HOUSTON \u2013 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched a sweeping review into the financial practices of nearly 1,000 cities across the state, including major metros such as Houston, Galveston, Dallas and San Antonio, to determine whether local governments are complying with state audit and transparency laws.<\/p>\n
Paxton\u2019s office confirmed that the number of cities under review is expected to continue growing as the initiative expands.<\/p>\n
The effort centers on Senate Bill 1851, a newly enacted law that prohibits cities from raising taxes above the no-new-revenue rate if they fail to meet Texas\u2019 long-standing financial audit and transparency requirements. Paxton has already intervened with several cities, La Marque, Odessa, Tom Bean and Whitesboro, ordering them to halt what his office described as unlawful tax increases.<\/p>\n
According to the attorney general, those investigations revealed wider problems.<\/p>\n
His office said many municipalities across Texas \u201croutinely fail\u201d to comply with the required audits, prompting Paxton to launch a proactive statewide review rather than waiting for individual complaints.<\/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 Paxton said in a statement. \u201cThis review ensures the law is universally followed, taxpayers are respected, and local government is accountable to all Texans.\u201d<\/p>\n
The initiative covers some of the largest cities in Texas, including:Houston, Galveston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Lubbock, Wichita Falls, McAllen, Beaumont, Amarillo, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Laredo, Texarkana, Brownsville, Waco and Tyler.<\/p>\n
Paxton\u2019s office warned that cities found out of compliance with audit rules or those that ignore information requests could face \u201csignificant legal risk.\u201d Municipal leaders who have received requests for documents are being urged to respond promptly.<\/p>\n
Texans who believe their local officials are violating SB 1851\u2019s requirements can now file a complaint through a form created by the Office of the Attorney General.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched a sweeping review into the financial practices of nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[7216,56,58,57,1967,66,223,287,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-82651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-galveston","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-headlines","11":"tag-houston-news","12":"tag-ken-paxton","13":"tag-local","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82651","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=82651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}