At the time this is published, counties who are on an October fiscal year will be busy conducting public meetings, trying to meet all the publication deadlines, and adopting a budget to take effect Oct. 1. After doing this for 21 years you would think this would get easier, but I can assure you it does not. Every year it seems to come down to the same discussions. Are we going to give salary increases, and if so how much? Are we going to have to raise taxes, and if so how much? These seem to be the questions that are the most difficult to deal with. We all know that our county officials and employees are not paid enough, and you can ask anyone and they will tell you their taxes are too high. I believe this is more perception than reality, at least at the county level.
As I have traveled across the state this year going to conferences, I have tried to discuss taxes with taxpayers from the different areas. I have discovered that generally all people feel the same way: Taxes are too high, and government, including local, wastes too much money. I find this to be true no matter what the various tax rates happen to be. In one area there may be a county with a tax rate of 75 or 80 cents, and if you ask the taxpayers in that county, they say: “Taxes are too high, our local government is costing too much, and we can’t afford it.”
In another area a county may have a tax rate of 30 to 40 cents, and in another a rate of 10 to 15 cents, and they will all say the same thing. I have come to the conclusion that no matter how much people are paying in local taxes, it is just politically correct to say, and believe, they are too high. Also, the rates do not take into consideration the differences in property valuations across the state.
So what is the proper amount of local taxes? In reality it has nothing to do with the tax rate (even though the state seems to focus on it). The proper amount of taxes depends on the amount of money it takes to provide adequate funding for the different departments to provide the services required in each respective county. Each county has differing opinions on their needs and the value they place on them. There are as many factors that come into play in these decisions as there are counties in the state. We have to deal with hurricanes, ice storms, floods, wildfires, tornados, and droughts, not to mention people. Our counties range in population from 82 in Loving County to over 4 million in Harris County. We are urban and rural; we have timber in East Texas, vast range lands in West Texas, miles of shoreline in South Texas, and circle pivots on fertile farmlands in the Panhandle.
I write all of this to show the importance of local control and how vital you are as local officials. A one-size-fits-all government will never work in Texas, nor can policies and programs be dictated from Austin. Texas is a state made up of individuals, and decisions as to how many taxes they pay and what they pay for are better left up to local officials. Our forefathers understood the value of local control, and we owe it to them and to our children to strive to maintain this control.
Remember, no one knows the value of the resources and the people in your counties better than you.
Let’s meet in Odessa next month and have some fun together!