Dateline: September 15, 2005

Sales tax receipts decline after long gain

AUSTIN – Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn last week announced that the state collected $1.49 billion in sales tax in August, up 4.4 percent compared to a year ago, but the news locally was mixed.

After five straight months of stronger sales tax allocations, Clarendon’s rebate slipped 8.66 percent to $20,862.69. Despite this month’s lower allocation, the city is still 5.62 percent ahead for the year-to-date figure from this time one year ago.

Howardwick’s allocation was up 10.28 percent to $1,372.73 and was running less than half a percentage point ahead for the year-to-date. And Hedley was up from $244.36 this time last year to $795.54 for the month, but it still lagged more than four percent behind for the year-to-date.

Austin’s outlook was better. When the state’s 2005 fiscal year ended August 31, sales tax collections were 5.8 percent higher than in FY 04, contributing to a $1.2 billion revenue surplus for fiscal 2005.

September 2, after closing the books on the last biennium, Strayhorn asked the governor to convene a three-day special session of the Legislature to appropriate the necessary funds to assist Texas education, security, health care and human service providers who are helping Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

“While we can count on the federal government to do what it can in Texas, the feds are not going to pay for us to hire more police, and they are not going to pay for us to bring in more teachers to educate the thousands of new children enrolling in our already stretched local schools.

“The need is here. The resources are here. We need to act now to provide relief to our Texas communities,” Strayhorn said.

Strayhorn sent September allocations of $244.6 million to Texas cities, up 10 percent. Calendar year-to-date, city rebates are running 7.8 percent higher.