There is a common deception played by local politicians: they claim they are keeping tax rates flat or low, while quietly extracting millions more from your pocket. In Randall County, this deception was made official on September 8, 2026, when the Commissioners Court voted unanimously to pass a budget that deliberately targets your hard earned cash. The 5 to 0 vote highlights how quickly local officials will align against taxpayers when there is more money to be extracted.
Specifically, the Randall County Commissioners Court voted to set a property tax rate of $0.40093 per $100 of property valuation. While that number might sound small on paper, it is engineered to be 3.01 percent higher than the county's calculated no-new-revenue tax rate of $0.38921. By deliberately setting the rate above this benchmark, the commissioners are extracting a massive $74,011,435 in total ad valorem tax levy from local property owners. This represents a substantial increase in the financial burden placed on families and businesses.
Where is this extra revenue going? The county plans to use this tax windfall to fund salary adjustments and various municipal projects. While everyone wants competitive pay for essential services, local governments must learn to live within their means, just like the families they serve. Instead of looking for internal budget cuts or optimizing existing operations, the commissioners took the easy way out and decided to extract more revenue from property owners.
This type of revenue extraction is a direct violation of the spirit of tax limitation. In Texas, local governments have a history of trying to maximize revenues without voter consent. To protect property owners, organizations like the Institute for Justice have fought back against municipal land use and economic overreach. In the famous case of Dallas Amortization, the City of Dallas retroactively rezoned a minority-owned auto shop to force it out of business without paying a single dime of compensation. While that battle was over land use, the underlying theme is identical: local governments treating private property not as a sacred right to be protected, but as an endless resource to be exploited for bureaucratic expansion.
Private property is the foundation of a free society. When local officials treat your home and your business as a bottomless ATM to fund their budget growth, they chip away at that foundation. Randall County residents deserve representation that respects property rights and practices fiscal restraint, not a unanimous court that votes to increase the tax squeeze.