School Finance
Squeaking in just before May 27 and sine die, lawmakers in the state House and Senate passed a school finance bill that will provide raises for teachers, pre-K, and property tax relief. The final OK comes a day after Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen announced that the two…
When it comes to property taxes, Texas homeowners pay some of the highest residential property taxes in the country, the research group Attom Data Solutions said last week. According to economist Daren Blomquist, only New Jersey, Illinois, and Vermont posted higher effective property tax rates last year than then 2.15 percent Texans paid. The company’s…
Texas schools aren’t failing, but they’re close, Education Week’s annual report card revealed. The biggest mark against the state seems to be no surprise — school finance (we talked more about how school finance affects the real estate world here).
Mike Collier knows that there are people that care deeply about whether Texas stays red, turns blue, or goes purple — but it’s not his chief goal. “My aspiration is political competition,” he said on a drive from Houston to Dallas last week. “I just want to see the end of this one-party system.” Collier…
I’m going to make a confession: I’ve been to more school finance and budget meetings in my career than I can count. And they’re boring. I mean, stronger-than-Ambien, potentially effective as a torture device boring. And I am one of those weird people that like budgets and reading budgets. If I was going to color…
