By Elna Christopher
Director of Media Relations
More than 36 counties swiftly passed resolutions in support of HJR 56 by Rep. Burt Solomons (R-Carrollton) during the very first week that commissioners courts met after Solomons filed the constitutional amendment to prohibit unfunded mandates.
Please be advised that if your commissioners court does not meet until February, passage of a resolution next month still will be timely. We are gunning for 254 resolutions in support of HJR 56!
Once passed, please either fax a copy to Elna Christopher at (512) 478-3573 or e-mail elnac@county.org. Thanks to the 36 counties that have already done so.
On Jan. 27, Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas) filed the Senate version of Solomons’ constitutional amendment, SJR 17.
Solomons is busy obtaining House co-sponsors of his constitutional amendment. As of Thursday, Jan. 27, he already had 13 co-sponsors. They are:
Rep. Rodney Anderson, R-Dallas; Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton; Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine; Rep. Rick Hardcastle, R-Vernon; Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving; Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin; Rep. Jim Jackson, R-Carrollton; Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio; Rep. Jose Lozano, D-Kingsville; Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano; Rep. Diane Patrick, R-Arlington; Rep. Ralph Sheffield, R-Temple; and Rep. Todd Smith, R-Bedford.
If your representative is not on the co-sponsor list, please join Solomons in asking your member to sign on.
HJR 56 would make the state either pay for unfunded mandates or absolve certain local governments, including counties, from carrying them out if the state does not provide appropriated funds or reimbursements. If passed by the Legislature, the amendment would be on the ballot in November of this year and, if voters approved it, take effect Jan. 1, 2012.
TAC will send additional updates on this extremely important legislation as it moves forward.
The Senate Finance Committee is putting SB 1, the Senate’s introduced version of the state budget bill, on a fast track.
The committee has scheduled a series of hearings – Monday, Jan. 31, through Thursday, Feb. 3 – on Article II of general appropriations – the huge area of health and human services. Monday’s hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in Room E1.036 of the Capitol Extension.
Monday’s hearing will open with the committee’s organization, rules and procedures. The Comptroller of Public Accounts will follow with the layout of the biennial revenue estimates and then the Legislative Budget Board will give an overview of the base budget recommendations. Invited testimony from affected state agencies will follow.
The committee’s posted hearings for the rest of the week can be accessed here.
Article II deals with all matters related to health and human services, which will include mental health care funding and other areas important to counties and their taxpayers. From the postings, it appears that public testimony on Article II could begin as early as Tuesday.
For those of you who may want to testify on Article II, we wish we could be more specific at this time. Please feel free to contact the TAC Legislative Department at (800) 456-5974 for updates on the schedule and to let us know if you would like to testify on mental health, indigent health care or other state agency budget items included in Article II.
By Tim Brown
CIP Senior Analyst
The Legislative Budget Board (LBB) this week released its annual report on government efficiency, part of which was based upon a 2010 county and city survey regarding the estimated $14 million in local government costs of registering sex offenders.
The Texas Association of Counties /Texas Municipal League (TML) survey was shared with the LBB and numerous other state officials and agencies. Three of the LBB recommendations involved the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) about which TAC and TML partnered on the survey.
The LBB’s analysts made three recommendations in relation to SORNA, which is one part of the 2006 federal Adam Walsh Act (AWA). They are:
Recommendation 1: Amend the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure to improve the usefulness of the sex offender registry and eliminate barriers to successful reentry into the community by one or all of the following options: (a) require the Texas Department of Public Safety to include more information on the sex offender registry to help the public distinguish between registrants who are a risk to them and their families versus others whose actions resulted in registry; (b) require the Texas Department of Public Safety to limit the public registry to compliant medium- and high-risk registrants and all non-compliant registrants; and (c) clarify when the court may grant a petitioner’s request for early termination of an individuals’ obligation to register.
Recommendation 2: Amend the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure statute to exempt certain youthful offenders from registration for a sex offense based on consensual sexual conduct if both participants are at least 13 years old and neither participant is more than four years older than the other.
