Greg Abbott budget proposal calls for $15 billion in property tax cuts

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s day by day publication that retains readers on top of things on probably the most important Texas news.

Gov. Greg Abbott desires lawmakers to spend $15 billion to decrease Texans’ property taxes and at the very least $750 million on faculty security measures resembling safety and increasing psychological well being providers, whereas persevering with to completely fund his border security operation, in line with his 2024-25 budget proposal distributed Thursday.

“To build the Texas of tomorrow, we must continue the State’s unrelenting efforts to build infrastructure, grow the energy sector, improve job training and public education, and ensure healthcare access — all while keeping Texans safe and preserving the freedoms we enjoy today for future generations,” the Republican governor wrote in the 25-page doc, first reported by the Quorum Report.

The proposal lays out, for the primary time, how Abbott desires lawmakers to ship property tax cuts — an thought agreed upon by Republicans in each chambers at the same time as particulars differ amongst plans.

Abbott proposes sustaining present cuts to high school property taxes made below a large faculty finance package deal handed in 2019 and utilizing state {dollars} to additional cut back taxes below that regulation. The state doesn’t truly elevate property taxes — that cash is collected by cities, counties, faculty districts and different native entities — however by funneling extra state cash into colleges, it’s capable of decrease the quantity that colleges accumulate. The cuts would apply each to houses and companies.

He additionally asks lawmakers to contemplate expanding broadband access, supporting alternatives to abortion, creating household depart for state staff, investing in flood mitigation and different massive infrastructure tasks, paying down among the state’s unfunded pension liabilities for state staff, and giving raises for lecturers each lively and retired.

Abbott additionally features a new proposal to enhance death benefits for Texas National Guard members who’ve been stationed alongside the border as a part of his multibillion-dollar safety mission Operation Lone Star.

The doc additionally calls for increasing postpartum Medicaid advantages to 12 months, addressing staffing and funding shortages in nursing houses, and shopping for harm-reduction medicine for regulation enforcement officers to hold to battle the fentanyl crisis. He proposes funding reform on the embattled Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, and supporting little one abuse investigators and kinship care applications for youngsters faraway from their mother and father’ houses.

As with Abbott’s budget proposals in earlier classes, the doc is brief on specifics. It doesn’t lay out funding totals statewide or for every state company, and it doesn’t give particulars for find out how to steadiness the price of the concepts he’s proposing with different spending necessities or limits on state spending. Most of the precise budgeting work will fall to House and Senate lawmakers, although Abbott wields veto energy over the ultimate product and has the power to shoot down particular line gadgets.

The governor’s budget define is required by the Texas Constitution to be delivered to lawmakers earlier than his biennial State of the State deal with.

Each initially proposed $130.1 billion in general-revenue spending for the 2024-25 biennium, leaving at the very least $50 billion of obtainable cash unallocated in the early drafts.

That features a historic $32.7 billion budget surplus attributed to record-breaking tax collections in the final 18 months.

“Our mighty Texas economy has produced another record — we now have the largest budget surplus in the history of our state,” Abbott wrote in the proposal. “But make no mistake, that money does not belong to the government. It belongs to the taxpayers.”

Lawmakers are required to move a balanced budget earlier than the top of the session. The new budget is usually permitted close to the top of May.

Abbott’s proposals for the subsequent biennium largely mirror priorities he described Thursday night throughout his State of the State deal with, delivered at Noveon Magnetics in San Marcos.

In his Thursday speech, he named seven emergency gadgets that lawmakers can vote on instantly: slicing property taxes, ending COVID-19 restrictions “forever,” increasing faculty alternative, making colleges safer, ending “revolving-door” bail insurance policies, securing the state’s border with Mexico and cracking down on fentanyl.

The budget doc was distributed Thursday and addressed to House Speaker Dade Phelan, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and members of the 88th Legislature. The doc had not been posted on Abbott’s web site as of Friday morning.

Reducing property taxes

The $15 billion Abbott desires to spend on property tax cuts is in line with the quantity already laid out in spending proposals in the House and Senate, and his previous statements about spending at the very least half the excess on these cuts.

