Bond and rollback issues had a mixed record on election night.

Yes, as is typical, about three-fourths of the bond and rollback elections for schools passed. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Large school districts – including San Antonio – found it tough or actually impossible to sell tax rate hikes. Smaller and suburban districts found the job much easier.

Some quick background.

All school districts were required to lower their maintenance and operations rate to two-thirds of its 2005 level. They could then raise that rate up to four cents without an election, and school districts get extra-generous state match (or freedom from recapture) if they do so.

Bond issues work the way they always have. The interest and sinking rate is the rate needed to retire voter-authorized bonds.

Unlike maintenance and operations rates, with the Interest and Sinking rate a school district can often get significant additional revenues when property values rise.

Accordingly they would be required to lower the rate – absent a new voter-approved bond issue.

The biggest story of the night on the school front was the failure of the San Antonio Independent School District’s rollback election.

 San Antonio could have charged a maintenance rate of $1.04 per $100 of valuation without an election, but tried instead to raise the rate to the state-maximum, $1.17. The district got backing from a lot of the local civic leaders and many local Democratic politicians.  Voters still said no.

The San Antonio result is all the more surprising given some of the disingenuous rhetoric used by the measure’s backers. Several wrote in the San Antonio Express-News that voting for the bond would still cause taxpayers to get a tax cut, just not as large a tax cut.

That’s only partly true. Yes, the property tax rate would have been lower than it was in the prior year. But it’s not necessarily a tax cut, because many businesses had their franchise tax liability increased by the new “gross margin” tax provisions passed in 2006.

Also, some bond supporters claim that there was no new money for schools in the 2006 bond package, without mentioning the funded teacher pay raise, the new allotment of $250 per high school student, and the generous match on the four discretionary pennies, all of which were included in the 2006 package.

Rollback supporters also mentioned that San Antonio is property poor, without mentioning that several other property poor urban school districts made do with a $1.04 tax rate.

In the end, Bexar County voters voted against tax hikes in the San Antonio, Southside, Harlandale, and Somerset school districts. Voters in the Edgewood ISD – where the lawsuit originated that led to recapture — supported higher taxes.

In the Houston metropolitan area, school districts fared better. Houston ISD had to work overtime to pass its bond issue. According to the Houston Chronicle opposition from the NAACP and three influential black Democrats - - State Reps. Sylvester Turner and Harold Dutton and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee opposed the plan because  of plans to close schools in their neighborhoods.

The Chronicle also noted the bond issue won support from the Greater Houston Partnership, the Urban League, and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), It narrowly passed with 51 percent of the vote backing the bond. And all this for a bond package that did not involve an increase in the tax rate, because it was largely financed by tax base growth (i.e. increased appraisals).

The suburban bond issues – many of which did involve tax rate increases – passed easily in the Houston metropolitan area.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the Irving, Fort Worth, and Denton school districts passed bond initiatives, while a tax increase (rollback) was defeated in Lake Worth.

It is true that about three-fourths of the 100-plus school districts seeking higher taxes received them.

But the vast majority of schools holding elections to raise taxes are small and rural. In the state’s populated areas, tax increases were harder to pass.

In sum, it appears that school districts now have to sell the voters on many big tax hikes, whereas in the past they could simply pass them with little recourse for taxpayers.

Comments (0)

Comment	smaller | bigger
Name
Write the displayed characters
Subscribe via email (Registered users only) I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.
	Add Comment