Recommendation 3: Amend the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure to prohibit local jurisdictions from establishing additional local residency restrictions for sex offenders.
The LBB annual report is titled “Texas State Government Effectiveness and Efficiency” known as the GEER. On page 358, the GEER references the TAC/TML survey which estimated the cost to counties and cities of implementing SORNA at $14 million.
Previously, in December 2010, the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice released its interim report. In its report, the committee made recommendations similar to those later released by the LBB as part of the GEER, also in part based on the TAC survey.
Recommendation 1: Repeal Article 62.402 (A) and (B) of the Code of Criminal Procedure to enable Texas not to be bound to the federal minimum for registration requirements.
Recommendation 2: Establish a minimum standard for registration requirements, which include the current process for deregistration for those approved by the CSOT [Council on Sex Offender Treatment].
Recommendation 3: Not to implement AWA.
Recommendation 4: Require that all registered sex offenders have risk assessments done.
Recommendation 5: Continue working to improve communication between states regarding registered sex offenders who present a significant risk to community safety.
If you have any questions or comments about this article, please contact Tim Brown at timb@county.org or call (800) 456-5974.
By Laura Nicholes
TAC Legislative Staff
The Community Justice Assistance Division (CJAD) within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) may receive severe budget cuts — in the neighborhood of $116 million — for basic community supervision funding, diversion programs, community corrections and treatment alternatives to incarceration.
Each of these four strategies are primarily funded by the state and implemented at the local level as preventative, long term, cost saving measures aimed at reducing recidivism, managing jail populations, providing courts with sentencing options and reducing commitments to state correctional facilities. State funding for each of these strategies is more cost-effective and successful when allocated at the local level rather than incarceration.
Such cuts would dramatically affect CJAD and its oversight and appropriation of funds to local adult probation departments. The local departments provide prison diversions through probation and community-based programs.
Proposed Cuts to Community Corrections/Prison Diversion Program Funds HB 1
|
2010-2011 |
2012-2013 |
Difference |
est. % cut |
Adult |
$559,637,211 |
$443,551,483 |
– $116,085,728 |
20.7% |
Misd. |
$28,939,038 |
$0 |
– $28,939,038 |
100% |
Although the Senate’s budget proposal is about $50 million higher for the adult community corrections/prison diversion program funds than the House proposal, the Senate also eliminated 100 percent of funding toward misdemeanor basic probation.
The proposed elimination of funding for basic misdemeanor probation could be harmful to the local criminal justice system, including county jails. These cuts will leave few sentencing options for the courts other than direct sentencing to county jails for misdemeanor offenders.
The Texas Legislature currently funds misdemeanor probation at a rate of 70 cents per day for 182 days, a bargain for the return on investment. Probation defendants contribute much of the remaining funds necessary, in the form of fees, to implement community supervision.
For additional information on this article, please contact TAC Legislative Staffer Laura Nicholes at (800) 456-5974 or lauran@county.org.
By Tim Brown
CIP Senior Analyst
The House Committee on Ways & Means released its interim report this month. The report tackles a number of issues of interest to county officials. Of particular interest is the committee’s response to the charge “[e]xamine the state's major tax exemptions to determine how the current costs and benefits compare with the original legislative objectives. Make recommendations for adjustments as needed.” While the committee focused most of its attention on state taxes, it did not leave out the local property tax.
Using preliminary 2009 data from the school districts, the committee found partial exemptions of $235.7 billion, not counting totally exempted properties such as churches and state-owned properties. The following table lists the different school district exemptions and their contribution to that total.
