AUSTIN (Nexstar) — As top Texas Republicans show scant signs of progress towards a deal to lower property taxes, some Democrats in the Texas House are taking the impasse as an opportunity to present their own ideas.
State. Rep. John Bryant, D-Dallas, led a small coalition of progressives on Thursday in supporting a new package of property tax relief measures that tops out larger than any other proposal yet.
His bill proposes $20.9 billion to provide homestead exemptions of up to $200,000, cash rebates to renters, permanent pay raises to teachers, and some cuts to school district tax rates.
“Texans pay the fifth highest property taxes in the nation, yet our state is 44th in its support for public education. Neither ranking is acceptable,” Bryant said. “We believe a property tax relief plan should simultaneously address both.”
A recap of the 9:30 a.m. news conference is available in the video player below.
House Bill 62 increases the basic allotment for public schools by $1,000 and indexes it to inflation, creating a permanent increase every year. That would amount to a pay raise of $4,300 per year for teachers.
“We find ourselves in a fortunate position with the record surplus, and it is our duty to use this opportunity to provide relief to Texans burdened by property taxes,” said Rep. Christina Morales, D-Houston. “But let me be clear, our focus is on the people and families, not the corporations. We believe that giving money directly to those who need it the most.”
The Democratic plan proposes the state use $3.8 billion to send renters a cash rebate of up to 10% of rent paid in the previous tax year. Lawmakers argued the Republican plans do nothing to help the 38% of Texas households who rent.
“We cannot ignore the fact that renters have been left out of this conversation since the very beginning,” Morales said. “That is why we have been tirelessly fighting to include them. Renters deserve to receive their fair share of tax relief, especially as rents have skyrocketed in the past few years.”
The plan would grant homeowners an exemption of either $100,000 or 25% of their home’s appraises value (whichever is higher), capped at $200,000.
The Texas Senate is standing behind a proposal to increase the exemption to a standard of $100,000 for all homesteads. Homeowners can currently exempt just $40,000 of their home’s value from property taxes.
“This prevents the $100,000 exemption from evaporating rapidly due to the increase in home values,” Bryant said.
That plan would spend $4.11 billion to buy down the taxes that school districts charge for maintenance and operations expenses.
That strategy is known as “compression.” Essentially, the state would take on a greater share of local tax burdens and require that districts lower their tax rates accordingly.
That is the strategy that the Texas House and Gov. Greg Abbott support exclusively. They back legislation that spends all of the $17.6 billion on compression, with a long-term goal of eliminating the maintenance and operations tax completely.
But Democrats argue that is unrealistic and unhelpful to renters and teachers.
“The comptroller has projected that that was going to cost about $60 billion over the next two years, once the property relief plans are put in place. $60 billion. Where are we going to get $60 billion?” said State Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin. “This is unrealistic, it’s unsustainable, and [it] holds our schools hostage to what the state decides to do instead of their local communities.”
It is not clear how this plan will fit into the longstanding proposals that have been on the table between the House and Senate. Bryant said they have not yet discussed their proposals with House leadership like Speaker Dade Phelan.
“We intend to do that immediately,” he said.
Allred touts fundraising as he aims to challenge Cruz in Senate race
A Texas Democrat who hopes to challenge Ted Cruz in next year’s race for U.S. Senate says he’s already bringing in big campaign donations. Dallas congressman Colin Allred said he raised nearly $6.2 million since announcing his campaign in May.
Allred shared his fundraising report with the Texas Tribune. The quarterly deadline to file official campaign finance reports is next week.
Cruz has not yet released his fundraising totals. But records from the Federal Elections Commission show he had more than $3.3 million on hand at the end of March.
Allred has focused his campaign on Cruz, but must first win the Democratic primary next March to earn the chance to take on the incumbent senator. He’s likely to face challengers: Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez is expected to announce his run for the Democratic nomination. It’s not clear if other Democrats could also join the race.
Past experience suggests this campaign will be costly. In 2018, Cruz spent well over $45 million in his campaign against Democrat Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke spent more than $79 million on his campaign. Cruz won reelection that year by nearly three percentage points.
Summer heat takes toll on Texas prison workers
For years, Michael Webber would sweat in the searing metal attics above Texas’ state prisons as he powered through electrical maintenance trips minutes at a time. That was all the time the oppressive heat would allow.
“We’d see temperatures as high as 130, 140. You’d work in that for a couple of hours, and you can only be up there for so long,” Webber said. “Then you’d have to come back down into that 105, 110 degree weather that everyone lives in so you could cool off. The conditions there could be really grueling. It becomes just like a pressure cooker filled with heat.”
Webber remembers witnessing other staff members succumb to the pressures to stay conscious and hydrated through long summer days. Staff would pass out from the heat at least once a week, he said, overheating from the physical demands of pacing through stifling cellblocks, climbing stairs, patrolling the yard and staying vigilant under a stab-proof vest.
“To put them in that environment is a recipe for disaster. TDCJ is not a safe place to work,” Webber said.
