(Texas Scorecard) – During interviews following Houston Mayor John Whitmire’s first State of the City address, he said he wouldn’t “look to raise taxes” until the city is in better shape.
Reporters pressed him on the proposed tax increase his finance director rolled out last week before council members.
“I’m not going to look to raise taxes until I can tell Houstonians I’ve done everything possible to cut out waste duplication, and quite frankly, corruption,” Whitmire said. “We’ve got people indicted over an $80 million water drainage contract that didn’t exist. We’ve got the midtown management district self-dealing.”
“So, when I have done everything I can to cut waste duplication and corruption, I will let the public know,” he added. “I am not going to do a quick fix of raising property taxes without the public having a say.”
Whitmire wasn’t clear on exactly what he meant by “not raising taxes.”
Many equate that to the no-new revenue rate; some elected officials use it interchangeably when they mean maintaining the current property tax rate, and in Houston, prior administrations have used that when they sought to limit property tax collections to Houston’s property tax cap formula, the combined rate of population plus inflation or 4.5 percent, whichever is lower.
Off the record, council members have speculated that it means collecting the combined rate of population and inflation, which would likely require lowering the property tax rate but still collecting more in property tax revenue.
The Houston City Council has until October 28 to set the city’s property tax rate.
