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Last summer, the Tarrant Appraisal District’s board of directors passed a reappraisal plan that, among other steps, limited residential appraisals to once every two years. New legislation filed by State Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, would require annual appraisals — in effect making biannual schedules like Tarrant’s illegal. Turner filed the bills on the same day he officially became chair of the new Texas House subcommittee on property tax appraisals. “The Texas Constitution requires equal uniform appraisals with respect to taxation,” he said in an interview. “And if you have one appraisal district start to do things fundamentally differently than what is going on in other counties … it really threatens to destabilize the whole system.”A majority of appraisal districts reappraise properties every year. But the reappraisal plan passed by the Tarrant Appraisal District’s board of directors has kickstarted a movement to drastically change how property appraisals are handled in Texas. After Tarrant passed a plan to freeze residential market values in 2025, switch to a two-year residential appraisal schedule and establish a 5% threshold for raising residential values in the future, several other counties like Johnson and Bexar followed suit with similar plans. Tarrant Appraisal District board chair Rick Barnes, who won election as the Tarrant County tax assessor-collector in November, blasted Turner’s proposal. Barnes, a former Tarrant County Republican Party chair, ran on a platform of limiting property value appraisals to every three years.“Property taxes in Tarrant County are too high, any way you look at it, and this proposal simply raises them even higher,” Barnes said. “I don’t know how to say that in any other way. I think it’s a bad bill by definition. 440,000 voters in Tarrant County elected me to do what I could to help them with their tax situation. This bill goes directly against that.”Tarrant’s reappraisal plan has been simultaneously lauded by some as a necessary step to ease homeowners’ tax burden and lamented by others as a surefire way to endanger state funding for public schools, which is contingent on accurate local appraisals.The state comptroller’s office conducts a property value study every two years and compares the values it generates with those reported by the local appraisal district. If the local values are too different from the comptroller’s in a particular school district, that district is in line for funding cuts. Measures that encourage value stagnation on properties — like Tarrant’s residential property value freeze and biannual schedule — make it more likely that the local appraisal figures won’t match the state’s. In November, Chief Appraiser Joe Don Bobbitt identified six school districts that were at significant risk of state funding cuts under the reappraisal plan; that number has since risen to seven. Castleberry ISD, one of the districts flagged by Bobbitt, estimated it could lose $3.5 million under the reappraisal plan. Turner said he filed legislation to mandate annual appraisals in large part because of the dire consequences districts could face.“Our school districts in Tarrant County will be financially penalized, which, of course, is fundamentally unfair, because the school districts have nothing to do with the appraisal system that the appraisal district adopts,” Turner said. “Ultimately, it’s a negative impact on the kids in Tarrant County and their ability to learn and thrive in our public schools.”Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, speaks with community members at the groundbreaking ceremony for Mansfield Stadium on Dec. 18, 2024, in Mansfield. (Drew Shaw | Fort Worth Report)Barnes argued the responsibility to fund public education lies with the Legislature — and he’s very comfortable with the direction the appraisal district board is headed. “Doing something about it doesn’t mean we simply go to the property owners and say, ‘Let’s raise your taxes to do something about it,’” he said. Turner’s legislation comes after Gov. Greg Abbott announced property tax relief as an emergency item for this legislative session. The high property tax burden faced by Texans has become a rallying cry for conservative lawmakers and activists alike, with some going so far as to suggest ending property taxes entirely. That proposal is not likely to pass this session, but several other measures, including increasing homestead exemptions, have already received a warm reception. Resolving conflict in tax codeThe portion of the reappraisal plan that Turner’s bill targets — moving from a once-a-year to once-every-two-years appraisal cycle — has been the subject of debate and scrutiny among advocates, who point to a conflict in current Texas tax law. One portion of the code states that “all taxable property is appraised at its market value as of January 1.” However, another portion of the code states that all real and personal property in the district be reappraised at least once every three years.It’s a conflict that Brent South, chief appraiser for Hunt County and the legislative chair for the Texas Association of Appraisal Districts, flagged for lawmakers during a Nov. 7 Senate committee hearing.