Harris County faces 8% tax hike after storms

I guess you could call it a double whammy for anyone who owns property in Harris County. First came the destruction and subsequent cost of both the derecho and Hurricane Burl, triggering extensive out of pocket expenses even for those with insurance. Now we're learning those storms may have triggered a different kind of cost for home and business owners. It turns out lawmakers in Austin granted an exemption on non voter approved tax hikes above the state imposed cap of 3.5% to counties which have experienced a recent disaster. Precinct Three's Tom Ramsey says his Democratic colleagues on commissioners court have already decided to take full advantage and raise property taxes for next year. A full 8%, without asking voters for permission. They want to go through with an 8% increase in your taxes, which is 268 million more dollars than we had this year. Let me put that another way. We were able to fund all of our programs this year, take care of all of our business this year, do everything that we need to do this year. But we need another $268 million. We have a spending problem in Harris County, not a revenue problem in Harris County. Panel Ramsey fears the additional quarter billion in revenue will be spent on social programs and not on improving weather resilience or vital infrastructure. Sue Lovell, what do you make of this? So this was the legislature, right? They voted the Republican controlled legislature. They left a loophole. What were you thinking? I mean, seriously, what were you thinking, that you were going to pass this now comes down and now the Democratic control commissioner, Republican commissioners criticize it. I'm not for this either. But look, why in the heck would you give them that kind of power at least say take it to the voters? I mean, it's wrong. It's I hope they vote it down, asking them to vote it down. We have been through a lot and an 8% increase is crushing. All right, Gary, so here's what happened. In order to pass the legislation, you had rural legislators who were concerned if we had a hurricane, that there would be cost to the government because of the hurricane, because there could be collateral damage. Fortunately, the county did not suffer a lot of collateral damage. It was mostly individuals in rural and the hurricane that we had. So that's how this bill came about. Now, that's not not a good thing. It ends up it becomes a loophole. It's the irresponsibility of the Democrats on the commissioners court who said, well, we don't have any additional damage because of Hurricane Burl, but we want more money to spend because we know how to spend your money better than you. And that's what's going on here. And they will spend it on social programs. And while they neglect the jail and other core items, Paul, at a time when folks are dealing with inflation, they've got a we got a huge HisD bond issue. We've got a an issue before the voters in terms of providing additional funding for flood control. They could get spiked because this is being imposed on them. Voters don't have a say. Yeah. So this is a discipline issue, there were a few years where the values of existing properties had shot up like ten, 12%. In 23. They only went up 1%. So that affected their ability to tax. On top of that, there's Arpa money that came from Covid that is dissipating going away. And so they're having to backfill those dollars and they didn't get the normal tax hike that they would have gotten through increased valuations. And so they had to do something about it. And now they're doing this I think it's a bad idea. It should be voted down. Holly, you cover county government. What's going on here. Well, you mentioned the Arpa dollars that came into the county almost $1 billion. And what did they spend it on? A lot of new social programs that are quote unquote temporary, such as the guaranteed basic income program they're trying to push through once again, that would give $500 stipends to select residents. There's also free childcare and a whole slew of social programs. And they promised a couple of years ago, Lina Hidalgo said, we're going to have to figure out a way to pay for these programs to continue them. After the federal dollars are expired, and this is obviously going to be the path. Marcus Davis, this is coming out of your pocket. You own lots of property. Listen, I can't I can't believe some of the stuff that I'm hearing, but Paul Paul laid it out great. And Holly was kind of kind of right. But Gary I don't know how how look, Daihatsu said it right. This was legislation that was authored by the GOP. So if it's irresponsible for the Democrats to use it, then it was irresponsible for the GOP to create it. That's the equivalent of a parent leaving a gun on the counter and the kid shooting someone and you saying, well, it was come on guys, everybody has to has to hold their own in terms of responsibility. Now, I am not against social programs. Child care is a very important thing to hardworking men and women who just cannot simply afford it. I don't agree with handouts of minimum $500 guaranteed all that kind of stuff. So I'm not opposed to social programs. I'm opposed to irresponsible social programs, and I'm opposed to using loopholes in order to and finagling things in order to get there. You didn't like that loophole. We're almost through with this segment. The argument is, is you got to take care of the fundamentals first. What counties were, formed, organized to do the