Senator: Harvey tax hikes ‘callous’

Bettencourt slams local governments on recovery moves

AUSTIN — One of the top Republicans leaders in the Texas Legislature is slamming the city of Houston and other local governments for trying to raise taxes on homeowners in the name of hurricane recovery.

And he’s certain the increase will provoke a response of some sort from the Legislature.

“I don’t understand this mindset,” state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, said. “It’s callous.”

He said homes have been flooded and damaged, and local governments’ first reaction appears to be raise taxes on those same people even though local officials have emergency funds and federal aid is on the way.

“It’s beyond tone deaf,” said Bettencourt, who is the chairman of the Senate’s Republican caucus. “I don’t believe governments should be showing this type of attitude when people are down.”

But Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office said they are left with few other choices. The city already dipped into its emergency funds and while they are getting federal help, they city is still left with 10 percent of the debris removal costs, said Alan Bernstein, communications director for Turner.

“So how’s it going to get done?”

Bernstein asked if the city doesn’t get additional revenue to pay for it all.

Turner last week rolled out a plan to increase the tax rate from 58.64 cents per $100 of appraised value — the lowest city tax rate since the late 1980s — to 63.87 cents to help pay for the damage Hurricane Harvey caused.

Turner has said the increase would generate an extra $113 million for one year to help the city cleanup after Harvey. The average Houston owner of a $225,000 home with a standard homestead exemption would pay $118 more in property taxes next year under the proposal, according to the mayor’s office.

Houston is not the only local government to seek a tax increase for hurricane response. Pearland is seeking a 2.8 percent increase in its tax rate, to 70 cents per $100 of valuation, because of anticipated stormrelated expenses.

Missouri City, Sugar Land, Galveston and Pasadena all have proposed tax rate increases, but those were planned before Harvey’s arrival.

Bettencourt said raising taxes now is a “huge mistake” that is not going to go over well with homeowners who have their own storm damage to worry about.

“Taxpayers are going to be furious,” Bettencourt said.

Bettencourt has long been critical of the pace at which he said local governments have been raising taxes. During the Legislature’s session in the spring and during a special session in the summer, Bettencourt pushed a tax reform plan that would have made it harder for local government to raise taxes without a public vote.

But at the same time, the Senate rejected a similar House tax reform plan that included a provision that could have helped stormdamaged homes keep taxes lower. Under the House proposal, if homes were damaged by a natural disaster like a hurricane, it would have required a new assessment of the property to account for the damage, theoretically lowering the taxes for damaged homes.

That provision never was considered by the Senate and the tax reform package as a whole failed.

Bettencourt said the tax increases will almost certainly provoke a response from the Legislature and have “lasting implications.”

He said he once thought governments should have more flexibility to raise taxes to help pay for emergencies, but now, he said he’s less supportive of allowing even those exceptions give how fast some governments are moving to increase taxes.