Signing off 27 hours early prior to the official end of the special session, the Texas House of Representatives effectively ended debate on what Gov. Greg Abbott has called his No. 1 priority in the special session: property tax reform.
The two chambers had been battling it out over the past several days on how to tackle the issue—mainly on the amount to limit rollback tax rates.
As it stands, Texas law allows entities to exceed the effective tax rate (which allows an entity to collect the same amount of revenue as the year prior) by 8 percent before holding a rollback election.
The Senate's proposal would lower this cap to 4 percent and the House's limit sat at 6 percent. The House's proposal also exempted entities bringing in $25 million or less in revenue from the limit. The Senate's version exempted those bringing in $20 million or less.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, led the charge for the House, working on negotiations with Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, who has spearheaded the issue for the Senate in both the regular and special sessions.
Bonnen, who was expected to appoint conference committee members to further work out differences in the chambers' unique versions, surprised everyone by saying he would no longer look to do so with his counterparts in the Senate.
"I have been working with members of the Senate for several days on Senate Bill 1; we have made our efforts, so I don't want there to be in any way a suggestion that we have not, will not, would not work with the Senate on such an important issue."
Bonnen declined to appoint a conference committee because he said doing so would effectively kill the bill, which needed to be agreed upon before a legislative deadline.
Shortly thereafter Tuesday night, the House adjourned for the special session, throwing the bill back into the Senate's court for further movement.
Bettencourt declined to accept the House's version of the bill, killing any hopes of advancing property tax reform in the current special session.
"We are not going to accept the take-it-or-leave-it proposal from the House, and we are going to fight another day," Bettencourt said. "I hope the governor calls us back as soon as possible."
Cities, counties and local entities have been critical of this method of fixing property taxes as limiting local control and limiting the growth of services for increasing populations.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler joined many others in expressing disappointment the Legislature had not touched school finance reform, which would have offered much relief to property taxes.
"Texas lost in the special session because our property taxes will continue to rise until the Legislature fixes the broken school finance system," Adler said. "And once again this session, they didn't even try."
Round Rock Mayor Craig Morgan has echoed this sentiment throughout the special session.
"True property tax relief will never be accomplished without addressing school finance," Morgan wrote in a post on his Facebook page. "Oh, and school finance will never be resolved in a 30-day session that includes tree ordinances and bathrooms. This issue did not occur overnight and will not be fixed overnight."
The Legislature did pass a bill that creates a commission to study the school funding formulas, but no changes to the formulas can take place until the next called session.
At this time, Abbott has not indicated whether he plans to call the Legislature back for an additional special session.