CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Nueces County is facing a potential multimillion dollar budget shortfall so dire that tax assessor-collector Kevin Kieschnick was in Austin on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to get help from state officials.
Kieschnick's office previously has told 3NEWS that the tax assessor-collector's office has been locked in a standoff with local refineries Valero and Flint Hills Resources for years over unpaid property taxes, creating the problem.
"That shortfall is being created, not because of any budgetary expenditures, but money that is not going to be received, money that was budgeted," he said.
Monday, Flint Hills came to an agreement with the county in which both sides decided the refinery would pay 90 percent of its valuation from 2019-22.
"It's not gonna cure the problem, but it'll help," chief assessor Ronnie Canales said Monday.
Nueces County Pct. 4 Commissioner Brent Chesney said the effect on the county is "a real anomaly" in his experience.
"This is my 15th or 16th budget between my term on the city council and my time as a county commissioner, and I've never seen anything like this," he said.
He said the refineries' appraisal values $5 billion jumps are to blame.
"We've never seen a jump like that, and when you're talking about billions of dollars of protest value being held up, that means those dollars aren't going to be collected -- that's the bottom line," he said. "Everybody has a right to dispute, but it's it's the end result of it is it's going to cost us some serious potential hardship."
While it may seem like just another irrelevant bureaucratic tug-of-war, it has wider repercussions, Kieschnick said, including the county possibly having to figure out how, and where, to cut up to 27 percent of its operating budget.
Simply put: services and staff may have to be cut to ensure the county can continue to function. That is, if the state legislature doesn't come through.
'We are doing everything . . .to prepare'
County judge Connie Scott said layoffs would be a last resort, and that she plans to meet with county department heads and elected officials to brainstorm more obvious budgetary cuts.
"We've got a list," she said. "We are going over every department, every cost expense we can cut back. Things we can do without, things we can combine, services we maybe aren't going to go out and hire in the future."
Scott said the county won't know the extent of the damage until Aug. 1 -- after the courts certify the amounts the refineries will need to pay -- but she said that, on paper, the county will appear to have a lot more money than it does.
"We don't know how bad it's going to be and we are not going to panic, but we also have a duty to be prepared and maybe move forward and have some ideas in place to help with those budget meetings when they come up," she said.
'It's a real Hail Mary'
Gov. Greg Abbott called a second special session of the Texas Legislature last month after lawmakers were unable to agree on property-tax cuts. It is there that Kieschnick is lobbing what Chesney likened to a famous last-second football play born of desperation.
"He's got a great idea, but it's a real Hail Mary," he said Wednesday. "It's a Hail Mary on the 1-yard line with 99 yards to go and no time left on the clock. So it's that kind of attempt. But kudos to Kevin for giving it a shot."
The play -- a bill authored by State Reps. Todd Hunter and Hugh Shine and Sens. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa and Paul Bettencourt.
There's no guarantee that it will be addressed, but Chesney called it a worthy risk.
"I think it's a wonderful idea," he said. "And Kevin is doing everything he can to be proactive in this matter, and he should be applauded for his efforts."
The bill proposes "a bracketed approach."
"It would only affect numbers above $1 billion that affect refineries and larger corporations," she said. "Anything possibly held up in a lawsuit. It would bracket everything out of there, where we could move forward with our numbers and make it a more realistic budget approach."
Kieschnick said whether or not the currently unnumbered bill gets heard depends on whether legislators believe the topic is relevant to the special session's agenda or if the session can be amended in a way that allows it to be heard.
The special session addresses property-tax cuts and school-district property-tax rates.
The county isn't the only entity that could be affected by what is now a stalemate between Valero and the appraisal district.
"It's going to potentially cost CCISD, Tuloso-Midway, West Oso, the hospital district, Del Mar," Chesney said. "We're talking about some serious, serious financial devastation because of this dispute between the appraisal district and the refineries."
Multiskilled journalist Bill Churchwell contributed to this story.