Harris County Hustle

Big business hopes you sit out the vote, too.

So, you rent. You may never own a home.

You may not care who sits on the Harris County Appraisal District (HCAD) Board of Directors. But you know who does care?

• Your landlord.
• Every meal-prepping, house-flipping TikTok bro.
• Major industrial landowners.
• Republicans.

Until this year, all appraisal districts in Texas had appointed boards of directors. Houston Republican Senator Paul Bettencourt proposed a law (that got added to a Texas Constitutional amendment, and passed) saying that in the 50* largest counties, three board seats would instead need to be elected.

The law specified that the elections should happen, if the vote passed, on the May 4th uniform election date.

A few key facts that make this make a little more sense and underscore why you should vote:

• Paul Bettencourt, a Republican who sides with Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Ken Paxton on policy issues, used to be the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector.
• He now owns a firm people pay to challenge their property tax assessments.
• Those firms make money when you sign up, and then take a percentage of any savings you get. His takes 40%. Which means the more challenges, and the more he takes off, the more he gets paid.
• Many places in Texas regularly have May 4th elections, but Houston, which is most of Harris County, does not.
• Houston, which is most of Harris County, votes Democratic. So Houston’s Democratic voters are not in the habit of checking for elections on that day, especially elections for positions that have never been elected before.

Who benefits the most from tax challenges? No surprise, people who have the time and money to sustain a challenge.

The individual homeowner can challenge their own taxes, and you might get a little off, but year over year, you don’t see much change.

People who own land as their business, either their whole business or a big part of it, have greater incentives to challenge. Some major industrial (think refineries) and corporate (think skyscrapers) owners challenge every year, going all the way to the lawsuit level. They’ve got lawyers on retainer and time on their hands. They get millions knocked off their taxes.

And homeowners bear even more of the burden while our public revenues suffer. Public schools, roads, flood infrastructure. If taxes fund it, property tax appraisal districts affect it.

The question is this: do you want Republicans, landlords, big business, and those annoying dudes on TikTok who want you to form an LLC and set up a retirement account for your dog to have the biggest voice in who governs the Harris County Appraisal District?

Or do you want a shot at an equitable process that centers the needs of homeowners, particularly those who are most vulnerable to losing their property to delinquent taxes and predatory practices?

If you’re down with the former, sit this one out. But if you are here for the people, vote.

You can find a sample ballot and all of the information about early voting (April 22 to 30), election day (Saturday May 4th), and the times and places for polling sites (fewer than usual) on HarrisVotes.com.

You get to vote for all three seats, and you should vote for the equity slate:

Place 1: Katherine Blueford-Daniels

Place 2: Melissa Noriega

Place 3: Pelumi Adeleke

Mark your calendar. Make a plan to vote. Then ask three friends for their plan, and follow up to make sure they vote.

(And don’t forget, you’ll have to vote again later in May…but more on that later. Now, let’s get everyone ready for May 4th.)

*Fun fact about those 50 largest counties. This is another way Republicans target Democrats in Texas. When they peg laws to population size, they can say they are being neutral, when in fact, the largest counties in Texas tend to vote mostly or even exclusively Democratic.

In this particular case, in many of the smaller counties to which this law applies, not enough people even signed up to run, so they aren’t having elections. But in the big counties like Harris (Houston) and Travis (Austin), the county is having to spend tons of money to hold elections *and then* to hold runoff elections from the March primary a few weeks later.

So in Houston/Harris County, we will have at least 4 elections (March primary + runoff, May 4th, November general) and possibly a 5th if there isn’t a clear winner in any of the May 4th races.

And by the way, the law could have been written so no one had to plan an extra election. It was done this way on purpose. Doesn’t seem very fiscally responsible, does it, Republicans?