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Gov. Rick Perry Claims Residence In 2 Places
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Candidate
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| Contributor | DFWDem |
| Last Edited | DFWDem Aug 12, 2009 09:43am |
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| Category | General |
| News Date | Wednesday, August 12, 2009 03:40:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | AUSTIN (AP) ― Gov. Rick Perry lives, works and votes in Austin. But he also claims to be a resident of College Station, Texas, where he owns a house and gets a tax break designed for local homeowners, records obtained by The Associated Press show.
Aides were scrambling Tuesday to figure out whether rent payments that Perry and his wife received for the property would require them to claim a smaller homestead exemption than they would normally get. Perry's daughter, Texas A&M student Sydney Perry, lives in the home and has roommates that pay rent to the family, officials said.
No one disputes that Perry has made Austin his official home since 1991, after he was elected agriculture commissioner. After becoming governor in 2000, Perry moved into the Texas governor's mansion. In 2007, Perry moved into a rental mansion in a posh Austin suburb so the historic downtown building could be renovated. Taxpayers are footing the $9,000-a-month tab for the rental home.
That same year, the Republican governor and his wife, Anita, bought a 2,500-square-foot house in College Station, near the Texas A&M University campus. Perry signed a form in January 2007 saying that the house was his "principal residence homestead." Perry has spent time in the home but has never lived there.
According to definitions published by the state comptroller, homeowners must reside in their homestead on Jan. 1 of the year they claim the exemption. And if the homeowners move away, they can continue to claim a homestead exemption if they "intend to return to the home and ... are away less than two years."
Brazos County Chief Appraiser Mark Price said Perry's exemption was granted based on his 2007 application, which stated that the house would be the governor's "principal residence homestead" on Jan. 1, 2008.
"He declared it as his primary residence," Price said. |
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