AUSTIN, Texas (KVIA) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is reviewing nearly 1,000 cities to ensure they are following SB 1851, a recently enacted state law that bars cities that do not strictly follow the state’s financial statement audit and transparency requirements from raising taxes above the no-new-revenue rate. El Paso is one of the cities under review, Paxton’s office says.<\/p>\n
“To enforce that law, Attorney General Paxton previously\u00a0sent\u00a0letters to La Marque, Odessa, Tom Bean, and Whitesboro to stop their unlawful tax raises,” Paxton’s office explained.<\/p>\n
The office says that during that process, they discovered some cities allegedly fail to comply with the requirement. In response, Paxton has launched an initiative to look into these cities and to request audit information from them.<\/p>\n
“Any cities not in compliance put themselves at significant legal risk, and any city who has received an email information request from the Office of the Attorney General should promptly respond,” Paxton’s office stated.<\/p>\n
Paxton is reviewing the following cities, according to his office:<\/p>\n
El Paso<\/p>\n
Houston<\/p>\n
Galveston<\/p>\n
San Antonio<\/p>\n
Dallas<\/p>\n
Fort Worth<\/p>\n
Lubbock<\/p>\n
Wichita Falls<\/p>\n
McAllen<\/p>\n
Beaumont<\/p>\n
Amarillo<\/p>\n
Corpus Christi<\/p>\n
Laredo<\/p>\n
Texarkana<\/p>\n
Brownsville<\/p>\n
Waco<\/p>\n
Tyler<\/p>\n
\u201cLocal officials will not be allowed to ignore the law, cover up their finances, and burden Texans with never-ending tax increases,\u201d said Attorney General Paxton. \u201cOur cities and municipalities must prioritize transparency and minimizing the tax burden of every citizen across the state. While many cities have already complied with these requirements, I\u2019m launching this review to ensure that the law is universally followed, taxpayers are respected, and local government is accountable to all Texans.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas (KVIA) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is reviewing nearly 1,000 cities to ensure they are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-81936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81936","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=81936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}