“It’s hot. It’s miserable. It’s inhumane,” said Jeff Ormsby, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) correctional officers’ union. He previously served as an officer for 28 years.
“It’s nonstop. Some of them don’t even get to sit down for the 14 to 16 hours they are there,” Ormsby said. “It’s comparable to if you go buy the heaviest coat possible, put that coat on and go to Texas Memorial Stadium and run up and down the stairs constantly.”
As a record-hot Texas summer just begins, current and former correctional officers are calling for their department to do more to protect them. They blame the heat for the department’s severe staffing shortage.
Sixty-nine of TDCJ’s 100 units lack full air conditioning. As of June 22, the department reported nine staff members fell ill due to the heat this year.
Yet, both the heat and the staffing issues have persisted for years. In 2021, TDCJ reported a correctional officer turnover rate of over 40%. Last year, they hit a record number of vacancies, with more than 8,000 open officer positions.
“The heat is one of those working conditions that is causing people to quit, causing the people not to come work there. That’s something we have to address,” Ormsby said. “It starts with TDCJ requesting it in their budgets. I think they could do more.”
This legislative session, the department told lawmakers that staffing is their most significant issue. However, TDCJ did not request any money for air conditioning when lawmakers were drafting their budget for the next two years. The union believes that may be why the legislature did not appropriate any.
“The people who are making these decisions and not putting this money in the budget — they’re sitting in air-conditioned offices. They’re not working the runs. They’re not running down the stairways, and I think maybe they’ve forgotten where they came from,” Ormsby said.
TDCJ did receive $85 million for “deferred maintenance” from the legislature this session. The department told Nexstar “a substantial amount of that will go to cool beds.” They are in the process of prioritizing projects for that funding.
The Texas House also approved $545 million in the biennial budget for air conditioning in TDCJ facilities, but the Senate stripped it out.
“Core to this department’s mission is protecting the public, our employees, and the inmates in our custody. It is a responsibility that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice takes seriously,” TDCJ Communications Director Amanda Hernandez said in June. “We take numerous precautions to lessen the effects of hot temperatures for those incarcerated within our facilities. These efforts work.”
For former officers who have found cooler work, however, the issue is not just one of human resources, but human dignity.
“Do we want to be humane and treat our state employees as if they are valued members of our society?” Webber asked. “Or do we want to treat them like disposable widgets that we can throw away and get another one? That’s the route that we’ve chosen to take as a state.”
Funding overhaul could help foster care families and providers
For the first time in decades, Texas will overhaul the way it funds foster care.
During the most recent legislative session, lawmakers approved the funding necessary to “modernize” the way it pays the families and providers who care for children in the system.
According to the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), the methodology for calculating the cost of care has remained “largely unchanged” over the years, despite advancements in technology, data collection and other changes to the child welfare system.
Historically, the state has paid foster families and treatment providers a set daily rate, per child. The amount depended on one of five service “levels” — from Basic up to Intense Plus.
Katie Olse, CEO of the Alliance of Child and Family Services, explained that while the needs of a child can change over time, the necessary dollars to care for them aren’t always as flexible, under the current level system.
“A child may really stabilize and do very well in a setting, and then they may have to move because that setting may only be contracted or paid to provide this type of care,” Olse said. “Really, what we need to do is build a system that adapts around the child and works and follows with that child.”
In 2020, a consulting group contracted by the state conducted a study, which found the current system did not realistically reflect the time and cost of staffing and providing care and also did not reward providers for helping a child improve.
DFPS presented the results of the study to lawmakers during the 87th legislative session in 2021, and the legislature directed the state to develop a new rate methodology, which they approved and funded this spring, during the 88th legislature.
Under the new system, the state will purchase different service packages and reimburse families or providers for the actual services provided in those packages.
“The child may not have to disrupt and move, just because they are doing well. And the payment won’t change and disincentivize that provider from continuing to serve that child,” she said. “We are really focused now on the child: what are the child’s individual needs? And how do we build out a service package that can meet that child’s needs?”
She explained that more than 20 different service packages have already been defined and designed “based on real data and real children’s needs.”
Jesse Booher, the DePelchin Children’s Center senior vice president and chief operations officer, said providers were glad to see this effort “cross the finish line” after so many years.
“The types of children that are coming into foster care now are experiencing more severe, much more complex trauma. And therefore, the ways in which that trauma is manifesting is much more severe and much more complex,” Booher said, adding that it was time for a change.
Rate modernization is expected to take a few years to fully implement. The level structure will remain in place during the transition.
“It won’t be a switch that gets flipped overnight. It’s something that will take time to implement just because it is such a monumental change,” Booher said.
Olse agreed, saying the rollout wouldn’t be “perfect.” However, the effort faced little pushback at the Capitol, and she believes the collaboration between the state agencies, providers, families, advocates and lawmakers is a good sign.
“We’re all very committed to the end goal, which is resources being spent the right way to help serve children and families in communities and help to get out of the system successfully.”