Texas Tribune
Texas 2023 election challenge threatens tax cuts, teacher pensions
by Natalia Contreras, Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, The Texas Tribune – 2023-12-01 11:03:47
SUMMARY: Lawsuits based on unfounded claims about voting equipment may delay a cost of living increase for Texas retirees and property tax cuts. The lawsuits, filed by activists with connections to election conspiracy promoters, challenge election results certified by Governor Greg Abbott. The contested policies, approved by voters, could now take months to be resolved due to legal procedures. Retired teachers may face delayed pension raises, their first in nearly 20 years, while homeowners face deferred property tax reductions. The claims argue voting equipment was uncertified and vulnerable to tampering, despite official certifications and security measures. Votebeat and The Texas Tribune report on the implications of these legal challenges for Texas residents.
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Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Help us answer your questions about voting where you live by filling out our survey.
Lawsuits based on false claims about voting equipment could delay millions of dollars in cost of living increases for retired teachers expected to arrive in January. The lawsuits also threaten to hold up state property tax cuts for homeowners — arguably Republicans' signature policy achievement this year.
Voters widely approved both policies this fall. Now Gov. Greg Abbott plans to ask legislators Friday to address the issue and prevent further delays during the fourth called special legislative session.
The election contests challenging the results of the November constitutional amendment election were filed in Travis County district courts days after the November election by right-wing activists. They are based on false claims that Texas' voting equipment is not certified and that voting machines are connected to the internet. Abbott has not certified the results of the election and won't be able to until the lawsuits are resolved in the courts — which experts say could take weeks or months.
Voter advocates say the election contests are yet another attempt to undermine trust in elections. This time, though, it could have immediate negative implications for millions of Texans.
“I think this is a perfect example of the real impact in peoples' lives when we delay the certification of our vote because of misinformation,” said Katya Ehresman, voting rights program manager at Common Cause Texas.
At least six lawsuits — filed by residents from Bexar, Llano, Denton, Rains, Brazoria, Liberty, and Atascosa counties who have ties to local promoters of election conspiracies — are challenging the 14 constitutional amendment propositions that were on the ballot in November.
By law, challenges to constitutional amendment elections can't go to trial earlier than a month after it's been filed — unless requested by the contestant — and not later than six months after it was filed.
Issues at stake for voters
Cost of living increases for about 400,000 retired teachers and public school employees could be delayed for months, unless the lawsuit moves quickly through the courts. Advocates say that, for many, this would be the first raise to their pensions they will see in nearly 20 years.
Lawmakers earlier this year passed Senate Bill 10, which provides some retired Texas teachers with cost-of-living raises of between 2% and 6% to their monthly pension checks. The Legislature then put the proposition on the ballot, seeking voters' approval to use $3.3 billion from the general revenue fund.
Eli Melendrez, a staff researcher with the Texas American Federation of Teachers, said the average monthly pension of a retired educator is about $2,174. The pension increase would add about $80 more to their monthly checks, he said. “That sounds really small, but if you look at it in aggregate, we're talking about $30 million per month in these retired educators' pockets,” Melendrez said. “It's definitely significant.”
Retired teachers' first pension check of 2024 will be delivered at the end of January. “Time is very much of the essence when it comes to these issues,” he said and added that it isn't clear yet whether retired teachers would receive back pay to cover any delays.
The lawsuit also imperils, at least temporarily, what is arguably Texas Republicans' top priority this year — cutting property taxes for homeowners and businesses. Republicans including Abbott made big promises this year to use a record $33 billion surplus to deliver tax cuts to Texas property owners — who, largely because the state doesn't have an income tax, pay some of the highest property tax bills in the nation, according to the conservative Tax Foundation.
State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, the Republican who championed the policy in the Legislature, could not be immediately reached for comment.
After months of infighting among the state's top GOP leaders over how exactly to make those cuts, lawmakers greenlit an $18 billion tax-cut package aimed at driving down school taxes, the biggest chunk of property taxes. Voters signed off on the measure, dubbed Proposition 4, at the November ballot box by a wide margin — 83% of voters in favor, 17% against.
The package includes $12.7 billion in new tax cuts. Of that, $7.1 billion is slated to go to school districts so they can replace local tax revenues with state dollars. The proposition also gives a significant boost to Texas' main tax break for homeowners: the state's homestead exemption on school district taxes, the slice of a home's value that can't be taxed to pay for public schools.
Those cuts will tally up to more than $2,500 in tax savings over the next two years for the typical Texas homeowner, according to figures provided by Bettencourt's office, which nets out to a little more than $100 a month. Seniors who are homeowners are expected to get bigger savings.
