Public hearing: Van Zandt County approves conditional assignment of $35 million in private‑activity bond authority to TDHCA

Van Zandt County Commissioners Court held a public hearing on Nov. 5 about assigning $35 million in private‑activity bond volume cap to the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA). After presentations by TDHCA and outside counsel, the court approved a resolution to go forward with the assignment, but only after extracting commitments for local oversight and financial transparency from the East Texas Housing Finance Corporation (East Texas HFC).

Scott Fletcher, deputy executive director for housing finance at TDHCA, and Andy Perrotta of Bracewell took questions by phone about how TDHCA uses the volume cap. Fletcher described TDHCA’s role in issuing tax‑exempt mortgage revenue bonds and mortgage credit certificates and explained the difference between TDHCA’s authority to issue bonds and the actual flow of funds: “the bonds we issue are payable solely from the revenue generated from the underlying mortgage loans,” and the volume cap is a limited IRS allocation the state administers, he said. Fletcher emphasized that…