What a Week of Groceries Costs Across Texas Right Now
Anyone who fills a cart at an H-E-B, a Walmart, or a Kroger in Texas has felt it: the same...
How a Shutdown Would Squeeze Texas’s Federal Workers
When people picture a government shutdown, they picture Washington. But Texas is home to roughly 156,000 federal civilian employees —...
School, City, County: Who Gets Your Property Tax
Ask a Texan who they pay property taxes to, and most will say "the county" — because the county tax...
When a City Garage Sits Empty: How Texans Can Check the Math
Almost every Texan who lives near a downtown has driven past it: a multistory concrete parking deck, built with public...
Cost of Living: Texas vs. California, by the Numbers
A family selling a modest three-bedroom house in the Bay Area and moving to the Dallas suburbs is a story...
Every Texas Property Tax Exemption You Might Qualify For
Texans pay no state income tax, but they make up for it with some of the highest property-tax bills in...
Texans Over 65: The Property Tax Break You May Be Missing
For Texans on a fixed retirement income, the property-tax bill is one of the biggest threats to staying in a...
A $600 Million No-Bid Pandemic Contract, and the Procurement Risk It Exposes for Texas
In March 2020, as hospitals across the country ran short of masks and ventilators, one state wired roughly $457 million...
The Texas Property Tax Protest Deadline You Can’t Miss
A Texas homeowner can do everything else right — gather the comparable sales, photograph the cracked driveway, line up a...
How to Protest Your Texas Property Appraisal (and Actually Win)
Every spring, the same envelope lands in Texas mailboxes: the Notice of Appraised Value from the county appraisal district. For...
The Federal Spending Wire tracks how federal, state, and local government spending actually lands on Texas households — property taxes, utility bills, benefits, jobs, and the tax dollars flowing through Washington and Austin alike. Every figure is sourced to the public record, so you can see exactly where your money went.