Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating nearly 1,000 Texas cities for compliance with a new transparency law, including Corpus Christi, which filed its annual audit late and set a property tax rate above a key state threshold, according to city records and state officials.<\/p>\n
The review, announced by the Texas Attorney General\u2019s Office on Wednesday, seeks financial records and audit information from municipalities statewide — including major cities like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Waco, and El Paso — to ensure compliance with Senate Bill 1851, a law tied to audit transparency and property tax limits.<\/p>\n
Senate Bill 1851, passed during the 88th Texas Legislature in 2023 and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott that June, requires cities to complete and file annual audits and bars those that fail to do so from adopting property tax rates above the no-new-revenue level.<\/p>\n
State law requires cities to file an annual audit within 180 days of the end of the fiscal year. For Corpus Christi, that set a deadline of March 29, 2025.<\/p>\n
The City filed its Fiscal Year 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report on May 14, 2025 — 46 days after the deadline — according to Corpus Christi City Secretary Rebecca Huerta.<\/p>\n
Under Senate Bill 1851, cities that are not in compliance with audit requirements are restricted from adopting a property tax rate above the no-new-revenue rate, which is the level that would generate the same amount of property tax revenue as the previous year, according to state law.<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi adopted a Fiscal Year 2025 property tax rate of $0.599774 per $100 valuation, compared to a no-new-revenue rate of $0.598423, according to the City\u2019s official tax rate notice.<\/p>\n
Because the adopted rate is about 0.23% higher than the no-new-revenue rate, the city will collect more property tax revenue than the previous year, which qualifies as a tax increase under Texas law.<\/p>\n
Taken together, the City\u2019s late audit filing and tax increase place it within the conditions outlined in SB 1851, which could be why the City of Corpus Christi is among those under review.<\/p>\n
Huerta said the City has received notice from the Attorney General\u2019s Office regarding Senate Bill 1851, but a copy of that notice was not readily available.<\/p>\n
What happens next depends on whether the Attorney General\u2019s Office makes a formal determination regarding the city\u2019s compliance.<\/p>\n
Under Texas Local Government Code \u00a7\u00a7103.001 and 103.003, cities are required to complete annual audits and file financial statements within 180 days after the end of the fiscal year. Section 103.003(c), as amended by Senate Bill 1851 in 2023, restricts cities found to be out of compliance from adopting tax rates above the no-new-revenue threshold until they meet those requirements.<\/p>\n
It is unclear whether such a determination has been made for Corpus Christi.<\/p>\n
Huerta said the City\u2019s next annual audit, for Fiscal Year 2025, was filed on March 26, 2026, within the 180-day requirement.<\/p>\n
3NEWS has reached out to the Attorney General\u2019s Office for comment and will update this story when a response is received.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating nearly 1,000 Texas cities for compliance with a new transparency law,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156,6608,69900,92963,4479],"class_list":{"0":"post-243146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-corpus-christi","8":"tag-corpus-christi","9":"tag-corpus-christi-headlines","10":"tag-corpus-christi-news","11":"tag-property-tax","12":"tag-senate-bill","13":"tag-tax-rate-notice","14":"tag-texas-attorney-general"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243146","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=243146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}