Exemptions |
Billions ($) |
Percent | |
Residential |
$15,000 Homestead |
$73.7 |
31.2% |
65+ Freeze Loss |
49.8 |
21.1% | |
Local Option % Homestead |
34.3 |
14.6% | |
10% Residential Value Cap |
14.8 |
6.3% | |
$10,000 65+ Homestead |
13.8 |
5.9% | |
Local Option 65+ or Disabled |
7.2 |
3.1% | |
Veteran/ Surviving Spouse Homestead65 |
3.8 |
1.6% | |
Historical Home Designations |
0.3 |
0.1% | |
Subtotal |
$197.7 |
83.9% | |
Business |
Freeport Exemption |
$22.9 |
9.7% |
Pollution Control Exemption66 |
9.1 |
3.9% | |
TX Economic Dev. Act (Chapter 313) |
5.1 |
2.2% | |
Low Income Housing |
0.3 |
0.1% | |
Tax Abatements |
0.3 |
0.1% | |
Solar and Other |
0.3 |
0.1% | |
Subtotal |
$38.0 |
16.1% | |
Total |
$235.7 |
100.0% | |
School district property taxes were lowered in 2006 when the state reworked the franchise tax into the more broad based margins tax. As part of the 2006 property tax buy-down, the state agreed to “hold harmless” the school districts by making up the lost property taxes using state revenue. Consequently, school district tax rates were decreased by about one third from a maximum of $1.50 to $1.00 or less, although the Legislature did leave in room for some growth.
In 2009, John O'Brien, director of the Legislative Budget Board, testified before the newly created House Select Committee on Fiscal Stability saying the taxes that were supposed to pay for the property tax buy-down were producing less revenue than expected, resulting in a $4.6 billion annual gap in school finance.
However, districts were frozen at their 2006 funding level — an increase in property values benefits the state, not the school districts. This raises the question: would the Legislature reduce or eliminate other school district property tax exemptions in order to bump up local tax levies which would, in turn, reduce the state’s financial obligations to those schools?
By 2010, around 300 school districts had reached the maximum tax rate of $1.17 for operations and maintenance. An estimated 60 percent of school districts will dip into reserves to meet operating expenses in 2011. This point is important since there is already talk about lawsuits against the state for what is allegedly becoming a de facto statewide property tax, which is not allowed under the Texas Constitution.
However, if taxed at a tax rate of only $1.00 per $100 of taxable value, $235.7 billion in property could generate $2.357 billion in school district property taxes per year. That amount is equal to 10.8 percent of the $21.78 billion in property taxes levied by school districts in 2009.
Of course, the percentage is subject to change. The Comptroller predicted a decline of 1.97 percent in property values for 2010 followed by a 3.47 percent decline in 2011. Property values are expected to increase in 2012, but only by 0.69 percent.
Declining property values combined with little or no room to increase property tax rates will naturally result in reduced tax levies. If a property tax increase decreases the state’s financial obligation under the hold harmless provisions of the school property tax buy down, then a reduction in property tax levies must increase the state’s financial obligation to the schools. Such an increase given the current financial environment would only exacerbate the state’s financial problems.
Why do counties care about school district funding? Eliminating or reducing school district property tax exemptions could reduce the state’s financial headaches, thus giving it less reason to directly or indirectly pass down costs to counties and other local government entities.
It should be noted that the committee made no recommendations about the individual property tax exemptions in this charge; it simply summarized the exemptions.
If you have any questions or comments about this article, please contact Tim Brown at timb@county.org or call (800) 456-5974.
____________
iRobert T. Garrett, “State tax swap isn't even, with $5 billion shortfall,” The Dallas Morning News, March 25, 2010. Available online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/texas-legislature/headlines/20100325-State-tax-swap-isn-t-even-1263.ece
iiIbid.
iiiJenny Lacoste-Caputo and Gary Scharrer, “New crisis in school funding,” San Antonio Express-News, August 4, 2010. Available online at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/New-crisis-in-school-funding-779245.php
ivTexas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Annual Property Tax Report : Tax Year 2009, January 2011. Available online at: http://www.window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/proptax/annual09/
vTexas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Letter to Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker of the House Joseph R. Straus, III dated October 1, 2010. 28 Jan 2011