What John Oliver fails to mention is that in the Texas example shown - a municipal utility district (MUD) in Conroe - the district only has one property owner, the developer. The district is bare land that the developer is planning to develop into a subdivision. It currently does not have water, sewage, or drainage…

In California, you can create Community Facilities Districts with election hold among property owners rather than residents in situation outlined in the show to impose Mello-Roos fees on land parcels. It seems like Texas’ law is outdated, and developers found it’s cheaper/faster/easier to hire Stingray’s services…

These aren’t bogus. They run important services and infrastructures. In conservative states, they are often set up to off set state taxes so the GOP can say they didn’t raise taxes. They also work across county and city jurisdictions, working well for services that transcend arbitrary boundaries, like water,…

John Oliver has been right-on so many times but here I object to his conclusions. Special Assessment Districts can be extremely helpful. First, they aren’t secret - they are usually passed by voters within the District who want to tax themselves for a local project, be it under-grounding utility lines, adding a…

They are like anything else, good ones and bad ones. Being involved in the water utility industry, on the whole they do a lot better job and managing the consumers money and putting it back into the water system than cities. A lot of cities siphon money off of the water utility for pet projects instead of reinvesting…

Anybody who own real estates and pay property taxes would hardly consider the existence of special districts “obscure.”

It’s for research!