At this writing, the 79th Legislature is still in session. I was thinking there for a while that I might have some very good news for you county leaders. I was hoping that the finance caps bill would fail, but instead it was suddenly tucked underneath the skirt of the school finance bill. I cannot for the life of me try to guess at this time what the outcome will be of this and other pending bills.
Like another president of the Association said, “Nobody’s property is safe while the Legislature is in session.” I was wishing that our legislators would read the article written by Texas Association of Counties Executive Director Sam Seale in the November-December issue of County Magazine (volume 16, number 6). Sam hit the nail on the head in his article titled “State Must Fix the Real Tax Problem.” If you did not have the pleasure of reading this editorial, do yourself a favor and dig that article out of the file and read it.
While you are at it, read the article written by the president of the Texas Association of Counties, Palo Pinto County Judge Mickey West, in the May/June issue of County Magazine. Mickey’s article was published in two dozen Texas newspapers, and I am sure that at least one legislator read it and completely ignored it. The article details the burdens being placed on the local taxpayers because of unfunded mandates and school finance. In a nutshell, if the state would fulfill its constitutional financial commitment to public education, your citizen’s property taxes could be cut by up to one half.
While our citizens struggle to make a living for themselves and their families, millions of dollars in Medicaid are being lost to Texas because we are using local ad valorem taxes to pay for indigent health care. This session had bills pending at the time of this writing to take the unspent 8 percent of our local taxes that indigent care counties must budget for indigent health care and send it to the state to be redistributed to the regional hospitals. If our counties do not spend this money, it goes to the regional hospitals in Houston, Dallas, etc. to cover their funding shortfall. Many of these urban counties have a combined tax rate lower than most of the counties in Texas. If the proposals were to become law, it would cripple our county and most other counties as well. While I have no problem with helping out my fellow counties when necessary, I cannot see sending my citizens’ hard-earned ad valorem tax monies to other counties’ regional hospitals when federal monies are available to cover these costs, if only the state would try to obtain them.
To quote our legal counsel, Jim Allison, “We are the only state leaving significant federal dollars unspent because we use local property taxes (not eligible for federal match) to fund indigent health care. Let’s use the interim study to unite behind a program to fund these expenses with state/federal dollars instead of the local property tax.” Why shouldn’t Texas have access to these monies like all other states?
It is not necessary to strip our citizens of more tax dollars. The state needs to be a better steward of all our money and take care of its citizens by going after this federal money whenever possible.
I will hopefully see you at the State Conference in October. Do not forget to make your reservations now.
Van York, CJCAT President