The lawsuit also jeopardizes a slate of other tax changes in Proposition 4, including a new cap on how much certain businesses' property values, which helps determine an owner's tax bill, can grow each year. The proposition also expands the pool of businesses that don't have to pay the state's franchise tax — and allows voters in counties with at least 75,000 residents to choose three new members of their local appraisal districts' board of directors, which are appointed positions.
Who is suing and what are the claims?
At least two of the six nearly identical lawsuits were filed by Jarrett Woodward of Bexar County. Woodward has in the past year spoken in front of county commissioners in Kerr, Uvalde, Medina, and Bexar counties trying to persuade them to ditch electronic voting equipment and to hand count ballots instead.
In the lawsuits, Woodward argues the voting equipment used in the Nov. 7 election was not properly certified and that “the ballot marking devices similar to those that Contestants were forced to use for voting in 2023 contain multiple severe security flaws including the opportunity to install malicious software locally or remotely.”
Voting machines used in Texas by vendors ES&S and Hart InterCivic have been certified by the Texas Secretary of State and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Neither the machines used to cast ballots nor the machines used to count ballots have the capability to connect to the internet. The process to certify election equipment in Texas is robust: After vendors submit an application for certification, state officials physically examine the equipment and test its accuracy.
Last year, Woodward and others filed similar lawsuits against multiple county officials across the state for using voting equipment they say is not certified; at least seven were dismissed and the others have yet to succeed. Similar unfounded claims have been made in other states across the country.
Woodward did not respond to Votebeat's request for comment.
Woodward was part of a long lineup of speakers — including Mark Cook and Tina Peters of Colorado — who spread election conspiracy theories at an event in Kerrville in August and have ties to MyPillow CEO and well-known election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell, an ally of former president Donald Trump. Cook is connected to clerks who have tried to illegally obtain access to voting systems. Peters is a former Mesa County Colorado clerk who was indicted last year on felony and misdemeanor charges related to election equipment tampering after she allowed unauthorized people break into her county's election system in hopes of finding evidence of fraud.
Joshua Fechter at The Texas Tribune contributed reporting for this story.
Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.
Disclosure: Common Cause and Texas Secretary of State have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
These Texans aren’t taking buyouts despite repeated floods
by By Emily Foxhall, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-20 05:00:00
SUMMARY: Recent floods in Harris County, Texas, have devastated homes along the San Jacinto River. Tom Madigan, who owns multiple properties, quickly started repairs without knowing the Harris County Flood Control District aims to buy out such flood-prone properties. The region has a longstanding buyout program to remove homes from high-risk flood areas, with about 800 out of 2,400 targeted properties purchased. However, buyouts are voluntary and often insufficient for low-income residents. Despite the program, many choose to stay due to affordability and community ties, while others like Madigan remain skeptical of receiving a fair offer.
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HARRIS COUNTY — After the floodwaters earlier this month just about swallowed two of the six homes that 60-year-old Tom Madigan owns on the San Jacinto River, he didn't think twice about whether to fix them. He hired people to help, and they got to work stripping the walls, pulling up flooring and throwing out water-logged furniture.
What Madigan didn't know: The Harris County Flood Control District wants to buy his properties as part of an effort to get people out of dangerously flood-prone areas.
Back-to-back storms drenched southeast Texas in late April and early May, causing flash flooding and pushing rivers out of their banks and into low-lying neighborhoods. Officials across the region urged people in vulnerable areas to evacuate.
Like Madigan's, some places that were inundated along the San Jacinto in Harris County have flooded repeatedly. And for nearly 30 years, the flood control district has been trying to clear out homes around the river by paying property owners to move, then returning the lots to nature.
The recent floods show why buyout programs can be important. These spots typically flood first and worse. Gov. Greg Abbott reported that hundreds of rescues took place in the state while the floods destroyed homes. A man drowned and a child was swept away into the floods. One Harris County resident described climbing on top of his motor home as the water rose before first responders rescued him.
But the disaster and its aftermath also illustrate why buyouts are complicated to carry out even in Harris County, home to Houston, which has one of the most robust buyout programs in the country. The flood control district has identified roughly 2,400 properties as current buyout candidates around the San Jacinto; the district and county have bought about 800 of them.
Nearly all of the district's buyouts are voluntary. If an owner doesn't want to sell, the district can't force them out.
Buyouts make sense for some people who can't be protected from floods, said Alessandra Jerolleman, director of research for the Center on Environment, Land and Law at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.
But buyouts might not provide lower-income people enough money to get somewhere safer, she said, and they could lose important support like child care from nearby family or neighbors.
