Constitutional Amendment Election

Not everyone realizes that there are to separate elections in May. There’s the run-off for congress and other partisan offices on May 14 and the less well known Constitutional Amendment election on May 7. There are two propositions on the May 7 ballot, both are related to property taxes.

Proposition 1 says “The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the resident homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on a homestead.”

Yes, it is widely agreed that the ballot language sound like gibberish, even lawyers have to ask experts what it means. Those experts will you refer back to the actual legislation that generated the proposition and the Texas constitution and explain that if passed it would reduce property taxes for elderly and disabled Texans by decreasing the amount they pay to public schools, which is generally the largest part of a homeowner’s tax bill. The state is responsible for making up the reduced revenue for school districts. This amendment will increase the state’s share of public school funding by more than $744 million from 2024 to 2026.

The reason that the Texas legislature passed this amendment by a wide bi-partisan margin is that in 2019, they passed a law which provided a property tax reduction to many homeowners but failed to include disabled or elderly homeowners because under the Texas Constitution, their tax rate is frozen. Proposition 1 would amend the Constitution to allow disabled and elderly homeowners to receive the benefits from the 2019 property tax reduction that other homeowners received and freeze their tax rate at a lower rate.

The language of Proposition 2 is much more straight-forward and says “The constitutional amendment increasing the amount of the residence homestead exemption from ad valorem taxes for public school purposes from $25,000 to $40,000.”

If passed by Texas voters, Proposition 2 would raise Texas’ homestead exemption from $25,000 to $40,000 for school district property taxes, saving an average homeowner around $180 on their annual property tax bill. The amendment requires the state of Texas to make up $600 million annual decrease in school district revenue.

Opponents of these propositions make the argument that they don’t fix the real problem which is that our public schools are largely funded by property taxes. While that’s true these propositions do make the issue slightly less onerous and swing the pendulum back toward the state with regard to the percentage of funding provided by the state versus local property taxes. For the last decade or so, in most districts, the local portion has steadily increased so in that sense these propositions are a welcome reversal.

Monday April 25^th is the first day to early vote and Saturday May 7th is election day, I urge you to make time to vote “For” both these important propositions.

 Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 20, 2022