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Travis County, Texas

First Issues Docket

Every dead end in the money trail becomes a numbered pursuit here. When a document is obtained and ingested, the issue gets stamped with the date and what it revealed. 4 of 5 complete.
#1
Ingest the Travis County adopted budget.

Total, funds, and the General Fund by function.

2026-08-21 — what this revealed: FY2026 tax-supported budget $1,760,175,394 — General Fund $1,559,097,516 (Sheriff incl. the jail is $252.9M of it), Road & Bridge $31.6M, Debt Service $169.4M. All-funds memorandum ~$2.16B. Adopted rate $0.375845/$100. Every fund and functional area cross-foots to the county’s Recapitulation Financial Statement.
✓ Complete
#2
Officials & Commissioners Court.

County Judge, four Precinct Commissioners, and countywide offices.

2026-08-21 — what this revealed: County Judge Andy Brown; Commissioners Travillion (1), Shea (2), Howard (3), Gómez (4); Sheriff Sally Hernandez; DA José Garza. The court meets Tuesdays 9 a.m. at 700 Lavaca St. Several offices are on the Nov 2026 ballot.
✓ Complete
#3
City of Austin budget.

The county seat and state capital’s budget.

2026-08-21 — what this revealed: Austin FY2025-26 General Fund operating budget $1.49B (Police + Fire + EMS > 60%), across a ~$6.3B all-funds city budget that includes Austin Energy ($1.38B) and Austin Water ($864M). Ingested and walkable at /places/austin.
✓ Complete
#4
Confirm the certified taxable value.

The FY2026 rate is sourced, but the exact TY2025 certified NET taxable value (~$326.2B) is derived from the debt levy and rate because the rate-calculation worksheet is a scanned image with no text layer.

2026-08-21 — what this revealed: Confirmed from the county’s 2025 Tax Rate Calculation Worksheet (Form 50-856): the 2025 total taxable value the rates are levied on is $326,206,918,474 — the certified appraisal roll ($316,855,405,703) plus about $11.2B of property still under protest. The earlier derived estimate was right. (The worksheet is a scanned image, so the figure is read from its printed component lines.)
✓ Complete
#5
Go item-level — the transparency frontier.

Travis already publishes a vendor payment register. The open frontier no Texas government has reached is item-level purchase-card disclosure (Oklahoma is the benchmark).

Open