“Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Lord Acton, British historian.



Can You Trust “$100 Bill” White?

No! Absolutely Not!

  1. Bill White is paying property taxes on only 56% of the $2.9 million fair market value (per the Harris County Appraisal District website) of his home at 101 Stablewood Court in the Stablewood gated community.
  2. Bill White deservedly got the nickname “$100 Bill” because his residential structure is on the HCAD books at a taxable appraised value of only $100! At least that is what it was at on the appraisal district’s 2004 tax roll. After the appraisal district was advised that this matter would become a political hot potato, his file on the appraisal district’s web site has quit showing the assessed value breakdown between land and structures.
  3. Just before Bill White was elected mayor and he was the Greater Houston Partnership’s principal liaison to the City regarding City finances, the Lebanese-owned Wedge Group, of which he was CEO, had the HCAD assessed value of its gleaming office tower at 1415 Louisiana reduced by 36% from 2001 to 2004. Subsequent to that fact being exposed, the Wedge Group apparently has gone to a triple-net-lease arrangement whereby the lessees pay the property taxes. This type of lease reduces the landlord’s gross revenues (principal basis of assessment valuation) but not its net income. Just goes to show you that there is more than one way to dodge property taxes.
  4. Bill White’s Prop 1, which was approved by the voters in 2004, has proven to be a big-time hoax upon Houston voters. Prop 1 promised to cap the growth in the City’s total property tax revenues to the lower of 4.5% or the combined rate of growth in population and inflation. However, the City’s total property tax revenues for fiscal year 2006, the first year Prop 1 was in effect, exceeded the mayor’s Prop 1 cap by $8 million and the mayor absolutely refuses to refund the $8 million back to Houston taxpayers!
  5. Bill White refused to accept the 2004 voter mandate by over 242,000 Houstonians (majority vote in every city council district) to place the voter-initiated Prop 2 Taxpayer Bill Of Rights into the City charter. Republican businessmen Bruce Hotze and Jeff Daily, along with Democrat Carroll Robinson (former city council member), filed suit in an appellate court to force Bill White and city council to place Prop 2 into the City charter. The appellate court voted 3-0 to force the mayor and council to do so.
    Hotze et al then filed a request for a declaratory judgment in a lower court to show that Props 1 and 2 were not inconsistent. Bill White then filed with that court a request for summary judgment, which was denied. Hotze et al then filed their own request for summary judgment, which was granted by the judge. After spending a MINIMUM of $100,000 of taxpayers’ monies in pursuing these anti-voter legal maneuvers, Bill White has now filed an appeal to the district court summary judgment granted to Hotze et al!
  6. Bill White now claims that his 2004 Prop 1 conflicted with and thereby voided the $0.50/$100 cap placed on the maintenance and operations portion of the City’s property tax rate voted into the City charter by Houstonians in the 1980s. White’s Prop 1 clearly does not conflict with the voters’ 1980s charter change and the possible conflict issue was never raised in the 2004 Prop 1 campaign. If the issue had been raised, no doubt Prop 1 would have never passed.

Now, knowing all of the above, do you trust Bill White, or any measure he puts on the ballot?.

VOTE NO TO ALL 8 CITY PROPOSITIONS A THROUGH H!
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