to 4 percent. Bettencourt will lay out SB 182 with other property tax bills on Monday and public testimony will be taken Wednesday.

For cities as well as counties, SB 182 limits the revenue they collect from their citizens to fund different services like police and fire, said Lonnie Hunt, County Relations Officer with the Texas Association of Counties.

“By law, the main source of revenue counties have is the property tax,” Hunt said. “We don’t like that. Everybody hates the property tax. But, unfortunately, counties don’t have the option of saying, ‘Well, okay, we’ll find our money somewhere else.’ We don’t get all these other fees and taxes and other things other levels of government have access to. But the county sales tax - most counties don’t have that, but the ones that do, that was enacted as a property tax reduction rate.”

By Jackie Wang