Texas lawmakers have spent years raising homestead exemptions and compressing school tax rates. Texans still want an answer to the simplest question in the debate: Why does the bill keep going up?
In this week’s episode of Politics with the Big Dogs, Anthony Holm traces the modern history of Texas property-tax relief and examines the choice taking shape between Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
At a Sept. 15 hearing of the Texas House Committee on Ways and Means, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath confirmed that school districts collect approximately $29.2 billion a year in local maintenance-and-operations property taxes. The hearing also heard an estimate of $8.6 billion to remove that levy from homesteads alone, with the cost projected to rise over time.
Those figures put a concrete price on a debate Texans have heard for decades.
The state has repeatedly expanded the school-district homestead exemption. The current exemption reached $140,000 after voters approved the constitutional amendment connected to Senate Bill 4. Texas has also used “compression,” replacing portions of local school tax revenue with state funding so districts can lower their M&O rates.
But relief on paper and relief on an actual tax bill are not always the same thing. Rising appraisals, local tax decisions, debt and spending can absorb what Austin says it delivered.
Patrick has long championed the homestead exemption: remove more of a home’s value from school taxation and give homeowners a clear, easily understood benefit.
Abbott is pressing a different idea. His property-tax plan calls for allowing voters to eliminate school property taxes on homesteads, alongside tighter limits on local spending and on appraisal growth.
Anthony walks through the strengths and limits of each approach. A larger exemption can deliver immediate savings, particularly on lower-valued homes. Eliminating school M&O taxes on homesteads could produce a larger and more visible cut, but it also forces lawmakers to answer the harder question: What durable revenue source replaces the money?
That is the test Anthony keeps returning to. The state cannot call another complicated formula a victory if Texas homeowners cannot see the result.
The episode then turns to a widening fight inside the Texas Republican Party.
Karl Rove said he will vote for Democrat Jon Rosenthal instead of Republican Bo French in the race for the Texas Railroad Commission. Rove cited French’s comments about South Asian students at the University of Texas and called French a bigot, according to reporting from The Texas Tribune.
Anthony’s response is about more than one endorsement. He argues that the decision revives the long-running divide between the Bush-era Republican establishment and the activists who have pushed the party in a more populist direction.
The Railroad Commission regulates Texas oil and gas—not railroads—which makes the contest consequential well beyond the personalities involved.
Anthony also studies Patrick’s campaign ad attacking Democratic lieutenant-governor nominee Vikki Goodwin over girls’ sports.
His focus is tactical: a clear issue, a measured delivery and a close built around fairness and safety. Whether viewers agree with the ad or not, Anthony argues that it is an example of disciplined political communication—specific enough to be understood and restrained enough to be credible.
New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Clara County, Seattle and King County have sued to block the federal government’s new public-charge rule.
The plaintiffs argue that the rule unlawfully expands the government’s authority to consider immigrants’ use of means-tested public benefits when deciding certain green card and visa matters. Anthony takes the other side of that policy argument: he believes benefit use and self-sufficiency are legitimate factors for the federal government to consider.
The legal question will be resolved in court. The political question is already here: What obligations should attach to continued immigration status, and who should carry the cost of public assistance?
The episode closes on a hopeful note.
The University of Austin says it is building a legal-education initiative with support from the Federalist Society. Its first step is tuition-free undergraduate legal education centered on constitutional text, history, argument and real cases. A separate group of judges, professors and practitioners is working on proposals for a faster, more affordable and more intellectually diverse model of legal education.
Anthony welcomes the effort as an investment in constitutional literacy and institutional competition. Instead of waiting for legacy institutions to reform themselves, UATX is building an alternative.
Which property-tax approach do you trust more: a larger homestead exemption or eliminating school M&O taxes on homesteads?
Watch the full episode, then send Anthony your answer for Big Dog Mail.
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