Oh, the Hypocrisy

Here’s a story from KVIA.com:

Several city representatives say they will direct City Manager Tommy Gonzalez to decrease the City of El Paso tax rate.

District 5 Representative Isabel Salcido has placed an item on Tuesday’s city council agenda. The agenda item is co-sponsored by District 3 Representative Cassandra Hernandez and District 7 Representative Henry Rivera.

Representative Salcido voted to issue $389 in Certificates of Obligation during her term. Representatives Hernandez and Rivera voted to issue more than $500 million in Certificates of Obligation since they took office. Now, they pretend to champion the taxpayer.

Who did they think was going to pay all that debt they ran up?

Of course the City has to reduce the tax rate. Otherwise they’ll trigger a rollback election.

From HonestAustin.com:

A rollback election, also called a tax rate election or tax ratification election, is a vote by the voters of a jurisdiction to approve or reject a tax rate proposed by the governing body of a tax unit, such as a school board or city council.

In Texas, local governments may only increase the amount of revenue that they collect from property taxes by 3.5% per year, otherwise they must obtain voter approval.

The tax rate at which new revenue would exceed the 3.5% cap is called the voter-approval tax rate. When the governing body of a taxing unit adopts a tax rate that exceeds that cap, a rollback election is automatically triggered. (However, water districts have different actions that trigger an automatic election).

Since property values have skyrocketed this year, the City has the choice to either lower the tax rate to limit the revenue increase to less that 3.5%, or else face the wrath of the taxpayers in the voting booth.

But even with a lower tax rate, we’ll still be paying more in taxes.

The political grandstanding would be amusing if it weren’t so expensive.