I had a conversation with a lobbyist last night about the leadership (or lack thereof) in the House, and he had some interesting observations. “At the start of the session, I thought the divisions from the speaker’s race had really weakened Straus. I kept waiting for the meltdown. It never came. I think the members looked around, saw that they could do anything they wanted to do without the chair’s interference, and they thought, ‘Hey, this isn’t so bad. In fact, it’s pretty good.’ The bottom line: He thinks Straus is in better shape than he’s ever been.

What follows are the main conclusions and recommendations of the auditor’s report, which was released yesterday. All text comes from the report. I have not altered anything. My comments are in italics.

* The Emerging Technology Fund (ETF) should make significant improvements to promote greater transparency and accountability.

* Issues in a number of areas impair the ability to administer the ETF in the best interests of the State. It is important to hold recipients of funds accountable. Auditors identified the following weaknesses:

* Decision making related to the ETF and recipients of funds is not open to the public.

* The ETF conducts limited monitoring of recipients’ performance and expenditures of funds.

* The Office of the Governor does not report the value of the State’s investments through the ETF on its financial statements.

* The ETF does not administer its contracts with the seven Regional Centers for Innovation and Commercialization (RCICs) and the Texas Life Science Center for Innovation and Commercialization (Texas Life Science Center) in a consistent manner. Both the RCICs and the Texas Life Science Center evaluate and make recommendations to the ETF’s Advisory Committee regarding applications for funds. The Advisory Committee then makes its recommendations to the ETF’s trustees. Trustees make the final approvals on ETF grants and awards.

* The Office of the Governor, which administers the ETF, was cooperative and provided all of the information the State Auditor’s Office requested during this audit.

* The Office of the Governor did not agree with certain conclusions and recommendations in this report, and its detailed management’s response is presented in Chapter 6 beginning on page 40. The State Auditor’s Office reviewed the information in management’s response but did not modify the conclusions or recommendations in this report as a result of that review. (more…)

This week we spoke to Senator Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, about Rick Perry’s proposed higher education reforms and the importance of research at Tier One universities.

Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden stands like Casey at the Bat, fully wanting to score.
And nothing but a base hit, or a walk, perhaps, will get him to the floor.

As this week ended with the scoreboard showing naught, Ogden admitted he lacked the stroke to bring his budget up for Senate debate. He described his position in baseball terms: The right foul line is the conservatives who want no additional money taken from the rainy day fund to balance the next two-year budget. The left foul line is the liberals who want to increase taxes to avoid deep cuts in public education. Neither side has the votes to prevail, Ogden said today. “I don’t have a bill between the foul lines yet, but we’re working on it.”

The dilemma for senators on both sides is they hold the most power now because the vote to debate requires two thirds vote of those present, while a House-Senate conference committee report requires a simple majority to pass. But to pay for the Senate plan, 21 votes also are required to spend money from the rainy day fund. So both votes require a combination of Republican and Democratic senators. Ogden said those holding out for more spending should give up because the Senate bill is as good as it is going to get. And as bad as his proposed two-year budget would be for Texas, politically, it probably is the best that can be passed by the current Legislature.

Other than a redistricting bill, there is nothing more political than the state budget. Deciding how to spend the taxpayers’ dollars may seem like a noble task of stewardship. But it is really about chasing campaign dollars and votes. And that is what derailed the Senate budget plan this week. First, look first at the inside fight of what senators called “twosies versus threesies,” Article II Medicaid versus Article III education. Senate Republicans decided to fund nursing homes and doctor’s reimbursements ahead of higher and public education. That erased the specter of nursing homes closing across Texas. It also cooled opposition from the health care industry, which pours about $7 million into legislative campaigns every cycle. But that meant less money for education, important to Democrats.
(more…)

Tagged: Americans for Prosperity, budget, Empower Texans, Steve Ogden, texas public policy foundation, Tim Dunn

The next time that the Texas House of Representatives draws a redistricting map, in 2021, Texas is going to be a very different state. As the House debated redistricting and fought over whether Republican cartographers had awarded Hispanics enough new seats, the clock was already ticking on the new Republican majority. The demographic tsunami that swept over the state in the first decade of the new century is a not an event. It’s a process–and it’s not reversible.

