Texas voters this week showed wariness toward raising property taxes \u2014 and embraced cutting them.<\/p>\n
Voters across the state shot down bids by school districts and cities to increase funds to hire teachers and police officers, pave roads and keep schools humming. More than half of those measures failed in Tuesday\u2019s elections, according to a Texas Tribune analysis.<\/p>\n
The most dramatic failure came out of Austin, where voters in one of the state\u2019s most liberal cities rejected a measure to boost tax bills to tackle homelessness, bolster public safety and close a multi-million dollar budget gap \u2014 a stunning rebuke against Austin City Hall.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Texas voters handed homeowners and business owners significant property tax breaks<\/a> by wide margins.<\/p>\n To tax-cut proponents, that suggests a continued appetite for tax cuts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe public is signaling they want more,\u201d said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who pushed the tax-cut measures.<\/p>\n State Republican leaders plan to push hard on their desire to cut taxes during the 2026 midterms and when they get back together in Austin in 2027.<\/p>\n Once upon a time, Texas voters were more open to tax increases. School districts held 751 elections asking voters for higher tax rates between 2006 and 2019, according to the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a business lobbying group that pushes for tax cuts. Voters signed off on 80% of them, according to that group\u2019s analysis of Texas Comptroller data.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a stark contrast from Tuesday\u2019s results, when some 44 school districts asked voters for permission to adopt a higher tax rate, according to a partial Tribune tally of tax-rate elections held across the state. Voters rejected more than half of them.<\/p>\n \u201cTaxpayers really said \u2018enough, we don\u2019t have any more money to give,\u2019\u201d said Genevieve Collins, director of the conservative political group Americans for Prosperity\u2019s Texas chapter, which pushed to defeat some of the measures.<\/p>\n In Austin, city officials pushed a 20% tax hike to produce about $110 million to plug a $33 million hole in the city budget, tackle the city\u2019s homelessness crisis and improve public safety and parks. For the typical Austin homeowner, that would have meant an additional $303 toward their annual city tax bill, not including other fee increases the city enacted this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n The measure drew pushback on affordability grounds. Local officials in recent years had already gone to voters several times asking for tax-rate increases. Five years ago, Austin taxpayers signed off on a 20% tax increase to pay for Project Connect, the city\u2019s multibillion-dollar public transit expansion that has since been plagued with delays and cost overruns. Last November, voters approved tax increases for the Austin Independent School District and Travis County. The county again raised taxes this year to help pay for damage caused by the July 4 floods.<\/p>\n Still, the average Travis County homeowner\u2019s tax bill was effectively flat from 2019 to 2024 when adjusted for inflation.<\/p>\n At the same time, opponents ridiculed questionable city spending practices, many of which were unveiled by the Austin American-Statesman<\/a>. To Matt Mackowiak, who heads the group Save Austin Now that pushed against the tax measure, the proposition\u2019s defeat is indicative of a lack of trust in City Hall.<\/p>\n \u201cThey want to keep the party going, and they\u2019re sending the bill to taxpayers,\u201d Mackowiak said. \u201cAnd for once, taxpayers sent the bill back and said \u2018no.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In the wake of the measure\u2019s defeat, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson acknowledged that Tuesday\u2019s result was a \u201creferendum\u201d on City Hall. He called for a \u201csystemic evaluation\u201d of the city budget to look for ways to cut costs. Houston Mayor John Whitmire initiated a similar audit that found about $122 million in savings. And Mackowiak vowed to force a city charter amendment for an independent audit of the city\u2019s finances if officials don\u2019t make sufficient strides to rein in spending.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to give voters reason to trust us \u2014 to trust that we will strike the right balance between services and the funding needed to provide those services,\u201d Watson said in a statement Tuesday night.<\/p>\n Despite Tuesday\u2019s defeat, property taxes in Austin will still rise \u2014 but not by as much as they would have had the proposition passed.<\/p>\n Austin wasn\u2019t the only city where voters said no to a higher tax rate. Voters in Mesquite rejected a tax-rate increase that would have enabled the city to hire two more firefighters and three police officers, among other matters.<\/p>\n