The 2017 state legislative session was heralded by local leaders as an attack on municipalities’ right to govern themselves, and as 2019 approaches they expect deja vu. Bills will begin filing into the legislative hopper in 165 days—Nov. 12—and state lawmakers will begin filing onto the House and Senate floors in 222 days—Jan. 8. Last week local leaders showed the first inklings of crafting a legislative agenda. “We pretty much expect to have a very similar session in terms of the type of legislation related to cities,” said Brie Franco, Austin’s intergovernmental relations officer. Legislators typically file 2,500 city-related bills, and Franco’s team combs through them all. Through early rumblings, Franco said the city should expect legislation related to hotel occupancy taxes, short-term rentals, zoning and land use, government ethics and regulatory barriers. Among the more significant discussions is a proposal from Gov. Greg Abbott to cap a city’s property tax revenue increase at 2.5 percent, a substantial drop from the current 8 percent cap. In the governor’s proposal, a city could only exceed the cap through a two-thirds majority approval from city council and registered voters. Austin City Council—with the exception of the conservative District 8 Council Member Ellen Troxclair—spoke out against a similar proposal during the 2017 session and plans to do so again in 2019. Austin has increased its property tax revenue at or near the 8 percent cap for the last several years. Austin Mayor Steve Adler said the low revenue caps are difficult on cities and that a majority of mayors from the state’s largest cities oppose them. He pointed to Houston, where city charter mandates a 4.5 percent revenue cap. “Houston has not been able to live under that cap,” Adler said. “At 4.5 percent they are starving government services.” City leaders have often blamed high property taxes on the state’s “broken” school finance system, in which the state recaptures property tax levied by property-wealthy school districts to help fund low-income school districts. Austin ISD had to send $534 million to the state this fiscal year while many of its schools are in desperate need of money. Franco said that could change this legislative session, as Abbott has recently said the state has, for too long, relied on the growth of school district property tax to fund public education spending increases. Another area the city plans to closely watch is the paid sick leave ordinance passed in February. Adler said the state could try to pre-empt the policy, which several local business owners came out against. Last year the state similarly overruled Austin’s fingerprinting requirement for ride-hailing service drivers, which brought Uber and Lyft back to the capital city. Austin City Council is scheduled to begin crafting its legislative agenda in August for final passage in late September.