Houston fiscal health was bad before COVID-19

A new report found that Houston taxpayers are on the hook for $25,800. Truth in Accounting (TIA) released the City Combined Taxpayer Burden Report that analyzed the fiscal health of the 10 largest cities in the United States, including underlying government entities. Not only are city taxpayers on the hook for the city government’s debt, but also the debt of the state, county, school district, transit authority, and more.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Reserve recently announced that it would buy the municipal bond debt of the states and large cities. This report analyzed the fiscal health of the 10 most populated cities based on financial reports before COVID-19 hit. These cities went into the pandemic with bad fiscal health, and they will come out of the pandemic even worse.

The report calculates the Taxpayer Burden for each city and its underlying governments. A Taxpayer Burden is the approximate amount each taxpayer would have to give the government in order to pay off the government’s debt. This is calculated by taking the total debt for the government and dividing it by the total number of taxpayers. To calculate Houston’s Combined Taxpayer Burden, TIA looked at the debt of the city, county, state, and other underlying entities. For Houston these underlying entities were made up of school districts, a community college, a transportation authority, and a port authority.

Houston $25,800 Taxpayer Burden is made up of nine entities and their Taxpayer Burdens:

• City of Houston (-$11,600)
• Houston Independent School District (-$900)
• Harris County (-$600)
• Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (-$300)
• Spring Branch Independent School District (-$300)
• Alief Independent School District (-$200)
• Houston Community College (-$100)
• Port of Houston Authority of Harris County ($300)
• Texas (-$12,100)

While the city of Houston has a Taxpayer Burden of $11,600, once the debt of the county, state, and six other underlying entities are added together the combined Taxpayer Burden jumps to $25,800.

You can read the full report here and read Houston’s individual report here.