Last year the Texas Legislature passed an expanded business tax for the purpose of increasing state spending on public education while lowering the excessive burden of property taxes to fund education. School property taxes were supposed to be cut by one-third.

That is not happening as a number of school districts push for higher property taxes though tax elections. As Terrence Stutz points out in Dallas Morning News today, “More than three-fourths of Texas school districts that sought voter approval to hike their property tax rates were successful this week, paving the way for other districts across the state to consider their own tax elections next year.”

School districts didn’t win all of their elections. As Will Lutz points out in a column for DallasBlog, tax hikes failed in San Antonio and a number of other school districts in Bexar County, “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.”

Taxing entities had better quit being so greedy about raising property taxes all the time and learn to live within their means. One of these days, property owners are going to wake up and start fighting back.

To read the Terrence Stutz story, link here. To read Will Lutz’ column, link here.

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