Good morning, 

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Update your email preferences.

• Living in the Metroplex is about to get more expensive. Robert Montoya reports the county commissioners in Dallas and Tarrant counties are forcing higher property tax bills on constituents. Tarrant County has proposed a nine percent tax increase on the average homeowner, while Dallas County is proposing an eight percent hike.
     
• Taxpayers still have time to voice their opinion.
      
• In Dallas County, tax bills for the average homeowner have gone up 61 percent since 2013. Meanwhile, this would mark a 43 percent increase for the average homeowner in Tarrant County taxpayers since 2013.
     

• No city or county in Texas needs voter approval for tax hikes in 2019, but that’s changing. Why? The property tax reform legislation passed earlier this year – Senate Bill 2 – will take effect starting with next year’s round of budgets and tax levies.
      

• That law will limit property tax revenue increases at 3.5 percent for most cities and counties—excluding tax revenue from new properties added to the tax rolls that year—unless voters approve a larger increase.
      

• In February of 2018, Gov. Greg Abbott told voters in northern Bexar county to dump who he dubbed “Liberal Lyle” – State Rep. Lyle Larson – in favor of a conservative challenger. But as Brandon Waltens reports, Abbott yesterday made an abrupt about-face, offering Larson his full endorsement.

• When politicos talk about religious voting demographics in America, they often focus on the “evangelicals” that dominate the electoral majority in the Bible Belt of the American South. Sam Samson reports recent Democrat opposition to Catholic values has created the potential for a new, large, and powerful voting demographic for Republicans.
   
• A majority of nonwhite Christians in Texas self-identify as “conservative,” yet they vote for Democrats. In a new commentary, Grant Hillman explores the reasons why.
   
• In an email, my friend Bernard Groveman raises an interesting point about the reported purchase of a $15 million property on Martha’s Vineyard by the Obama family. Seems like a very bad purchase; since it is an island that would be submerged under rising sea waters caused by the global warming prognosticated by former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Al Gore. Shouldn’t they have instead bought “future” beach property further inland? Or maybe the Obamas are admitting the climate change hysteria they promote is nothing but politically-driven junk science?