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Bill King News
OPINION: Houston TIRZs are $1 billion in debt
By Bill King | Nov 27, 2024
As of last year, Houston’s tax increment reinvestment zones (TIRZs) had just under $1 billion in combined liabilities.
OPINION: Houston City Council members propose property tax increase
By Bill King | Oct 11, 2024
Four members of the Houston City Council (Martinez, Castillo, Alcorn & Plummer) have proposed increasing the City’s tax rate by 5%.
OPINION: Harris County has raised property taxes by nearly 30% in the last two years
By Bill King | Oct 2, 2024
It has been widely reported by the local media that Harris County Commissioners’ Court increased taxes by 8% at their meeting on September 19.
OPINION: Toll roads have become cash cow for Harris County
By Bill King | Sep 20, 2024
The Harris County toll roads are very profitable. Over the last decade, the toll revenue has grown from $610 million annually to $896 million, a 47% increase. Because the expenses for the toll roads are mostly fixed, the net income from them has soared, growing by 78% ($230 million → $410 million). The cumulative profit over the last decade was just over $3.5 billion.
OPINION: Unpacking Houston's electricity outages - Part I
By Bill King | Aug 27, 2024
The Houston area has been subjected to two widespread power outages this year. Many in our region went two weeks or longer before power was restored. The outages have sparked widespread public outrage and castigation of the power companies, primarily CenterPoint, by the media and politicians.
OPINION: Have you made a hurricane plan for your family?
By Bill King | Jun 10, 2024
Author's Note: As my regular readers will likely recall, I was heavily involved in redrafting our region's evacuation plans after the disastrous Rita evacuation in 2005. Every few years, I remind everyone about the importance of having a plan in the event a major hurricane threatens our area and update the reminder with the latest information.
OPINION: Gulfton extension of the uptown BRT
By Bill King | Jun 3, 2024
The Uptown BRT has been such a raging success that the previous Metro leadership decided it should be extended to roughly four miles on the south end to the intersection of Chimney Rock and Bissonnet.
OPINION: A primer on Houston’s tax increment reinvestment zones
By Bill King | May 21, 2024
In the last few years, there has been a great deal of media and public attention on the City of Houston’s tax increment reinvestment zones (TIRZs). The TIRZs are a murky, complex world that elude simple explanations or generalizations. It is also very difficult to get good data on them. The City has done a poor job of overseeing the TIRZs and the financial reporting is disjointed and difficult to access.
OPINION: Metro’s proposed BRT projects would be the biggest taxpayer boondoggle in Houston’s history
By Bill King | Apr 23, 2024
Metro’s previous leadership proposed the construction of two bus rapid transit (“BRT”) lines. At an estimated cost of over $3 billion, these two projects, if constructed, would be the most colossal waste of taxpayers’ money in the history of the City.
OPINION: Do not mail checks in window envelopes!
By Bill King | Apr 18, 2024
A couple of months ago, I wrote a check for about $200 to my pool company for the monthly maintenance. It was a computer-generated check that I mailed in a window envelope, which made it apparent that a check was enclosed. After about ten days, the check had still not cleared. I called the company and they said they had not received it. A couple of days later, the check cleared my bank twice, except the payee and the amount had been altered. Instead of being payable to my pool company for $200, the check was shown to be payable to a company and a person I had never heard of and were for a total of over $14,000.
OPINION: Harris County grew by 1.2% in 2023 but domestic migration continues slide
By Bill King | Mar 25, 2024
According to the estimates just released by the US Census Bureau, Harris County grew by about 56,000 residents in 2023, a 1.2% increase.
OPINION: Houston’s population inside Loop 610 little changed since 1950
By Bill King | Mar 8, 2024
There is a persistent urban myth that Houston’s core is densifying. But the Census data shows that has not been the case. A decade ago, the City Planning Department did an analysis of demographics of the city inside Loop 610 that largely went unnoticed.
OPINION: Houston ISD issues eye-opening 'Efficiency Report'
By Bill King | Mar 1, 2024
The State-directed administration of HISD has issued an Efficiency Report that documents a long list of expenditures and practices that will leave you shaking your head. Unfortunately, the much of the report is written in educational bureaucracy word salad that makes for difficult reading, but here are some highlights.
OPINION: City of Houston fund accounting
By Bill King | Feb 21, 2024
The accounting for the City of Houston finances is broken down into a number of discreet “funds.” For the most part, these funds are required by law to be segregated and only limited amounts may be transferred from one fund to another one. In some cases, the funds are actual separate legal entities, while others are “divisions” of the City, which various laws require their finances to be accounted for separately.
OPINION: Why is the City of Houston always short of money? – Part I
By Bill King | Feb 19, 2024
As many of you know, I have been closely following the City of Houston’s finances for nearly two decades. Over that time, the City of Houston has been chronically short of money to fund basic municipal services. One major result of this has been a historic underfunding of infrastructure. The most glaring example of this can be seen in the condition of our streets.
OPINION: Poll shows Biden border policy has backfired with Latinos
By Bill King | Feb 9, 2024
A poll by the University of Houston was released last week on the prospects for the March primary elections and the November general election in Texas. The poll unsurprisingly projected that Biden and Trump were headed to another showdown in November, and that Trump was leading Biden in that rematch by 9% in Texas. However, what I suspect the Biden campaign team found shocking was that Biden was losing to Trump with Latino voters by a 47%-41% margin. Twice as many Latino voters had a very favorable opinion of Trump than Biden (39%-19%). Only 55% of Latino Democratic primary voters said they were committed to vote for Biden. The other 45% were undecided.
OPINION: Houston Chronicle’s campaign to unseat Kim Ogg
By Bill King | Feb 9, 2024
In the run-up to next month’s primary, the Houston Chronicle has published over two dozen derogatory stories about Kim Ogg. These stories have regularly given Ogg’s adversaries and her opponent a platform to voice their criticisms with the imprimatur of being objective news stories. Their coverage of Ogg dovetails with the its campaign to convince Houstonians that their concern about violent crime is overblown, notwithstanding that in poll after poll Houstonians across every demographic have identified violent crime as their top concern.
OPINION: 2023 Harris County crime stats
By Bill King | Jan 22, 2024
The Texas Department of Public Safety receives reports from all law enforcement agencies in the state of reported crimes. Those reports are summarized in a database that is available to the public and updated on a daily basis as reports are received from the agencies. A few days ago, the database showed that it had received the December reports from all law enforcement agencies in Harris County, giving us the first look at the incidence of crime in Harris County for 2023.
OPINION: Transit has a negligible effect on traffic congestion
By Bill King | Jan 8, 2024
In 2019, I attended a community meeting where a Houston Metro representative spoke to campaign for its 2019 referendum to approve an additional $3.5 billion of debt to expand Metro’s footprint. The representative began her presentation by asking, “Who here enjoys sitting in traffic?” Most in the crowd moaned or shook their heads. She continued, “That’s right. None of us do. That is why we need to make sure the referendum is passed.” Most in the crowd nodded in agreement.
Transit carries less than 1% of daily trips in Houston
By Bill King | Nov 20, 2023
In my recent survey on transit, I asked respondents to estimate the percentage of daily trips made by Americans and Houstonians on some form of transit. The average estimate for the U.S. and Houston were 7.3% and 4.3%, respectively. As we will see, these estimates are significantly higher than the actual ridership.