Speak Up for Preservation During the 89th Texas Legislature

Our friends at Preservation Texas have provided this list of proposed preservation legislation for the 89^th Legislature’s session.  You can help advocate FOR the bills that strengthen historic preservation and AGAINST the ones that undermine preservation efforts by contacting your State representatives. The two bills we have a special interest in are:

HB 4450 is in response to the process that allowed the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) to request and receive permission from the Texas Historical Commission to demolish the Texas Pavilion/Institute of Texan Cultures building without a public hearing.  The University of Texas was able to demolish the landmarked University Junior High School on its Austin campus under similar circumstances.

SB 2639 is aimed squarely at Texas’s largest cities, including San Antonio. It is based on misunderstandings of how local historical preservation ordinances work and would impose financial penalties on  municipal governments for landmarking a historic property over the owner’s objection.

See Preservation Texas’s Legislative Priorities for more information.  Preservation Texas plays an important role in the creation and interpretation of public policy at the local, state, and federal levels that impacts historic preservation.

Click here to find your State of Texas Representatives and their contact information online.

Click the bill numbers below to read the full text of each.

Bills That Empower & Support Preservation:

• HB 2723 / SB 1920 – Requiring county tax assessors to grant property tax exemptions for cemeteries that are known to exist or that they should know to exist after a reasonable inspection, even if the owner does not apply or the owner is unknown.
• HB 4450 – Requiring a public hearing for contested demolition requests for State Antiquities Landmarks submitted to the Texas Historical Commission.
• HB 4809 / SB 2553 – Requiring county tax assessors to take into account restrictions placed on a property owner’s ability to alter, improve, or repair property due to its historic designation as a historic or archaeological site, along with the land necessary to access the site.
• SB 2606 – Increasing the state historic tax credit from 25% to 35% in economically distressed census tracts.

Bills That Impede Preservation:

• HB 3114 / SB 2076 – Eliminating/altering certain State Capitol view corridors in Austin (a former 2007 PT Most Endangered Places listing).
• SB 2639 – Requiring payment of damages for the designation of certain historic landmarks in cities with a population of 950,000 or above.

For updates, visit preservationtexas.org/public-policy.