Everyone wants lower property taxes. That is what makes the Texas Taxpayer Empowerment Plan powerful. It promises local spending limits, voter approval of tax increases, slower appraisal growth and elimination of school property taxes for homeowners.
Texans should control their taxes. Governments should justify spending. No homeowner should be taxed out of a home they own.
But lawmakers should test this plan beyond a campaign stage. They should test it in rural Texas.
Gov. Greg Abbott’s outline would limit local spending growth to population growth plus inflation or 3.5%, whichever is lower. It would require two-thirds voter approval for property-tax increases, allow 15% of registered voters to petition for a rollback election, appraise property once every five years, lower the homestead appraisal cap from 10% to 3%, extend it to other property, and ask voters to eliminate school property taxes on homesteads.
Major details remain unanswered: how inflation would be measured, which spending would be covered, what increase triggers a two-thirds vote.
In my hometown, we are not adding residents, subdivisions or businesses. Yet the city maintains streets, water and sewer systems, police and fire protection, parks and an airport — on a limited tax base and a flat population. Police vehicles, insurance, concrete and engineering do not come with a rural discount.
My economic development corporation’s Rural Core research project found that 97.7% of the increase in taxable value over the past two years came from reappraising existing property. Only 2.3% came from new construction and improvement. That is not growth. Existing property was simply assigned more taxable value.
Reappraisal can make a rural community look wealthier on paper without adding a single employer. The governor’s appraisal cap and five-year cycle may slow how fast increases reach taxpayers, but they don’t answer the real question: are rural properties valued at what they could actually sell for? Delaying an appraisal does not correct an inaccurate one.
Meanwhile, the spending cap treats local spending as the enemy. In rural Texas, fiscal responsibility is already a necessity, not a talking point. A statewide formula could deny small towns the flexibility to invest in parks, pools, libraries and downtowns — the projects that keep families and keep towns alive. Rural towns deserve nice things too.
Local voters already choose the people who set local budgets, and they can vote them out when they get it wrong. A two-thirds requirement changes that math. Even when most voters support a project, a little more than one-third can kill it. That hands a minority the power to overrule the majority on decisions that should be made at home.
The school proposal carries the greatest risk. Eliminating school property taxes would give homeowners immediate relief, but it would shift a permanent obligation from a stable local revenue source to the state budget — without naming a permanent source to replace it.
Conservative budgeting used to mean paying ongoing responsibilities with ongoing revenue, not a temporary surplus. In 2011, facing a budget shortfall, lawmakers cut $5.4 billion from public education. What happens during the next downturn, once the state owns the local share of school funding? Rural schools will be back in Austin every session, hat in hand, asking lawmakers to keep the promises they’re making today.
Local effort also supports local control. When Austin writes every check, Austin gains leverage over what schools receive and how they operate. Texas already spends thousands less per student than the national average. Between vouchers and dependence on biennial appropriations, rural districts could spend years asking permission just to operate.
Here’s the more important conversation: before the Governor and legislators limits what rural communities can raise and spend, state leaders should look at their own record — on schools, rural roads and water infrastructure — first.
Here’s one practical idea: require a Rural Impact Statement before lawmakers vote on a major tax proposal. Just as a fiscal note tells legislators what a bill costs the state, a Rural Impact Statement should tell them what it costs small towns — their infrastructure, their emergency needs, their schools, their local control.
Eighty-nine Republican House incumbents and nominees have signed the governor’s property-tax pledge. The devil is in the details. Next time a candidate signs a pledge like this at a rally, don’t just take the photo. Ask them what, exactly, they endorsed. Which inflation measure governs our towns? Will emergency repairs be exempt? What permanent revenue replaces school taxes?
Property-tax relief matters. But taxpayer empowerment should not mean starving rural communities or shipping their decisions to Austin. Any Texas tax plan must work in rural Texas, too.
Suzanne Bellsnyder is editor and publisher of the Hansford County Reporter-Statesman and Sherman County Gazette. A former Capitol staffer with decades of experience in Texas politics and policy, she now focuses on how state decisions shape rural life through her newspapers, including the Texas Rural Reporter.