Beth Van Duyne won Tuesday’s contested Republican primary for the 24th Congressional District in North Texas, besting four other candidates in the race with 64 percent of the vote. Van Duyne was endorsed by President Donald Trump. The former Irving mayor and Trump...
A tight special election to replace a state representative topped the list of local races on Dallas County ballots Tuesday, along with the statewide constitutional amendment election. Just five votes separated second- and third-place finishers in the House District...
A letter addressed to Texas House Committee on Ways and Means’ Chairman Dustin Burrows (R–Lubbock) from a group of city mayors outlines the staunch and uncompromising nature of local officials’ opposition to lowering the rollback rate to 2.5 percent. Local officials...
Local governments across Texas will adopt next year’s property tax rates over the next month. Taxpayers are left wondering which officials are funding bigger budgets off new growth, and which are simply asking taxpayers to pay more. Even cities that lower than tax...
Irving’s City Secretary “failed to perform her ministerial duty” when she rejected mayoral candidate Kristi Pena’s application and petition due to what she claimed were invalid signatures, the Fifth District Court of Appeals at Dallas ruled on Monday. Shanae...
Irving’s City Secretary – Shanae Jennings – has again come under fire from State Rep. Matt Rinaldi (R-Irving) for allegedly violating the election code in an attempt to keep a mayoral candidate off the May ballot. As Empower Texans reported last week, Jennings refused...
Cities have sunk roughly $17 billion on DART since 1984, after including debt payments and the agency’s operating costs. It’s a staggering sum, especially considering it’s the 5th most inefficient transit system in the nation. According to a study by the Hamilton...
The City Secretary of Irving has come under fire from a state lawmaker for allegedly violating the election code in an attempt to keep a mayoral candidate off the May ballot. A formal opinion from the Attorney General’s Office has been requested. Irving’s City...
Mayors from several local cities penned a letter strongly opposing Dallas County’s decision to sanction and encourage illegal immigration into local communities. Although the Dallas County resolution was cleverly packaged as a “non-discriminatory” call for...
State Rep. Matt Rinaldi is renewing his commitment to repeal the state’s dubious and problem-laden “Robin Hood” school finance scheme, filing a bill on the first day possible in anticipation of the upcoming legislative session. “Taxpayers continue to see their local...
A large North Texas suburb is proposing a property tax increase for the second straight year, in part, to spend millions on a failing golf course and an unpopular museum. Despite municipal officials across Texas who justify property tax increases for “needs” such as...
Perhaps the most widely misunderstood concept in municipal governance is judging the size of the “property tax base.” When determining the appropriate tax rate, officials often err by considering only the median home values they tax instead of the total tax base,...
Texas taxpayers are currently burdened with the second-highest local debt in the nation, on a per capita basis, when compared to the nation’s ten largest states. While the largest public borrowers in Texas are government school districts, nearly one-third of the $330...
A detailed analysis conducted by Empower Texans’ Metroplex Bureau has revealed an alarming disparity in municipal property tax burdens across North Texas’ fifty largest cities. The most egregious offender, Southlake, levies a property tax burden on the local economy...
The Metroplex Bureau of Empower Texans has uncovered an enormous inconsistency among the sizes of municipal bureaucracies across North Texas, with the largest cities in this category having more than twice the total number of employees per resident, when compared to...
Addison officials are frustrated that, despite residents paying over $238 million into Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) since 1983, they have yet to receive a train station. But failing to provide rail service to all fifteen of its member-cities may be the least of...
After squandering $23 million in unaudited expenses without laying a single brick, the ousted developer of a proposed “entertainment center” is in a lawsuit with the City of Irving. Meanwhile, city leaders are considering the approval of a second development agreement...
