Rhetoric vs. action

The budget from Patrick’s Senate all but guarantees higher property taxes.

Dan Patrick wants to raise your property taxes.

That’s the only conclusion we can reach after reading the Texas Senate’s proposed budget.

The lieutenant governor can’t do that, of course. At least not directly. A statewide property tax is unconstitutional in Texas. Only certain local authorities, like cities, school districts and counties, can levy property taxes.

But that won’t stop Patrick from trying. His state budget, sponsored by state Sen. Jane Nelson, brazenly underfunds health services and public education, inevitably pushing the tax burden onto local property owners. Even the most fiscally conservative school board member or county commissioner will get caught in Patrick’s trap as state funding dwindles and recapture siphons your school taxes. Services can only be cut so far. Students will still need teachers. Patients will still need doctors. And property taxes will be the only revenue stream available to fund them.

State budgets used to be a pipeline that helped shore up local needs. Now the former talk radio host is throwing the whole thing in reverse. Homeowners are paying so that Patrick can claim a false mantle of fiscal responsibility.

Just look at Houston-area school districts.

Thanks to recapture, also known as the “Robin Hood” school finance system, Spring Branch ISD sends three times as much in local taxes up to Austin, $66 million, than it receives in state funding, $17.5 million. La Porte ISD pays 38.6 percent of its tax revenues to the state. Galveston ISD pays 27 percent. And Houston ISD is still stuck dealing with a recapture payment of $162 million, though voters chose to detach property instead. At least we don’t have it as bad as taxpayers in Austin ISD. By 2019, recapture will suck up more than half of every tax dollar collected by that school district.

All across the state, local funding for school districts has grown by 44 percent since 2008, but state funding has only grown at 7 percent. In 2017, about $2 billion will be sent up to legislative coffers under recapture. HISD taxpayers alone will have to pay $1 billion over the next four years. Those property tax dollars could have stayed in homeowners’ pockets if the state had only paid its share.

As Texas Tribune reporter Ross Ramsey put it, “You can forgive your local school board members for smacking their foreheads: This budget proposal comes from some of the same legislators who have been railing against rising local property taxes and promising voters the remedy is to harness spendthrift local governments.”

Patrick is trying to pull this same trick with healthcare funding. The Senate budget accounts for neither Medicaid enrollment growth nor the increasing cost of health care. Refusing to fund something doesn’t mean that it goes away — it just means that local property taxes will have to make up the difference.

Even the Railroad Commission’s duties might have to be supplemented by local property taxes. The threemember board in charge of regulating the oil and gas industry is in dire need of funding to help clean up abandoned wells and other oil field remnants after the oil bust caused industry payments to plummet. So what did Patrick’s Senate budget do? It cut the Commission’s funding. Don’t be surprised when county taxpayers get stuck with the bill to fix sinkholes and contaminated water supplies.

Of course, there is an alternative to Patrick’s property taxes: Speaker of the House Joe Straus.

His budget fulfills the basic duties of keeping up with expected growth and health care costs, properly funding the Railroad Commission, and providing a $1.5 billion incentive to fix school funding so that the state doesn’t have to keep relying on recaptured property taxes. Straus pulls off this feat by cutting back on a spike in spending along the border and drawing down from the rainy day fund.

In contrast, school finance reform was nowhere to be found on Patrick’s top 25 priorities for the legislative session. Your property taxes just aren’t as important as his potty patrol.

Patrick spares no rhetoric about the burdens of the property tax on Texas families. Don’t listen to what he says. Look at what he does. Look at how he balances his budget. Patrick needs your local property taxes to fund his statewide agenda. Texans shouldn’t let him get away with it.