Is Mayor Parker Covering Up Unfair Taxation of African Americans?

One of the major City of Houston unions planned a press conference for Thursday May 29th regarding the unfair taxation for home owners, based on deep discounts for trophy properties. However, the planned press conference was cancelled.

Political insiders report that only the City of Houston has the power and motivation to kill stories related to unfair taxation of home owners and African-Americans. The reasons why the mayor would want to cover up unfair taxation are not intuitive.

First, Mayor Parker has been on the front line and had first- hand knowledge about the unfair taxation of home owners for eleven years. She served six years as comptroller and has been mayor for 5 years. It would be embarrassing if revealed that she has known about this problem for eleven years but acquiesced to over-taxation of home owners and African Americans.

Secondly, due to the cap on City of Houston property taxes revenues, based the total of population growth and inflation, the City of Houston gets limited benefit from the 19% increase in Harris County property taxes ($1 billion increase in 1 year in 2014). There is no reason to press for fair taxation of trophy properties and home owners, since the city does not benefit.

Mayor Parker enjoyed meaningful support from the African American voters when Ben Hall ran for mayor in 2013. Information regarding the over-taxation of African Americans was distributed in the Summer of 2013. It would be embarrassing to the mayor if revealed that she was aware of but did not work to resolve the problem for 2014.

O’Connor & Associates has the empirical data to support over-taxation of home owners and African Americans. It is available to members of the media. The data is clear and convincing. If Mayor Parker will not address these issues, it may be left to the legislature in 2015. It is ironic that Republican legislators are interested in addressing these issues while a liberal mayor, who should be championing them, remains silent.

Meanwhile, the 56-year old Anglo owner of a property tax consulting firm is offering free property tax appeals to the primarily African American home owners in the ten most over-taxed Zip Codes in Harris County.

http://www.poconnor.com/blog/free-2014-property-tax-appeal-for-most-over-taxed-home-owners-in-harris-county/

Information on over-taxation of African Americans:

http://www.poconnor.com/blog/african-americans-assessed-unfair-property-taxes-in-houston/

For more information contact Patrick O’Connor at 713 822 8613 orpoconnor@poconnor.com.

Patrick C. O'Connor has been president of O'Connor & Associates since 1983 and is a recipient of the prestigious Mai designation from the Appraisal Institute.