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The latest state budget reads: “Property values, and the estimate of local tax collections on which they are based, shall be increased by 7.04 percent in tax year 2017 and 6.77 percent in tax year 2018.” The budget always says this estimate, and the increases over the last four years were the highest anyone can remember. The four-year total increase was 26.88 percent. If a Texas family paid $5,000 in property taxes in 2014, a 26.88 percent increase means their taxes went up to $6,343 in 2018.

Texans are furious about these property tax increases!

If you listen to state politicians, you would think that school boards and county commissioners are to blame. If you listen to school boards and county commissioners, you would think that state politicians are to blame.

With an election coming up, Texans want to know, “What on earth is going on here?”

Well, it’s actually quite simple. The state can’t pay its bills. A combination of corporate tax cuts, interest charges and rising cost of services (particularly health care) are draining the state’s coffers. While we have $11 billion in the Rainy Day Fund, we now owe more than $100 billion in debt. We simply can’t keep up.

So the state has been playing a sinister game of pushing costs down to school districts and counties.

School districts and counties get their money from property taxes. Local property values keep going up, so school and county tax collections keep going up. And that lets the state slough off its obligations to local taxpayers.

Here’s how it works.

Before the state Legislature meets to work on the budget, a team of economists goes out and predicts how much Texas property values will rise.

They then predict how much more local property tax dollars will flow into school district and county coffers.

Once they have that number, the Legislature takes whatever money they expect to collect from sales tax, oil and gas tax, the business margin tax, etc. (but not property taxes, because property taxes are local) and allocates that money as best they can.

The result is a state budget that makes sure we get higher property taxes and nothing for it.

Once the state budget is set, state officials make darn sure the estimates of local tax increases actually materialize. Because if local property tax dollars don’t materialize as expected, somebody is going to run short of cash. And that’s a huge headache. When the Texas Legislature signs a state budget that says property taxes “shall be increased,” they mean it.

So much so that the state Comptroller’s Office checks on appraisals. If an appraisal district is not keeping up with market value, the comptroller tightens the screws.

At the same time, the Texas Education Agency makes sure school districts don’t lower their tax rates. The agency recently sent a letter to every school district in Texas, telling them that if they lower their tax rates, they could lose state funding.

There is no question that the state is responsible for skyrocketing property taxes, even though property taxes are collected locally. And it’s not just the school funding mechanism that drives property tax increases. The state passes laws that force counties to spend more money, and counties have no choice but to use rising local property taxes to pay their bills.

State politicians know this, and they know that if Texans ever figured it out, they’ve be in deep trouble.

So they deliberately confuse the matter to avoid accountability. They’ve gotten away with it for years, and property taxes have skyrocketed for years.

But state politicians have never had to deal with a Democrat who happens to be a CPA, who knows we’re being cheated and why, and who is determined to bring honest solutions to the table rather than obfuscation.

With Election Day a few weeks away, the candidates should present their views, and they should allow their views to be vigorously challenged.

Then (and only then) can voters figure out which candidate will deal honestly with one of the most vexing problems we face in Texas.

Collier is the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor of Texas.