This story has been updated.
Bexar County chose a landlord advocate, a conservative leader and a longtime Texas legislative aide for its first-ever slate of elected members to the Bexar Appraisal District’s board of directors.
In the runoff election for Place 2, Erika Hizel, who runs an advocacy group for small landlords, beat out realtor Stephen Spears 64.2% to 35.8% on Saturday.
Hizel, who was endorsed by the Bexar County Democrats, owns her own real estate company, Kimeaux Investments. Her advocacy group, San Antonio Property Owners Alliance, helps small landlords navigate the valuation appeals process.
For Place 3, Robert Bruce, the founder of Boerne Stage Airfield and a leader in several state and national conservative groups, won the runoff with 53% of the vote. G.L. “Larry” Lamborn, a retired CIA and Army Reserve officer, took 47%.
Bruce is involved in the Conservative Partnership Institute, the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He told the San Antonio Report that he wants the board to set goals of reducing the number of protests and lawsuits filed over property valuations.
Place 1 was decided outright in the May election when Naomi Elizabeth Miller, a longtime district director to then-Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, took 53% of the vote.
The newly elected members will be sworn in at a board meeting in July.
The positions and others across the state were created by the Republican-led Legislature to give taxpayers more insight to the appraisal process.
Going forward they’ll be elected on the November ballot, but the state triggered an unusual countywide municipal election to elect the first members ahead of property tax season.
Turnout in the runoff was less than 1% of Bexar County’s 1.3 million voters, with roughly 12,000 people casting a ballot. Of those, 168 ballots were left blank.
The new members will serve on a board with other members appointed by the various taxing agencies, responsible for hiring the county’s chief appraiser and setting the agency’s budget.
The tax law also gave appraisal boards new authority to oversee their counties’ appraisal review boards, whose members are paid to hear and decide challenges to property tax valuations.
