Copperas Cove says social media post falsely tied city to tax limits

Copperas Cove moved quickly Tuesday to knock down a social media claim it said was both unverified and false. City officials said an image circulating on a local public page on May 19 wrongly tied the city to a statewide tax restriction, even though Copperas Cove was not among the communities named in the state action the post appeared to reference.

The post said more than 130 Texas cities had been barred from raising property taxes above the no-new-revenue rate because of missing audit reports and financial statements. Copperas Cove said that description did not apply to the city and pointed to the Attorney General’s May 14 list of 130 communities, which did not include Copperas Cove. The city said the image had no credible source and that the claim was simply not factual.

The correction came as Attorney General Ken Paxton announced letters prohibiting more than 130 Texas cities from adopting property tax rates above the no-new-revenue rate until they met audit and transparency requirements. Copperas Cove’s statement was meant to separate its own record from that broader dispute and to give residents a clear way to check the city’s filings for themselves.

City officials said the Finance Department has received the Government Finance Officers Association award for 33 consecutive years, a distinction tied to submitting the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report by March 31 each year. The city also said state law requires an annual audit and a financial statement filed with the municipal secretary or clerk within 180 days after the end of the fiscal year. Copperas Cove added that its audit has been presented to City Council before March 31 each year and that, for the past four fiscal years, the audit was delivered in February. The city’s financial reports page also posts Annual Comprehensive Financial Report and single-audit materials online.

The false claim landed in a city where tax questions already carry weight. In August 2025, Copperas Cove proposed a property tax rate of 68.6419 cents per $100 valuation, above the then-current 66.1043-cent rate, and said the proposal would raise taxes on an average home by about $93 a year. At the time, the no-new-revenue rate stood at 64.1782 cents per $100 and the voter-approval rate at 73.2345 cents. In June 2025, local reporting said the city expected to lose about $3.8 million in revenue from expanded state reimbursement rules for disabled-veteran tax exemptions, a pressure point that has kept finance and tax issues front and center for Copperas Cove residents.