“It's not as though it's a guarantee of reducing risks to that family,” Jerolleman said.
People who live near the river and who have endured repeated floods explained that they've stayed because it's affordable and, most of the time, peaceful. Where else would they be able to buy anything like it? Some said they didn't think the government would offer them what they consider a fair price to sell their land. Some didn't know the buyout program existed.
Madigan started buying homes more than 15 years ago in the unincorporated River Terrace neighborhood because they were cheap. On Tuesday, the Houston firefighter drank a Heineken and grilled hamburgers for his work crew outside his most damaged house, which he rents to his brother. Sodden rugs baked in the sun on the driveway.
Madigan said he might have taken a buyout if it was a reasonable offer — but he doubted it would be. He said he needed to get the properties ready again for his renters. “I can't wait,” he said.
Two blocks away, water had swept through a yellow house Madigan rents to a family with a teenage son. One of the workers fixing the property, 21-year-old Omar Reyna, watched the family throw out pretty much everything they had. Piecing together new laminate flooring with his dad, Reyna kept thinking about a trash bag of Teddy bears and stuffed toys he tossed out for them.
He wondered if the parents had been saving the toys for another kid they might have in the future.
“The faster we get it done, the faster they can come back in here,” Reyna said.
Some people choose to live with the risk of flooding
The San Jacinto is the largest river in the state's most populous county. For years before Harris County's first floodplain maps were drawn up in the mid-1980s, people built homes near its banks. Even today, people can still build in the vast floodplain if the houses are high enough and have enough stormwater detention.
The flood control district tries to buy out homes in pockets of the floodplain that are deepest, said James Wade, manager for the district's property acquisition department. Those are places where engineers can't easily fix flooding problems.
Buyouts are meant to get people out of flood zones before their property floods again, not to help in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. The process is slow: In some cases, it can take 18 months or longer to approve a buyout application, Wade said. The district pays owners the market value or pre-flood value for their house, determined by a third-party appraiser, plus moving expenses and a supplement to help them get into a house out of the floodplain, Wade said.
“It's a very equitable, fair program,” Wade said — but still some people don't want to leave.
Those who stay learn to adapt. They build homes on stilts. They monitor the river level and watch for releases of water from the Lake Conroe dam upstream. Some know intimately the routine of rebuilding: gut the house, clean it, put it back together.
The floor of 49-year-old Sean Vincent's house in the Forest Cove neighborhood in northeast Houston is 15 feet above the ground. Three feet of water flooded it when Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017. This month, the floods reached five feet high on Vincent's property. He cleaned out his waterlogged ground-level shed with help from church members. On Tuesday, he was building new shelves for it.
But most of the time Vincent, who works in railroad traffic control, said he enjoys the space surrounded by tall trees with room for his three kids.
“It's just really not a major part of our life,” Vincent said of the flooding. “Yes, it's inconvenient. Yes, it's now happened to us twice in seven years … It's sort of a trade-off for us. And it is lovely out here.”
“Where are you going to go?”
Then there are those who stay because they don't see anywhere else to go.
Jack St. John, 67, a retired long-haul truck driver, moved to Northshore 43 years ago and has had to clean up after two floods. He worries any time flooding threatens, but the neighborhood's advantages keep him there: He has no water bill because he has a well. His taxes are reasonable. The neighborhood has a fish fry in the spring and a barbecue in the fall.
“You know, when you leave, where are you going to go?” he said. “What's it going to cost to buy into another place?”
Farther northeast, in the Idle Wild and Idle Glen neighborhoods, the floods forced some residents to sleep under tarps. On one largely forested street, boats were turned sideways or flipped upside down. A small building was lodged in the trees. A car was in the ditch.
For several years, Elvia Bethea, 68, has driven from her home in Humble to check on people and pets here, and pick up stray animals. On Tuesday, she and other volunteers gave John Gray, 50, bamboo yard torches to fight the many mosquitoes, plus two trays of chocolate-covered strawberries.
Gray said he couldn't afford to fix up his destroyed house. He earns a living printing labor law posters for businesses. His printers at home were destroyed.
Gray said he had never heard of the buyout program but would consider taking one.
“Who do I call?” Gray asked. “I don't have a clue.”
From the back of a white SUV, Bethea handed some hot dogs to Jose Tabores, 68, who lives on Gray's land in a trailer now filled with mud.
“I'm coming for dinner, remember!” Bethea teased him.
Nearby, 51-year-old Veronika Scheid had been sleeping in a wet tent. The flood washed the shipping crate she lived in down the road and into the trees — along with her and her neighbors' belongings.
At a low point, when Scheid was crying over all she lost, she found a pink-and-white beaded necklace with stitching in the shape of a “V,” like her name. At the end was a charm shaped like a house.