“We provided your office some language that would clarify that based on the information the chief appraiser has, the chief appraiser shall reappraise annually to make sure we are at market value,” South said to Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, during the committee hearing. “And I think that’s very important.”Tarrant Appraisal District board members ultimately used South’s testimony to lawmakers to justify ending the district’s membership in the Texas Association of Appraisal Districts.“I don’t know how we can belong to a group that’s actively lobbying against us,” board member Matt Bryant said at the board’s Dec. 13 meeting. “It makes no sense.”Signs for Tarrant Appraisal District board candidates greeted voters outside a Colleyville polling place in early May. Callie Rigney, Matt Bryant and Eric Morris were the three candidates endorsed by Tarrant Taxpayer Advocates, a political action committee that has spent more than $70,000 on the race. (Emily Wolf | Fort Worth Report)Bryant is one of three board members in Tarrant who were elected by voters during a first of its kind election in May 2024. Before those elections, appraisal district members were exclusively appointed by taxing entities; a constitutional amendment crafted by Bettencourt gave residents the power to elect several members to their local board themselves. Eric Morris and Callie Rigney were the other two board members elected in May. Bryant, Morris and Rigney, all Republicans, ran as a slate, with the stated platform of capping residential appraisal increases at 5% and limiting appraisals to once every three years. Before they won their elections, Bobbitt said limiting appraisals is not allowed by law. After the elections and subsequent passage of the reappraisal plan, Bettencourt himself joined a chorus of voices questioning the legality of the board’s moves. Board training requirement on the table Turner filed a second piece of legislation to require both appointed and elected appraisal district board members to complete a comprehensive training before being appointed or filing for election. The bill would require prospective board members to sign a lengthy acknowledgement that they understand their specific role in the appraisal process. The Fort Worth Report reached out to every Tarrant Appraisal District board member for comment on Turner’s bills. Only board members Barnes, Gloria Pena and Wendy Burgess responded before publication.Pena said she believes a bill mandating training for board members is a great idea. Pena previously served as president for the Arlington Independent School District Board of Trustees, and she recalled receiving significant training for that role. “When I got on the (Tarrant Appraisal District) board, I was shocked there wasn’t any training,” she said. “Right now, it’s incumbent upon yourself to do research and determine what you do and don’t know.”Gloria Peña was one of five Tarrant Appraisal District board members sworn in during the Jan. 15 board meeting. She is pictured here at a meeting on Nov. 7, 2024. (Camilo Diaz | Fort Worth Report)Barnes, however, said he and other board members didn’t run for office based on a written commitment that “some bureaucrat wanted to write for us.” “We ran based on what the voters wanted us to do, and that’s where we’re at today,” he continued. “I think that’s a dramatic overreach of government to tell people that got themselves duly elected that ‘now you have to go through some training that we came up with, and then sign something saying you acknowledge your job.’ I think you got your job handed to you when you got elected to office.”Burgess, who previously served as Tarrant’s tax assessor-collector, said she is taking a wait-and-see approach to any legislation involving the appraisal district — including Turner’s.“If he can get it to gain traction, then we’ll see,” Burgess said. “Right now, we have a lot of districts that are out of the (property value study) confidence level right now, and there’s going to be some issues. Everyone wants to not pay a lot of property taxes. However, they don’t want their schools to close down either.”Turner said the subcommittee on property tax appraisals, which he will chair, is the perfect place to discuss the bills and debate their merits. A myriad of appraisal-related bills are filed each session, he added, making the subcommittee’s creation a wise choice to handle the workload. Lawmakers will hash out the specifics during the regular session, set to wrap on June 2. As a minority party member, Turner would need Republican support to get his bills across the finish line. Braden Roehling, communications staffer for Bettencourt, said the Republican senator is aware of Turner’s bill to mandate annual appraisals and “is looking forward to talking to Representative Turner about it.”“My commitment is to work constructively with my colleagues in the Legislature and local officials, including the TAD board in Tarrant County, to get this resolved,” Turner said. “Bottom line is, we cannot have a system in Tarrant County that is going to cut the legs out from under our school districts, and that’s the immediate problem I’m very determined to try to solve.”