Gov. Greg Abbott Tuesday rejected a call by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner for the state to immediately tap into its rainy day fund to help pay for the recovery from Hurricane Harvey so Turner can avoid raising property taxes in his city.

"In times like these it is important to have fiscal responsibility as opposed to financial panic," Abbott said at a briefing on Harvey recovery efforts at the Texas-FEMA Joint Field Office in North Austin, at which he was joined by Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp, whom he chose to lead the post-Harvey rebuilding, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and other state officials and legislators.

"The lieutenant governor and the speaker both agree with me and that is that Texas will need to tap into the rainy day fund," Abbott said. "They both agree with me that the appropriate time to do that is in the next session. They, along with the comptroller, all agree with me that we have a full array of tools available to us to be able to respond to all of our challenges.

"An easy example is that one of the most important issues right now is debris removal and because the city of Houston acted swiftly to begin that process, I was able to swiftly provide them with almost $100 million," Abbott said. "We have an accelerated reimbursement process established where we will be able to reimburse the city for any expenses they have along the lines of our agreement with FEMA."

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"So all I need are invoices and I can pay their invoices," said Abbott, who said the payment time on invoices was about 10 days.

The state is responsible for disbursing federal monies coming to the state as part of a $15.3 billion disaster relief bill passed by Congress this month in response to Hurricane Harvey, with much more expected to follow. The governor has said that, if needed, the state can spend other funds for disaster recovery that could be replenished from the rainy day fund when the Legislature next convenes in January 2019.

In a letter Tuesday to Abbott, Turner asked the governor to use money in the $10 billion fund, formally known as the Texas Economic Stabilization Fund, to help Houston and other communities contend with huge, unanticipated costs that he said are exhausting the city’s $20 million in savings and its existing $100 million in flood insurance, and requiring the city to re-up its $100 million flood insurance policy to cover it through the rest of hurricane season and into next spring, at a cost of $10 million.

The mayor said the current policy for damages to municipal property has a $15 million deductible the city has to pay.

On debris removal, Turner said that the city is still responsible for 10 percent of the cost, meaning it will have to come up with $25 million of what will likely be a $250 million price tag.

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"I did see the mayor’s letter where he’s asking for certain payments by the state of Texas," Abbott said. "It raises a concern that the mayor seems to be using this as a hostage to raise taxes, while in reality, the city of Houston is sitting on hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that he’s not tapping into."

That’s a reference to taxpayer monies set aside by Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones in the city. The special zones are created by the City Council to draw investment to areas in need, with the additional tax revenue that result from new development set aside to pay for improvements within the zone.

"The mayor can use those hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for expenses that cost a fraction of that, or during the next session, the Legislature can and will modify the TIRZ statutes to ensure that reserves by TIRZ can be used by cities to respond to disasters," Abbott said.

But, in his letter to Abbott, Turner noted that "the nickname for the Texas Economic Stabilization is the `Rainy Day Fund.’ During Hurricane Harvey approximately 27 trillion gallons of rain fell in Texas. There hardly seem a more appropriate use of the nearly $10 billion of taxpayer dollars in the fund than to recover from this storm."