DALLAS - The Texas Attorney General's Office declined to provide an opinion sought by Brazos County on the local property tax exemption of two student housing complexes at Texas A&M University built as public-private partnerships.
"This office has consistently concluded that such questions are outside the purview of the opinion process," said Virginia K. Hoelscher, chairwoman of the attorney general's opinions subcommittee, in a letter to Brazos County Attorney Rodney Anderson that was released Tuesday.
The county had questioned the property tax exemptions of the White Creek and ACC South College projects at the university's flagship campus in College Station. An earlier article on Brazos County's request for an attorney general's opinion incorrectly identified the Park West project as one of the student housing P3 projects in question.
"The Attorney General is not going to provide an opinion regarding whether the projects are, or are not, exempt from property taxes," said Ray Bonilla, general counsel for the Texas A&M University System.
"The projects are clearly and directly linked to the public purpose of the university and thus exempt under well-established Texas law," he said. "This opinion request from Brazos County is the result of local politics. County officials are responding to misguided concerns from local apartment owners."
In the letter dated Aug. 26, Anderson said the P3 projects are "in competition with private housing projects that do not enjoy tax-exempt status, and when those private projects compete against tax-exempt projects they are at a competitive disadvantage."
The Brazos County Appraisal District said in a Sept. 1 letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that it should be allowed to tax the "equitable owner" of the two student housing projects rather than the tax-exempt university.
The appraisal district said it was unclear whether the projects qualified as publicly owned and therefore eligible for a property tax exemption.
The attorney general's office is not the proper venue for determining the validity of the property tax exemption, Hoelscher said.
"Unlike a court, which can resolve fact questions through an adversarial process involving sworn testimony and cross-examination, this office has neither the authority nor the resources to resolve disputed issues of fact through the opinion process," she said.
Brazos County lost a similar property tax case against a dormitory operator at Texas A&M earlier this year.
The Texas Supreme Court in April rejected the appraisal district's contention that the Texas Student Housing Authority owed several years of back taxes after it provided temporary housing to high school students in summer programs at the university.
A lower court agreed with the district that the non-profit housing corporation had lost the tax exemption on the property by accommodating the students, but the state's high court ruled otherwise.
"We need not decide whether housing aspiring golfers, doctors, or cheerleaders violates statutory conditions, because there are no statutory conditions," said Justice Don R. Willett in his opinion. "The exemption does not turn on whether a university hosts short, on-campus instructional programs."
