{"id":170859,"date":"2026-02-19T04:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T04:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/170859\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T04:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T04:59:07","slug":"lubbock-county-commissioners-claim-budget-audit-backs-no-new-revenue-tax-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/170859\/","title":{"rendered":"Lubbock County commissioners claim budget audit backs no-new-revenue tax decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Two Lubbock County commissioners say a recent audit validates their decisions to approve back-to-back no-new-revenue tax rates, while County Judge Curtis Parrish says departments and employees are suffering the consequences.<\/p>\n

Precinct 4 Commissioner Jordan Rackler is standing by his and Commissioner Jason Corley\u2019s decision to skip court meetings in 2024<\/a> to put the county at a no-new-revenue tax rate. He says a recent report on the 2025 budget from an outside auditor proves that approach worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me be clear, adopting this rate did not require using reserves. We balanced this budget responsibly without raising the tax rate while maintaining the services our residents depend on,\u201d Rackler said.<\/p>\n

The presentation Rackler and Precinct 3 Commissioner Cary Shaw showed reports the general fund is up more than $4 million over last year, driven by property taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe debt was down $25 million,\u201d Rackler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the assets were increased nearly $34 million,\u201d Shaw said. \u201cProperty taxes rode up $4.8 million, almost $4.9 million,\u201d Shaw said.<\/p>\n

The commissioners and Parrish disagree on what no-new-revenue truly means.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, the judge tells you that you don\u2019t get new construction on a no-new-revenue. That is false,\u201d Shaw said. \u201cThat\u2019s what he continues to say, and that is false.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked about growth is important, but we\u2019ve had to leave the growth on the table for the last two years because we have commissioners that want to pass the no-new-revenue rate. So, we get no new revenue,\u201d Parrish said.<\/p>\n

The report the commissioners presented shows public safety spending rose from 2024 to 2025, but Parrish says that funding still hasn\u2019t met the sheriff\u2019s office\u2019s needs the past two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sheriff needs eight new boots on the ground to take care of this growing county. And this commissioner\u2019s court did not fund any of them,\u201d Parrish said.<\/p>\n

After taking their own cost-of-living adjustments in 2024, commissioners couldn\u2019t fund them for other county employees. Rackler says that\u2019s the only negative he\u2019s heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cOther than that, I mean, I\u2019ve had people within departments that are like, man, I think y\u2019all are doing a great job. Keep it up. And then you have people that they just want to build and build and build. And so, it\u2019s mixed. But the employees, we need to take care of our employees. Our employees are our largest asset,\u201d Rackler said.<\/p>\n

When asked how supporting employees aligns with voting against raises, Rackler said the county budget officer didn\u2019t offer raises as an option.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause our auditor is our county budget officer. And when she said, this is what you\u2019re going to do, and she gives you options of what to approve and what not to approve, there were no raises offered,\u201d Rackler said.<\/p>\n

Parrish claims keeping the tax rate the same as the year before could have fully funded the sheriff\u2019s department, fire department and provided raises for employees. He says the county needs to stay competitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlso by not giving our employees a COLA adjustment, they started looking elsewhere,\u201d Parrish said.<\/p>\n

The commissioners claim the audit also backs up their push last year to pass the no-new-revenue rate again<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people that I worked for on a daily basis that voted for me to be here, outstanding support to stay with the no new revenue,\u201d Rackler said.<\/p>\n

The Lubbock County auditor says this report is a draft and hasn\u2019t been officially approved. It\u2019s not expected to show up on the commissioners\u2019 court agenda until March 23.<\/p>\n

Commissioner Rackler and Judge Parrish are both in the middle of campaigning to keep their seats in the upcoming primary election.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Two Lubbock County commissioners say a recent audit validates their decisions to approve back-to-back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[17178,69049,7990,2050,2438,69048,2440,62511,1522,2436,2449,69050,2429,69053,36623,2437,2435,168,170,169,2448,69052,2447,69054,2446,69051,2445,1876,33418],"class_list":{"0":"post-170859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-lubbock","8":"tag-audit","9":"tag-backs","10":"tag-brittany-crittenden","11":"tag-budget","12":"tag-cary-shaw","13":"tag-claim","14":"tag-commissioners","15":"tag-consequences","16":"tag-county","17":"tag-curtis-parrish","18":"tag-cuts","19":"tag-decisions","20":"tag-department","21":"tag-four","22":"tag-jason-corley","23":"tag-jordan-rackler","24":"tag-judge","25":"tag-lubbock","26":"tag-lubbock-headlines","27":"tag-lubbock-news","28":"tag-no-new-revenue","29":"tag-precinct","30":"tag-property","31":"tag-raises","32":"tag-rate","33":"tag-recent","34":"tag-tax","35":"tag-three","36":"tag-two"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}