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According to the comptroller's site, "(t)here are four prindples to truth-in-taxation: · Property owners have the right to kn6w of increases in their proper- ty's appraised vMue and to be notified of the taxes that could result from the new value. · A taxing unit must calculate and publish its effective and rollback tax rates before adopting an actual · A taxing unit must publish tpe- cial notices and hold a public hearing before adopdng a tax rate that exceeds the lower of the roll- back rate or 103 percent of the effective tax rate. · If a taxing unit adopts a rate that exceeds the rollback rate, voters may petition for an election to limit the rate to the rollback rate. Appraised Value and Assessments Appraisal notices aren't new, and to inform a property owner of changes in values makes sense. Prior to the enactment of current law, the appraisal notice was about ali the preliminary information distributed by most taxing entities, and the only indication taxpayers had that their tax bills might change. Unless they watched the local budget process closely or followed it in the local newspaper, the actual tax bills were the only true notice they ever received. In addition to the property value itself, there was also an assessment ratio used by many taxing jurisdic- tions. The ratio reduced the actual appraised value to one against which the tax rate was eventually applied. And the assessment ratio could be changed, depending upon the outcome of the budgetary process. Thus, there could be three variables in the equation for calcu- lating what a tax bill would be, year- to-year. An entity could "hold the tax rate stable" but manipulate the assessment ratio to result in higher property tax revenue. If values went up suf~lciendy, both the rate and the ratio might remain the same, or even go down, bur even those changes did not necessarily ensure that the taxpayers' financial respon- sibility would go down. The passage of TNT contributed to a simplifica- tion of this aspect of property taxa- tion, by prohibiting assessment ratios, placing all values ar "fair market," and requiring additional information on appraisal notices. Property owners also faced another inconsistency in the property tax process: conflict- ing appraisals. Each entity had the right to appraise property for itself. In many cases, there were as many as two, if not three, overlapping taxing jurisdictions; and the property owner might receive three dif- ferent appraisal notices with three different values from the county, the city, and the independent school district. The revisions associated with TNT did away with this potentially confusing practice as well, requiring county- wide, standardized appraisals by one legislatively created entity to be used by all taxing jurisdictions. Additionally, the legislature required an oversight review of values statewide, thereby removing any local bias in the setting of values. Individual entities were allowed to retain their osvn assessment and col- lection functions. However, over time many of these ta,~ation functions have migrated into centralized sys- tems, for economy-of-scale benefit. So the TNT evolution takes us from multiple appraised values, multiple assessment ratios, and multiple tax rates to a~ close to a How have 175+ public agencies saved over $150+ million dollars since 19917 With Creative, Flexible PARS PAI ,S