Attorney General Ken Paxton has sent letters ordering the cities of La Marque, Odessa, Tom Bean, and Whitesboro to halt potentially illegal property tax increases that might have been adopted in violation of a recently enacted Texas law.
“I have grave concerns that municipalities across Texas have blatantly violated the law in an attempt to crank up people’s property taxes,” said Attorney General Paxton. “My message to these cities is this: don’t mess with Texas taxpayers. Local governments must abide by the law, and I will take every step to defend the people of Texas and their hard-earned dollars.”
SB 1851 was passed during the last legislative session, stipulating that cities that do not meet the State’s auditing requirements may only raise taxes enough to maintain the previous year’s amount of revenue. Texas auditing laws require cities to file their annual report and financial statements by a certain point in the fiscal year, but several municipalities seemingly failed to do so and either submitted their reports late or not at all. Nevertheless, the cities moved to raise property taxes by up to 51%, well above the legally allowed no-new-revenue rate for cities that are out of compliance with state auditing laws. Attorney General Paxton has now sent a letter to the city, instructing it to pause its potentially unlawful planned tax increase.
To read the letter to La Marque, click here.
To read the letter to Odessa, click here.
To read the letter to Tom Bean, click here.
To read the letter to Whitesboro, click here.