“This is the time to tighten our belts, and limit unnecessary expenditures. That’s what the State of Texas, local businesses and families across Texas are doing, I believe local governments must do the same, or risk facing the consequences of fighting this battle. A legal fight to raise property taxes, could cost taxpayers and communities even more of their hard-earned money,” said state Senator Robert Nichols according to the Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel.
He’s talking about rapacious local government officials claiming the WuFlu issue qualifies as a “disaster” that exempts them from SB2’s automatic voter approval election for any property tax increase over 3.5%.
Senator Robert Nichols
“Gov. Greg Abbott has already warned local governments not to raise taxes. Nichols was co-author of Senate Bill 2, which lowered the amount cities and counties could increase taxes each year from 8% to 3.5% [without voter approval.] That law also created an exemption to allow governments to bypass that cap in the case of a state or federal disaster declaration in their area,” the Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel reported.
“Some counties and cities have interpreted this provision to apply to both physical disasters, such as Hurricane Harvey, and financial disasters, such as an economic downturn,” Senator Nichols said and nearby Angelina County is an example. The Lufkin Daily News reported that Angelina County commissioners approved an order to raise taxes over 3.5% without a vote of the people.
There is much abuse of taxpayers from local officials and remember that you cannot count on most local media to report truthfully if tax increases are proposed as I’ve documented many times.
No mention of a new or proposed tax rate is meaningful as to whether or not such is a tax increase or decrease unless it is compared directly to the Effective Tax Rate. If the new proposed tax rate is above the Effective Rate they are proposing a tax increase, if below the Effective Rate then it’s a tax cut.
See my commentaries that well explain how property taxes work here.
Appreciate your informing the public of this serious increase cost when most businesses are having to significallyvcut costs, cut salaries, cut inventories, cut hours, cut brnefits, and still be in danger. The federal benefits only become available to a subset of businesses simply due to shortsge of funds, complications of required banks involvement were often not able to respond timely, and added debt generally has to be repaid at the same time economy is struggling to recover. The incredible pushback on disclosure of treatment protocols will likely extend the COVID-19 suppression indefinitely.
Scurry County Government did that. Told everyone they would close everything down in Scurry County as budget was overspent. So they voted and raised taxes for 2020 by 25%. Then they closed everything anyway due to covid but our taxes are raised 25%. The most crooked local government I’ve seen in Scurry County!