“We must — and we will — do more to provide meaningful tax relief to homeowners and businesses across the state,” Abbott stated in the doc. “Thankfully, a robustly growing economy and the extraordinary revenue surplus in the state’s budget has afforded us the opportunity to do so.”

Absent from Abbott’s budget proposal is any point out of a rise in the state’s homestead exemption on faculty district taxes, or the greenback quantity of a house’s worth that may’t be taxed. Raising the exemption is a high precedence for Patrick, who has referred to as for utilizing $3 billion to boost the exemption from $40,000 to $70,000. But doing so would profit solely householders, critics have famous — which implies extra of the burden of paying property taxes would fall on renters and companies.

But Abbott and Patrick seem aligned on the thought of slicing property taxes companies pay on “personal property” like furnishings and gear — with Abbott expressing help for “targeted relief” for companies by growing the exemption for private property.

Abbott additionally referred to as for freezing county property taxes for seniors and ensuring they robotically obtain an extra $10,000 homestead exemption already put aside for seniors.

Notably, Abbott stated budget writers in the House and Senate ought to look for federal funds made obtainable below payments just like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act — signature achievements of President Joe Biden — and “determine which programs are worthwhile to pursue.”

School vouchers and different coverage pushes

Among the extra broadly debated coverage concepts in Abbott’s proposal is that of diverting public faculty {dollars} to constitution colleges, non-public colleges and home-schooling applications — a battle the Legislature has been combating for many years and one which divides Republicans in rural and concrete districts.

“Parents deserve the opportunity to choose the educational setting that is best for their child whether it is a traditional public school, public charter school, private school, or home-schooling,” Abbott wrote in his budget proposal.

The proposal suggests the creation of Education Savings Accounts to “provide parents with the option to use funding that would otherwise be allocated to their child’s public school on a variety of educational expenses such as private school tuition, online learning programs, instructional materials, and educational therapies.”

But critics of vouchers and related applications, together with rural Republicans and most Democrats, say they drain very important funding from a college system that’s — not like constitution and personal colleges — accessible to all college students and that ought to be absolutely funded.

“After almost a decade under Governor Abbott’s leadership, he answers the anger and frustration that parents and teachers feel in cash-strapped schools with a gimmick that further undermines the public education that the vast majority of Texas school children and their families rely upon,” state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, stated in a press release.

School safety

Among Abbott’s budget priorities is placing at the very least $600 million towards what he referred to as “school safety measures” that embody expertise upgrades; “hardening,” or growing safety, of faculty buildings and campuses to guard in opposition to mass shootings; and “expanded mental health resources.”

He additionally calls for $147 million to proceed funding a statewide telehealth program to attach youngsters with psychological well being assets via colleges, a program run via the state’s universities by the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium.

Abbott additionally desires $6.6 million spent on active-shooter coaching for regulation enforcement officers, a precedence he listed amongst his faculty initiatives.

The proposal makes no point out of considerably growing funding to struggling public schools or tying funding to enrollment rather than attendance, each concepts pushed by public training advocates.

Public security and border safety

In the proposal, Abbott additionally praises his Operation Lone Star border initiative for detaining migrants and seizing the synthetic opioid fentanyl. Funding for the operation, which has concerned the deployment of members of the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety and has value $4.3 billion in state funds to this point, ought to proceed, Abbott stated. He wrote that Texas will proceed to push the federal authorities to reimburse what he says are $6.7 billion in prices to the state to safe its border with Mexico.

In his proposal, Abbott asks for a brand new program to reinforce demise advantages for the Texas National Guard. In April, Bishop Evans died on Operation Lone Star whereas trying to rescue migrants from the water. His household was not eligible for state demise advantages, touching off an effort by lawmakers to alter that coverage.

“While much has been accomplished by the brave men and women at the border, there is still a great amount of work to be done to protect Texans, as the federal government shows no willingness to quell this humanitarian crisis,” the doc says.

James Barragán contributed to this report.