Both chambers of Texas Legislature pass bill that could trigger disannexation elections throughout Austin
The Texas Senate today blitzed through the normal procedures to pass HB 1900, a bill that could trigger disannexation elections in many parts of Austin. This is a direct response to police budget cuts last year.
HB 1900 establishes criteria for determining whether a city is a “defunding municipality” that has cut its police department budget disproportionally to the rest of its budget. Once such a designation is made, the city would have to “hold a separate election in each area annexed in the preceding 30 years by the defunding municipality on the question of disannexing the area.”
If Austin gets hit with the designation—which appears likely under the definition set in the bill—then disannexation elections would be triggered in vast tracts of Austin annexed since the 1990s, including River Place, Cat Mountain Villas, the Samsung Semiconductor plant and nearby areas, Southpark Meadows, and Onion Creek.
According to the text of the bill, any areas that opted to disannex couldn’t be reannexed until ten years later, if the city first “reversed the reduction” to the police budget.
The bill also could potentially force a city to freeze or even lower its property tax rate, and it could allow the comptroller to withhold sales taxes owed to a city and redirect it to the Texas Department of Public Safety…
Read the rest at The Austin Bulldog.
