BILL WOULD CUT PROPERTY TAXES FOR SENIOR OR DISABLED HOMEOWNERS
(AUSTIN) — Most homeowners with disabilities or aged 65 years or older would pay no school property taxes under a bill advanced by the Senate Local Government Committee Tuesday. Combined with previous property tax cut bills passed by the Senate, bill author and Houston Senator Paul Bettencourt says the average senior or disabled homeowner will save nearly a thousand dollars on their annual tax bill. “This bill is going to have probably the single greatest impact on senior property taxpayers and disabled property taxpayers as any bill we’ve ever passed yet in the Texas Senate,” he said. Under current law, about forty-five percent of senior and disabled homeowners pay no school property taxes in Texas. Should Bettencourt’s measure go into effect, he said that number could rise as high as 90 percent.
Senior citizens who own their own homes have typically received extra benefits whenever the legislature passes a tax cut. Many senior homeowners have long had their property tax rates frozen to protect against tax hikes. When it turned out the freeze also applied to property tax cuts, the legislature passed a bill in 2023 that would allow them to go down with everyone else’s when a broad-based cut is passed. This session’s SB 4, which increased the homestead exemption for all homeowners from $100,000 up to $140,000, included an extra $10,000 for senior and disabled homeowners. The bill passed onto the full Senate Tuesday, SB 23, would raise their total homestead exemption all the way to $200,000.
Housing affordability is a major concern for senior citizens, said Mike Taylor, representing the Texas Silver Haired Legislature, as they continue to see increases in cost of living. “What ever you giveth, the insurance premium will take away,” he said. “There’s someone always knocking at the door of older Texans trying to get more money out of them.” Reduction in expenses, like those proposed in SB 23, are functionally income increases for senior citizens. “This is a big help,” said Taylor.
Galveston Senator Mayes Middleton’s bill would require operators to plug inactive wells after 15 years.
The bill is also a priority of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who said he was working with the House and Governor Greg Abbott to achieve the higher exemption. “I believe, that working with the Speaker and the governor, we can get that homestead exemption to $200,000 this year,” Patrick told reporters at a press conference in early April. “That will wipe out almost every senior from having to pay any [maintenance and operation] school tax, which is the biggest part of their bill.”
On the floor Tuesday, the Senate approved a plan to deal with the 160,000 inactive wells dotting the state before they become abandoned “orphan” wells. Sometimes these wells can be revitalized, using new techniques or technologies to extract more oil. When abandoned by operators, they are left to the effects of time and nature, and to the Railroad Commission to clean up. In their 2024 report, the Commission estimated nearly 9,000 such wells exist in Texas. “We need to address those that have reached the end of their lifespan and could potentially pose a risk to health, safety, natural resources, agriculture, livestock and wildlife,” said Galveston Senator Mayes Middleton.
The state also lays out a lot of taxpayer dollars to deal with the issue, he said, paying to plug over 1,000 orphan wells last fiscal year at a cost of $34 million. The current budget includes $100 million to plug more wells over the next two years. Middleton’s bill, SB 1150, would require that an oil and gas operators to either reactivate or plug an orphan well after fifteen years of inactivity. The new requirements would be phased in slowly beginning in 2027, giving state regulators and operators time to plan for implementation.
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