Brown relying on public in tax fight

By MATT SCHWARTZ and RACHEL GRAVES

September 20, 2000 Web posted at: 11:15 AM EDT (1515 GMT)

HOUSTON, Texas (The Houston Chronicle) -- Houston Mayor Lee Brown has given up trying to fight City Council head-on over cutting the property tax rate, opting instead to marshal public opinion against the move.

"There's no one willing to change their vote, there's no reason to have another vote," Brown said Tuesday. "Right now, my staff is busy looking at how we can cut expenditures in order to meet the numbers we now have."

Asked whether he would consider a compromise -- including one proffered by Councilman Carroll Robinson that would eliminate the tax-rate cut altogether -- Brown said he would consider anything but has not received any counterproposals.

"Apparently, he's presented it to the news media, but I have not seen what he's proposing," Brown said, making clear he still resents Robinson's support of the tax-rate cut.

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Robinson, who said he sent his proposal to Brown, was among the eight council members who pushed for a cut in the property tax rate as a way of forcing the city to reduce spending.

The council voted 8-7 last week to scrap the current property tax rate of 66.5 cents per $100 assessed valuation. A group of council members initially had pushed for a 2-cent rate cut, but that proposal was effectively killed.

Should a tax rate not be set by Oct. 10, the city is required to adopt what is known as the "effective tax rate" -- the rate at which the city would take in the same amount of property tax revenue as in the last fiscal year. The city's effective tax rate is 64.67 cents per $100 assessed valuation.

The effective tax rate still must be confirmed by the council.

Brown has been particularly, and publicly, critical of Robinson since the council voted on the tax rate last week.

Robinson has accused Brown of making his vote a racial issue. Both men are black.

Robinson said Brown, in an address to a group of black ministers last week that both men attended, told them "that essentially I was disloyal" to his race.

Brown has a different version of events.

"I just explained the issue to them and explained that Carroll voted wrong," the mayor said. "Certainly, I would not talk about race. We're the same race."

Robinson also said that the vocal minority opposition to cutting the tax rate is aimed at him, one of two minorities who voted for it. The other, Orlando Sanchez, is more conservative and frequently opposes the mayor.

Brown is so angry at Robinson that he apparently will not even consider the councilman's proposal for a taxpayer dividend program in lieu of a tax-rate cut.

"It's a very strange strategy when somebody offers you an olive branch and you use it to stick him in the eyeball," Councilman Chris Bell said.

"This us-versus-them mentality that he's maintaining since the beginning of his administration is really getting him nowhere," Bell said. "I think what he's achieving is a solidifying of the coalition (favoring a lower tax rate) that you saw last week. And I think some members are going to be hard-pressed not to join it on other issues. As you might have noticed, a lot of people enjoy being on the winning side over here."

Bell also dismissed complaints about the tax-rate cut from people who came to speak before council last week and on Tuesday.

For the second week in a row, members of Houston's minority communities visited City Council to complain that the pending 2.7-percent rate cut would hurt their neighborhoods and businesses.

"Here I am trying to go into parts of the city that need development, and I want more city services," said Zafar Tahir, who introduced himself as a Muslim owner of gas stations in inner-city neighborhoods. "What is $15, $20 going to do for me versus the loss in police protection?" Tahir said, referring to the amount the average Houston homeowner would receive from the tax-rate cut.

Bell said he and his colleagues might give such statements more weight if the Brown administration was not arranging public criticism of the council members who voted to lower the rate.

"To be honest with you, all of this stuff we have been hearing in the council chamber the last two weeks would have greater impact if it hadn't been orchestrated by the administration," Bell said.

Some of those who pleaded with the council last week for maintaining the current tax rate read from notes supplied by the mayor's office and said they had been asked to come to the council meeting.

Bell and other council members have accused the mayor's office of using scare tactics -- such as suggesting cuts in public safety funding -- to get citizens to pressure council members to vote against the rate cut.

One of those who addressed the council on Tuesday was former City Councilman Ray Driscoll. Brown repeatedly stated Tuesday that he missed Driscoll's presence on the council.

But Driscoll scolded both the mayor and the council, saying their "petty bickering" is bad for the city. He said the tax cut was passed only to make a point, and council members should have sat down and worked things out.

In response to Brown's complaints that the tax vote was a Republican-led slap at him, Driscoll told Brown that he has been as partisan as anyone on the council. Driscoll said the mayor should be able to work with council members before "everything falls apart."

Driscoll said undoing the tax cut now would only drive the council further apart.

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