Read voters’ lips

The mayor’s property tax plan was legal and fiscally responsible, but now is not the time.

Next week, Houstonians will begin casting early votes in one of the most important bond referendums in the city’s history.

Watching a talented quarterback bobble the ball on the 1-yard line is exasperating, especially in an important game.

So it’s no surprise the city controller and council members this week were frustrated with Mayor Sylvester Turner. He had done a remarkable job of carrying the ball right up to the goal line; he has been on the verge of solving Houston’s potentially catastrophic pension problem. But days before voters begin casting their ballots on a related bond issue, Turner startled City Hall with an ill-timed proposal that would deny homeowners a small property tax cut.

The mayor wanted to sidestep the city’s revenue cap, which he’s allowed to do because Hurricane Harvey put the city under a federal disaster declaration. But the move generated needless controversy, and council members who fully support the pension plan were right to reject the proposal. Most important of all, voters must not let this distract them from supporting crucial bond issues on the ballot.

The revenue cap became a lightning rod for controversy when the mayor proposed basically suspending it and raising the tax rate by 8.9 percent in the wake of Harvey. But he pointedly suggested the tax hike wouldn’t be necessary if the state government would tap its Rainy Day Fund to help Houston pay disaster expenses. If the mayor hoped to pressure Gov. Greg Abbott into opening the state’s checkbook, the tactic worked. The governor bowed to intense criticism and presented Turner with a $50 million check to help fund the city’s disaster recovery effort. At that point, the mayor dropped his proposed property tax hike.

But on Monday, City Controller Chris Brown circulated a memo saying that the mayor once again planned to sidestep the revenue cap, which would have required a small cut in the property tax rate. Instead, the mayor intended to keep the tax rate at its current level for another year. The impact on taxpayers would have been negligible — the average homeowner would have paid another $7 next year — but it would have raise another $7.8 million for the city government.

The mayor argued that the city essentially did the same thing after floods in two previous years by including disaster relief expenses in its calculations. That surprised council members, who didn’t recall any similar controversy when they voted on the tax rate the last couple of years.

No doubt the city needs the money. The mayor’s property tax plan was perfectly legal and fiscally responsible. But its rollout was badly mishandled and the pointless controversy it generated couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Next week, Houstonians will begin casting early votes in one of the most important bond referendums in the city’s history. One of the five issues on the ballot would authorize selling $1 billion in pension obligation bonds that would help pull the city out of a financial sinkhole. Passing that bond issue is absolutely crucial to our city’s future. The last thing we need is angry voters taking out their frustrations on Turner’s hard won pension plan.

In the end, most of the mayor’s traditional allies on council voted against his property tax rate. Instead, they decided to set the rate in line with the strictures of the revenue cap. As a number of them pointed out, losing $7.8 million in revenue is paltry compared with the consequences of losing the pension bond vote.

Even though the mayor’s proposal made fiscal sense, its timing was politically tone deaf. City council was right to lower the tax rate. Nothing should distract voters from passing the pension bonds.