She was grateful the person who owned the land where she stayed hadn't taken a buyout. Otherwise she would have nowhere to go.
“At least we have this,” Scheid said.
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The Texas Tribune is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
Texas Tribune
Trump, Abbott speak at Dallas NRA convention
by By Annie Xia, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-18 19:24:41
SUMMARY:
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DALLAS— At the National Rifle Association's annual convention on Saturday, Donald Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott encouraged the thousands gathered to vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election as a way to ensure their Second Amendment rights.
“The NRA has stood with me from the very beginning, and with your vote, I will stand strong for your rights and liberties,” Trump said. “I heard it a few weeks ago that if gun owners voted, we would swamp them at levels that nobody's ever seen before. I think you're a rebellious bunch, but let's be rebellious and vote this time.”
Trump and Abbott spoke to a room packed with NRA members, some of which sported supportive attire from the standard-fare red caps to a dress covered with photos of the former president.
During the convention, the NRA released its endorsement for the 45th president, and the Trump political campaign announced the launch for the “Gun Owners for Trump” coalition.
Abbott touted his track record on gun rights by pointing to Texas laws passed last year, such as House Bill 3137 which prohibits local governments from requiring firearm owners to buy liability insurance. To energetic applause, he said the law ensured people would not be forced to pay to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
Abbott also described the state's successful crackdown on the recent pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses, in which protesters are demanding the schools divest from from companies tied to Israel or weapons manufacturing amid the Israel-Hamas War.
“When they tried to pull that stunt in Texas, our Department of Public Safety cleared the area, arrested the protesters and put them in jail,” Abbott said. “Unlike some of these radical leftist universities like Columbia, UCLA and far too many others, in Texas we don't tolerate paid protesters who tried to hijack our college campuses.”
Almost to the day, the NRA convention takes place two years after the Uvalde school shooting, where an 18-year-old gunned down an elementary school with a legally purchased assault rifle. The shooter killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers with an AR-15 style rifle.
During the 2023 legislative session, Uvalde families unsuccessfully pressed Texas policymakers to pass a raise-the-age law, which would have upped the minimum age for buying semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21.
“Donald Trump and Texas Republicans made the gun violence epidemic worse, especially in our state, where we have seen nine mass shootings just in the last 15 years,” said a statement by Gilberto Hinojosa, the Texas Democratic Party Chair, on Friday. “Even after Uvalde parents pleaded with Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz for commonsense gun safety laws, they decided, like Trump “ that the NRA and gun lobby was more important.”
Instead the legislature approved a school safety bill that established preventative measures toward school shootings. The law included a mandate that every school must hire an armed security officer and the creation of a department within the Texas Education Agency that can compel districts to adhere to active-shooter protocols.
During his speech, Trump endorsed four Republican candidates who are fighting in late May runoffs to be their party's nominee: Alan Schoolcraft, David Covey, Helen Kerwin and Brett Hagenbuch. Each of them has already received endorsements by Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton or both. Schoolcraft, Covey and Kerwin are running against Republican incumbents in the Texas House who impeded Abbott's signature school voucher bill or voted for Paxton's impeachment based on accusations of corruption.
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Texas Tribune
Photos: Texas storms cause widespread damage in Houston area
by By Marie D. De Jesús and Antranik Tavitian, Houston Landing, The Texas Tribune – 2024-05-17 14:45:42
SUMMARY: Severe storms hit the Houston area on Thursday evening, resulting in widespread damage, four fatalities, and power outages affecting nearly 900,000 homes and businesses. The Houston Office of Emergency Management is beginning recovery efforts, while officials discourage unnecessary travel. Reports from Houston Landing detail the extent of the destruction, which includes knocked-down power lines and damaged buildings, such as the Wells Fargo Plaza and the CenterPoint Energy Plaza. Photos provided by Antranik Tavitian and Marie D. De Jesús illustrate the damage seen across the region.
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Severe storms tore through the Houston area Thursday evening, causing widespread damage, killing at least four people and leaving hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses without power.
Gale force winds up to 100 mph knocked over power lines, blew out windows and toppled trees throughout the region. Houston Office of Emergency Management spokesperson Brent Taylor said officials will begin the recovery process once debris and damage are cleared. In the meantime, Houston Mayor John Whitmire and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo urged residents to avoid all unnecessary travel.
The storm ravaged Harris County — from transmission towers crushed in suburban Cypress to stricken oak trees blockading traffic to high-rise windows shattered throughout downtown Houston.
Here's a look at some of the damage wrought, reported by Houston Landing:
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