{"id":28963,"date":"2026-05-15T05:20:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T05:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/28963\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T05:20:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T05:20:42","slug":"texas-attorney-general-blocks-130-cities-from-raising-property-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/28963\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Attorney General blocks 130 cities from raising property taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Thursday his office<\/a> has told more than 130 Texas cities they can\u2019t raise property taxes because they\u2019re not complying with a new state law.<\/p>\n

The push is part of an ongoing effort by Paxton to make sure cities aren\u2019t unduly raising property taxes under Senate Bill 1851<\/a>, which passed last year. That law is part of a GOP-led push to rein in the state\u2019s high property taxes. It bars cities from raising more in property taxes than they did the previous year if they don\u2019t conduct an annual financial audit and release an annual financial statement based on that audit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will not allow cities to unlawfully raise taxes on hardworking Texans,\u201d Paxton said in a statement. \u201cThat is why I took aggressive action against over 130 Texas cities to hold them accountable and ensure they comply with state law. Cities cannot fail to abide by state audit requirements without consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year, Paxton requested financial documents and other information from a majority of the state\u2019s 1,200 cities to determine whether they\u2019re following the law. His office said some 135 cities \u201cfailed to comply\u201d with the law but did not say how.<\/p>\n

Among those cities were Alpine, Balch Springs, Victoria and Wimberley. Paxton\u2019s office said those cities comprised \u201can initial list of non-compliant cities, and the investigation remains ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Small cities told lawmakers<\/a> that the bill\u2019s provisions would disproportionately impact them because they do not have the manpower or time to produce audits within the 180-day requirement. The penalties that bar them from collecting some taxes would hurt their already paltry budgets. <\/p>\n

The Texas Tribune reached out to several cities Paxton notified, but they have not immediately responded to questions.<\/p>\n

Larger cities like Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and Corpus Christi were among the cities first subject to Paxton\u2019s tax probe. Those cities were absent from the list of towns Paxton ordered not to raise their taxes.<\/p>\n

So was Odessa. Paxton put the city on notice last year<\/a> after officials adopted a tax hike, but has not responded to city officials after they supplied his office with documents justifying the increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17656,3033,364,3902,8,366,291,9,17657,14547,7,17658,17659],"class_list":{"0":"post-28963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-alpine","9":"tag-corpus-christi","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-fort-worth","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-houston","14":"tag-ken-paxton","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-odessa","17":"tag-property-taxes","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-victoria","20":"tag-wimberley"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116576912782832418","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}