GOP-backed candidates win Harris appraisal district runoffs, promise taxing transparency

Two Republican-backed candidates won countywide elections Saturday, securing a majority of ideologically-aligned seats on the Harris Central Appraisal District board of directors.

The nonpartisan seats are not flashy. The board sets the taxing agency’s budget and can hire and fire the chief appraiser.

Both parties backed candidates in the runoff elections, however, and both cast accusations of politicizing the previously overlooked board.

Business owner Kyle Scott defeated former Houston City Councilmember Melissa Noriega in the Place 2 runoff by a little less than 15 percentage points, according to complete but unofficial results from the Harris County Clerk’s office. Business owner and pastor Ericka McCrutcheon won the Place 3 runoff over businesswoman Pelumi Adeleke by about 23 percentage points.

The candidates had advanced to the runoffs after finishing in the top two positions from crowded fields in a May 5 election.

Kathy Blueford-Daniels, a former Houston ISD trustee, won the Place 1 election on May 5 outright. She was endorsed by the Harris County Democratic Party.

McCrutcheon lamented the partisanship that had infiltrated the race, promising to focus on increasing the agency’s transparency and accountability upon taking her seat.

“While I was campaigning, I was astounded how few people even knew HCAD existed,” McCrutcheon said.

The races saw low-voter turnout, even for a county that typically sees large percentages of its electorate skip local elections. Only about 1.8 percent of Harris County’s 2.56 million registered voters cast a ballot in either of the races. That turnout is slightly lower than the 2.1 percent of the county’s registered voters that turned out on May 5.

Scott noted the low turnout is nothing new for the county and promised to represent the entire county on the board.

He said he would first work to get to know the board and the agency’s employees before making policy decisions.

“Because this is a campaign and you’ve seen some of the stuff swirling around, I want to make sure we level set,” Scott said. “I get to know them, they get to know me and let them know that 95 percent of the things they’ve heard about me are not true.”

Both the Harris County Democratic and Republican parties enlisted their campaign infrastructure in hopes of ginning up turnout ahead of what was expected to be a low-participation election.

The May 5 contest and Saturday’s runoff were brand-new elections in the county, created by a statewide November ballot proposition approved by voters to amend the Texas Constitution. The amendment largely was focused on tax breaks, but also created three elected seats on appraisal boards for the state’s 50 largest counties.

Previously, all nine members were appointed by local taxing entities. The elected members will have slightly more power because two of the three elected members can veto any appointment to the Appraisal Review Board, a committee that reviews appeals of property valuations.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston and author of the legislation that created November’s ballot initiative, said the elections needed to be held quickly and during the typically low-voter-turnout months heading into the summer to keep the races nonpartisan and seat the new members ahead of property tax bills being sent out in the fall.

The new members will be seated July 1, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s office. Their terms expire at the end of 2026, and future elections for the seats will be held every four years in November, beginning in 2026.

McCrutcheon said the first priority of the elected members needs to be increasing the accessibility and functionality of HCAD. She said a lack of understanding about how the appraisal district works causes some homeowners to miss out on exemptions for which they are eligible, while other property owners receive exemptions they should not.

To improve that, she said an education campaign is needed, targeted to senior and low-income homeowners who may be at risk of being taxed out of their properties.

Scott and McCrutcheon both endorsed an audit of HCAD’s tax rolls, hoping to locate property owners who may be paying lower taxes than they should because of holdover exemptions from the property’s previous owner.

Scott said he intends to take a more nuts-and-bolts approach to the position, saying he first will dig into HCAD’s budget and policy manuals to familiarize himself with the agency.

“Until you’re intimately familiar with the process, it’s foolhardy to make those big decisions,” he said.

Scott and McCrutcheon also said they plan to review the guidelines for Appraisal Review Board members in hopes of decreasing what they said was subjectivity in the process for disputing appraisals.

“I hear a lot of horror stories about the ARB,” McCrutcheon said. “It’s so subjective, they’re not listening to their constituents, they’re not trained, they’re overriding the chief appraiser.”