By Dawn Burleigh

Dawn.burleigh@orangeleader.com

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar is sending cities, counties, transit systems and special purpose taxing districts $867.1 million in local sales tax allocations for February, 0.7 percent less than in February 2015. These allocations are based on sales made in December by businesses that report tax monthly; October, November and December sales by quarterly filers; and 2015 sales by businesses that report tax annually.

“Energy-centric cities such as Odessa, Midland, Corpus Christi and Houston continued to see decreases in sales tax allocation,” Hegar said. “Other areas of the state helped to somewhat offset those losses as cities such as San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth and Dallas saw moderate increases in allocations.”

While the state overall saw a 0.7 percent decrease, entities within Orange County overall, saw an increase with Rose City at the highest with a 47.42 percent increase. Pine Forest was second with a 28.91 percent increase.

City of Orange received the least with a negative 1.76 percent compared to prior year payment. The difference has less of an impact with the difference of 2015 payment of $650,179.76 and 2016 payment of $645,459.06 is a negative 0.72 percent.

Orange County as a whole is up 4.25 percent overall. The difference of 2015 payment of $1,752,094.70 and 2016 payment of $1,800,844.56 showed an increase of 2.78 percent.

City Manager Dr. Shawn Oubre was unavailable for comment due to being out of the office until Monday.