House passes flurry of bills

Legislative leaders agree on budget, not property taxes

AUSTIN — After two weeks of political brinksmanship, the Texas House on Saturday approved key bills needed to avoid a special legislative session, though a controversial property tax reform measure passed without provisions requiring automatic rollback elections that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and senators had demanded.

Included in the fast-paced actions over just five hours was an agreement between Senate and House leaders on an approximately $218 billion state budget, the single bill the Legislature had to pass before it adjourns May 29, which includes tapping the state’s savings account for several one-time expenses including a reported $75 million for the Alamo preservation project in San Antonio.

Among other budget details that were slowly being announced late Saturday: Both chambers agreed to use accounting maneuvers to more fully fund some programs, despite earlier disagreement; additional funding was earmarked for Gov. Greg Abbott’s request for high-quality pre-K programs, the Texas Enterprise Fund business-incentive program and film incentives; and many cuts proposed by the Senate to higher education were restored. Public education stands to gain an additional $1.5 billion.

The House also approved

an important “sunset safety net” measure to extend the life of five state agencies by amending another bill, a signal that House Speaker Joe Straus had regained political leverage over Patrick and the Senate. Straus lieutenants said the votes show the House is not bowing to pressure from the Senate.

Even so, in a statement through his spokesman, Alejandro Garcia, Patrick claimed he had “used his leverage effectively” to gain action on his priorities.

“The lieutenant governor has already been successful in his goal of a conservative budget that does not use Rainy Day Funds for on-going expenses,” Garcia said.

Patrick also had demanded the House approve the Senate’s controversial “bathroom bill.” House leaders said Saturday night a much-revised version might be considered on Sunday.

On a day when the logjam of key legislation appeared to be broken, after weeks of public bickering and threats between the legislative chambers, the passage of the propertytax reform measure and the safety-net bill, along with an agreement on the budget, signaled that the chances of a special session were likely diminishing.

Top priority

At a time when Texans are increasingly angry about skyrocketing property-tax rates, the issue has been a top issue this session for Abbott, Patrick and Straus — though there has been disagreement between the chambers about how best to change the current system, with local governments lobbying intensely against any reforms that would limit their ability to cover their rising costs in a state with a mushrooming population and revenues that are heavily dependent on property taxes because Texas has no income tax.

Supporters of the House-passed reform measure contended Saturday its stronger notification requirements about tax hikes and changes in how appraisal boards are set up will benefit taxpayers with more transparency, and will force local governments to annually publicize a “no-new-revenue” tax rate, with a comparison of the rate they are proposing, to allow property owners to challenge the higher rate before it takes effect.

Opponents said rollback-election provisions left out of the House version would have given taxpayers more clout to push back against higher rates, by requiring voters to approve tax rates if revenues from the change were to exceed 5 percent. The House version leaves the “rollback” threshold at 8 percent — and only triggers an election if constituents successfully petition for a vote.

The House-passed taxreform measure, once finally approved, will go back to the Senate for the negotiation of a final version. That must be agreed to and approved by both legislative chambers within the next week.

The Senate bill had been scheduled twice for votes in the House starting Thursday, delayed each time by procedural and record-keeping miscues that had sent it back to the House Ways and Means Committee to be brought back to life. Rather than bring up Senate Bill 2 for debate on Saturday, the House sponsor of it, state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, RAngleton, in an unexpected move instead attached the revised wording as an amendment to Senate Bill 669, a measure making changes to the appraisal review process and arbitration.

“It will end the practice that happens on occasion where a mayor or city council says, ‘We lowered your tax rate, but we increased our revenue’,” Bonnen said, explaining “if you don’t like what’s happening on this rate, it tells you the date of the public hearing on that tax rate and it tells you the place.”

‘This is a farce’

Bonnen, who had been pushing for property-tax reform all session, said the approved House version will allow taxpayers to see which taxing entity is raising their taxes, before they do it. Under current law, local governments are not required to provide that detail in advance.

Bonnen contended the House version will be “holding everyone accountable.”

Conservative House Republicans tried, without success, to get the tougher Senate provisions put back into the bill.

Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, derided Bonnen for stripping a Senate-backed provision that would trigger a rollback election if local elected officials raise property taxes by more than 5 percent in one year. At one point, the two lawmakers yelled at one another as they tried to control the debate, underscoring the strong sentiments on each side of the issue.

“This is a farce,” Stickland insisted. “This is part of a victory, part of a victory.”

Stickland conceded that while the House version “does help alleviate some of the problems, and I would count this as a win … I’m very concerned that this is not the win this body should be producing today.

“Why aren’t we going further?” he asked. “Could we put more teeth in your property tax reform?”

Bonnen responded that adding the Senate’s rollback to his amendment, as some far-right Republicans had attempted, was not germane to the underlying bill and defended his plan as a sounder policy.

“I also don’t believe changing the rollback rate is a panacea for taxpayers,” he said. “I actually fear, although I do support the concept, that we will do what we’ve done in many other instances: setting rollbacks and caps that we then will tell taxpayers if they’re going up 3 percent, don’t worry about it.”

Texans should not have to wait until their property taxes go above a specified percent change before they are allowed to take recourse, Bonnen added.

Before relenting, Stickland said Bonnen’s proposal did not go far enough, citing the Republican Party of Texas’ platform calling for more sweeping reforms — and eventual abolition — of state property taxes.

Bennett Sandlin, executive director of Texas Municipal League that had opposed the Senate plan, said the agency “can live with this version.” Bobby Cervantes contributed to this report.