Rep. Drew Darby's Bill to Abolish School Property Tax Moves Forward as San Angeloans Rally Against Tax Increases

SAN ANGELO, TX – The Texas House Ways and Means committee Thursday voted unanimously to approve Drew Darby’s bill to abolish school property taxes in Texas. 

Meanwhile, San Angelo TEA party supporters rallied on the steps of the Tom Green County Courthouse at noon Friday to protest a proposed increase in county property taxes. 

Darby authored House Joint Resolution 21.  He said, “The bill gives you (voters) the opportunity to eliminate the school maintenance and operation property tax at the November 2018 election.  If approved by you, it would prohibit any political jurisdiction in this state from levying a property tax for the purpose of maintaining an efficient system of public free schools starting January 1, 2021.”

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Darby explained that the legislature has a lot of work to do to replace property taxes to fund schools, “I don’t have the answers on how best to fund schools but I do know the state legislature relies too heavily on local property taxes.  We need some direction from you.”  Darby continued, “Texans are asking for property tax relief and this would eliminate half of every property tax bill in the state.” 

At the courthouse rally, Americans for Prosperity senior field director Russ Duerstine said, “What we’re hearing from people around the state is that their property taxes are going up too fast, too high and many people are having to sell their house because they can’t afford the property taxes.”

Duerstine says property tax is complex, “Property tax is a very complicated and there’s no simple fix.”

 According to Americans For Prosperity Texas currently has the 14^th most burdensome property taxes in the nation.  Duerstine said, “The Texas legislature can provide property tax relief by allowing automatic rollback elections and by removing the petition gathering process.  Our state should drop the property tax rollback rate from 8 percent to a more affordable 4 percent.”

“We’re excited that the legislature is taking on some simplification aspects of property tax and make transparency a bigger part of the property tax issue.” Duerstine said.

After the rally the crowd walked across the street to Darby’s office and dropped off card telling the state representative who was there and that they want property tax relief.