JPS hospital passes 2026 budget, defers to county commissioners on tax rate
The JPS Board of Managers passed a $1.77 billion operating budget Thursday, as the hospital continues to treat more and more patients as the county grows.
The budget for 2026 is a 3.9% increase from 2025’s projected expenses.
The public hospital did not pass a tax rate at its meeting Thursday, but it calculated its budget using a rate that would bring in the same amount of revenue from properties that were on the tax rolls last year. But this rate is effectively a placeholder: Board members are expecting Tarrant County commissioners to lower the rate at its Sept. 16 meeting.
“Throw whatever tax rate you want out there, but we don’t decide that,” board member Blake Woodard said. “It will be something different.”
Commissioners have lowered the hospital’s tax rate for the past two years.
Board members butted heads over whether to recommend a lower rate to commissioners, so that the board could avoid retroactively having to readjust the budget with a new tax rate.
“The last two years it’s been arbitrary,” board member Trent Petty said of commissioners setting the tax rate.
“I disagree, I don’t think it has been arbitrary,” Tim Davis responded.
Petty also said the updated price tag for the hospital’s bond program is $2.5 billion, up from an estimate of $2.1 billion a year ago. The 2026 budget projects that the hospital will continue to grow its sizable cash savings to help pay for the bond projects, which include a new hospital, a new neighborhood clinic, and a new psychiatric emergency center, among other projects.
“Most private organizations, if they had a $2 billion project, they would finance more with debt,” hospital CFO Kim Hodgkinson said. “We have made the decision to finance more from operations.”
The bond projects are being paid for by $800 million in bond proceeds, which voters approved in 2017, with the rest being paid for in cash.
Next year, the hospital is expecting to continue to treat more and more patients, but fewer of them will have health insurance because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which ended the tax credits for people purchasing health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
“Some of our patients are going to drop the ACA,” Hodgkinson said, adding that the hospital expects to see an increase in patients paying out of pocket for their care as a result.
