State Rep. Vikki Goodwin said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick hasn’t responded to her requests to debate. Credit: Michael Karlis

During a Tuesday visit to San Antonio, Texas Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin, fired back at Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, her Republican general election opponent, accusing him of fabricating a claim that she wants a state income tax.

“I don’t want an income tax,” Goodwin told the Current during an interview. “We already have enough revenue. Texas is the eighth-largest economy in the world. We have the funds if we spend them in the right way.”

Goodwin’s rebuke comes days after Patrick, in a rare move for the three-term Republican, released an attack ad alleging she had prioritized forcing the state to adopt an income tax.

“This is a place where you can still dream the American dream, the Texas dream,” Patrick said in the TV spot. “But Vikki Goodwin, she wants to go in a different, less-prosperous direction. She wants a state income tax, number one, first and foremost.”

Goodwin, who’s served in the House since 2019, said Patrick’s accusation shows he’s scared.

Texas has produced a budget surplus for most of the past decade, with the last surplus ahead of the 2025 legislative session coming in just shy of $24 billion.

Instead of spending that money on health care, Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott, his key GOP ally, have spent billions on items including razor-wire border buoys in the Rio Grande River, tax incentives for data centers and private school subsidies, Goodwin said.

Further, she blamed Texas Republican leaders’ fiscal mismanagement for rising property tax rates.

“The reason property taxes keep going up is that the state continues to shrink its share of public school funding,” Goodwin said. “If it were an equal partner with our local school districts, we wouldn’t see our property taxes going up.”

Goodwin’s remarks come as major Texas cities including San Antonio face multimillion-dollar budget deficits this fiscal cycle.

At the same time, Abbott is proposing a tax plan that would make it harder for municipal governments to raise property taxes without approval from an overwhelming majority of voters, something experts have said would make it impossible for local governments to raise funds and balance their budgets.

“It goes back to the state not being an equal partner,” Goodwin said. “The state underspent its budget last year, and oftentimes the state creates these funds, like the flood infrastructure fund. But then it makes it really hard for our cities and counties to access that money. So, we see a lot of the costs for building roads and infrastructure falling on cities and counties.”

Goodwin told the Current she’s more than willing to debate the issue in a public forum. Although networks have offered to host a debate between Goodwin and Patrick, she said she hasn’t heard back from the lieutenant governor’s camp.

A poll released last month by Texas A&M University’s Bush School and ReconMR showed Goodwin with a two-point lead over Patrick.

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Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...