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House Bill 828 |
House Author: Hochberg et al. |
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Effective: See below |
Senate Sponsor: Shapiro |
House Bill 828 amends the Education Code to adjust the amount of state aid to which a school district is entitled to offset the loss of local revenue resulting from the tax rate reduction mandated by the 79th Texas Legislature, 3rd Called Session. The bill increases or decreases that additional state aid for any given year by the difference between the amount of a district's transportation allotment or its state aid for property tax credits under the Texas Economic Development Act for that given year and its transportation allotment or tax credits in the year on which the additional state aid is based.
The bill requires the commissioner to adjust the amount of a district’s local maintenance and operations (M&O) revenue in determining its state aid if, in the 2007 tax year or later, the district adopts a new local option homestead property tax exemption, eliminates an exemption that was in effect in the 2005 or 2006 tax year, changes the amount of the exemption, grants a new tax abatement, ends an abatement that was in effect for the 2005 or 2006 tax year, agrees to deposit taxes into a tax increment fund under a new reinvestment zone financing plan, or ceases to deposit taxes into a fund created under a plan that was in effect for the 2005 or 2006 tax year. The commissioner must determine the effect of a district's actions in regard to a tax exemption or abatement on its total entitlement to state aid or its cost in reducing its wealth per student to the equalized wealth level as if the additional entitlement to state aid for tax reduction did not exist and to adjust that additional entitlement in an amount substantially equivalent to any change in total state revenue or recapture cost that would apply to the district if this additional entitlement did not exist.
The bill also modifies the guaranteed yield level for the first six cents of tax effort above a district's compressed M&O tax rate (or first four cents of tax effort above that compressed tax rate in 2006-2007 and 2007-2008), which is determined by the wealth per student in weighted average daily attendance (WADA) for the Austin Independent School District, so that yield is the greater of the two values from a given year and the preceding year.
Except for the change to the guaranteed yield, which becomes effective on September 1, 2010, this bill takes effect September 1, 2007.