TexasCHLforum.com

Realtors are pushing tax rate reform, because their commissions are based upon valuations, so they won't say a peep about that. *And* people continue to vote for bond issues for all entities ensuring their tax rates essentially can't go down unless assessment values go up to compensate.

Ultimately, the county tax assessor is elected. In west Houston (Fort Bend County), the assessor has run unopposed since I've lived here (~five years.) Her office has continued to hammer people with default 8-10% increases, even through massive layoffs in oil and gas. And yet nobody runs against her. Contrast that with parts of Tarrant county where we were house shopping, and seeing tax rate changes on comparable houses of (2013 - 1.6%, 2014 - 0%, 2015 - 2.3%) made me want to vomit. On *top* of all of that, I have repeatedly seen people in 400-800k houses not even attempt to dispute their taxes at all, which contributes to the problem. When the sheep just "baaa" all the way to the slaughterhouse, why change anything?
I have a strong suspicion that because so many people escrow their taxes, the extra money per month becomes invisible, hence less complaining than is warranted.