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Linebarger Offers Relief to Underfunded Texas Schools through Property Value Appeals Services

Texas schools stand to lose funding if the local appraisal district’s values fall behind the Comptroller’s property value study. An article in the Aug. 6, 2019 edition of The Paris News in East Texas explains how property value appeal services like Linebarger offers helped Lamar County school districts keep state funding.

“When the comptroller studies the local values assigned by the local appraisal district and finds that they are too low, the state reduces state funding,” Partner Jim Lambeth told The Paris News. “This can become a great loss of revenue and can lead to drastic cuts in local schools. In the past, when Roxton ISD (no longer a district) was facing the loss of much of its state funding, which was potentially devastating to this district, we were able to appeal the comptroller’s findings and get Roxton full state funding.”

According to Robby Harbuck, Director of Linebarger’s Property Value Department, our appeals and audits on behalf of Lamar County school districts from 2013-2018 resulted in $145,777,726 in value reduction and $2,075,448 in additional state aid gain for those schools. Over that same timeframe, Linebarger achieved 7.7 billion in value reduction and $81.5 million in additional state aid gain for our ISDs statewide.

You can view the full article here if you have a subscription to The Paris News.