Source reporting: Texas Scorecard
A policy report is calling for Texas to create a centralized system for reviewing and disclosing federal grants accepted by state and local governments, according to Texas Scorecard. The proposal comes from the Texas Public Policy Foundation and represents the organization’s policy position, not a change in state law.
Authors James Quintero and Ben Crockett argued that Texas does not have a comprehensive mechanism for tracking federal money flowing to more than 5,500 local governmental entities. Their report recommended reorganizing the Office of State-Federal Relations as an Office of State Sovereignty that would review funding before acceptance, evaluate conditions attached to grants and maintain a public database.
Texas Scorecard reported that the authors calculated Texas state and local governments received a combined $84.3 billion in federal aid during 2023. The report estimated that federal funds represented 32 percent to 44 percent of state revenue and 3 percent to 6 percent of local revenue after excluding transfers from the state to local governments. Those figures are the foundation’s analysis and depend on its definitions and methodology.
The report also used local examples to illustrate how federal grants can shape policy and budgets. It identified nearly $5 million across 14 federal awards to Fort Worth for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and a $652,662 Environmental Protection Agency environmental-justice grant to Dallas. The authors estimated that replacing Fort Worth’s federal support with local revenue would require a 19.8 percent property-tax-rate increase. That projection is an advocacy group’s estimate, not an adopted tax plan.
The authors further argued that existing state reporting is incomplete. They said a Legislative Budget Board report on the 100 largest federal grants omits categories including disaster assistance, higher education, Medicaid supplemental payments and in-kind aid.
The public-integrity issue is visibility into obligations that can accompany federal money and the long-term local cost when a grant ends. A searchable statewide record could let taxpayers and lawmakers compare benefits, conditions and future commitments across jurisdictions. Creating a new review office, however, would require policymakers to decide its authority, cost and relationship to existing agencies. The Texas Legislature has not adopted the report’s recommendations.