Is anti-tax crusader Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, really interested in fair taxes or just making sure that rich homeowners and commercial-property owners don’t pay their share?
While discussing Senate Bill 270 in the Senate Intergovernmental Relations Committee, Patrick opposed property owners having to disclose the purchase value of their property so that appraisers would actually know what they’re worth. Currently, Texas appraisers estimate commercial properties which manage to hide billions of dollars in taxes because no one knows what they’re really worth, so homeowners end up picking the slack. Patrick, who is rarely sighted in committees unless there’s a tax bill up (at which point he turns up like the Ghost of Appraisals Past), decided to get on his perpetual hobbyhorse of appraisal caps, even though that wasn’t what they were talking about.
“Is it fair to change the rules of the game in the middle of the game?” complained Patrick. The bill, he said, would be bad because it might upset people who’ve underpaid their taxes. They’d have a leap in their taxes, and that’s just not nice.
This got short shrift from representatives of the Dallas Central Appraisal District. In testimony, senior appraiser Ken Nolan said that the southwest of Dallas, where middle-class families lived, was getting hammered because high-end properties were managing to hide their value through secrecy clauses in resale commitments. He singled out the genteel Highland Park, where Patrick owns radio station KMGS AM1160, as one of the worst offenders.
This article appears in April 6 • 2007.
