But the narrative quickly shifted when polling was released detailing the unpopularity of the proposed plan and a Legislative Budget Board (LBB) report showed an overall increase in taxes for households with income below $100,000.
The plan faced opposition even within the GOP-dominated Senate. Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), the original author of the property tax reform bill, announced last week alternatives to increasing the sales tax. The Senate eventually stripped the sales tax increase provision from the House’s school finance bill (HB 3) before passing that legislation on Monday.
HJR 3 and HB 4621, proposed constitutional amendments to institute the sales tax increase, were postponed yesterday by Rep. Dan Huberty (R-Houston) until January of 2021. Speaker Dennis Bonnen followed that announcement by stating that the legislation was unlikely to pass in the Senate.
Both property taxes and school finance, which have been intrinsically tied together since the beginning of the session, are the stated top priorities for the Legislature this session. The collapse of the sales tax swap now moves the debate back to the drawing board as lawmakers consider other options for decreasing the property tax burden on Texans.
Separate, but not unrelated from property taxes, is the fact that a budget must also be passed before the session closes.
While the Legislature could always revive talks on the sales tax swap, for now, the proposal looks to be dead on arrival. And yesterday’s pronouncements certainly signaled that a special session may indeed be necessary to resolve these issues.
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Brad Johnson
Brad Johnson is a senior reporter for The Texan and an Ohio native who graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 2017. He is an avid sports fan who most enjoys watching his favorite teams continue their title drought throughout his cognizant lifetime. In his free time, you may find Brad quoting Monty Python productions and trying to calculate the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.