I looked up the projected growth of the major urban counties in the next decade on the Web site of the Texas State Data Center. Here are some numbers. They are not based on census data but rather on the complex formulas demographers use. In projecting population growth, it is important to adopt a realistic growth scenario. I have chosen 0.5 — that is, I assume that migration will be half as much as during the nineties, a decade during which immigration was at a higher level than it is now. I view this as a conservative scenario. The number generated by the formulas is within the ballpark of the census numbers; that is, the census showed Texas with a population of around 25 million in 2010, while the demographic data produced a projection of 24,330,646.

Using the 0.5 immigration scenario, here is what Texas will look like in 2020: (more…)

I was standing outside the entrance to the House yesterday amid a score of lobbyists who were buttonholing members when suddenly the buzz of conversation evaporated into the air. The entire foyer became as quiet as a church. What was going on? Governor Perry had arrived. There was that last moment of talking before everybody realized he was there, and then it was as still and quiet as if the Queen of England had arrived. It was a respectful silence, an acknowledgement of the leader’s separation from the rest of us. I had not seen that happen before. The episode spoke loudly about the stature Perry has attained and the respect he is accorded–at least in that crowd of sycophants.  I did get to say hello. He came over and talked about the upcoming baseball series between Texas A&M and UT that will probably decide the regular-season winner of the Big 12 Conference and lamented that he will be out of town. Then he made a little motion with his hands of praying for the Aggies. He doesn’t make it easy for you not to like him.

Traditionally, swing votes are found in the middle of the political spectrum, but this session’s Anthony Kennedy in the state Senate may come from the far right. While all eyes have been on Royce West and Chuy Hinojosa, the two Democrats considered most likely to vote with the Republican caucus to bring the budget to the Senate floor this week, Dan Patrick has quietly positioned himself as a third key figure. Patrick told me this afternoon that his “intent” was to vote to suspend the rules so that the budget could be debated. And he said he “supported” the budget in general, despite his “no” vote in Senate finance. What he would not say was whether or not he would vote “aye” when it came to the floor

Patrick said his opposition in committee was meant to signal his displeasure with the decision to use $3 billion from the Rainy Day Fund to balance the budget. Now he says he can live with that concept—noting that, the way the bill is crafted, the money might not get appropriated if the Texas economy rebounds sufficiently to boost tax revenues. What he wants now is 1) an interim committee dedicated to finding long term solutions to school finance, and 2) an amendment to the sales tax speed up in Senator Duncan’s non-tax revenue bill. The tax speedup was one of the biggest sources of new funds—$880 million—found by Duncan and his Fiscal Matters Subcommittee colleagues, but Patrick thinks it is too burdensome for small businesses, and he wants them protected. (Let me pause here and make sure you understand that I understand that we all understand that neither this $880 million, nor virtually any of the other revenue sources found by Duncan’s subcommittee are actually “new funds” in any reality-based sense of the word.) If Patrick gets his way, however, that means the $880 million figure will come down, and some other source of funds will have to be found in the next day or two. (more…)

This article is based on a release distributed by the Texas Freedom Network. The thrust of the release is that the State Board of Education could approve “newly proposed instructional materials that promote creationism.” I doubt that this will happen, for two reasons. One, the ideological composition of the Board has changed, and I cannot envision that the new mainstream majority will support creationism. The other reason is that the state doesn’t have the money to pay for these materials. To these arguments I might add that there is a cost issue; the use of creationist materials could lead to litigation similar to a Pennsylvania case (Kitzmiller v. Dover) in which the ruling was that teaching intelligent design in public schools unconstitutionally promotes creationism.

Creationist materials have no place on the Web site of the state education agency. (A brief search did not reveal any of the materials.) I hope that the new SBOE will put this issue to rest in its July meeting and concentrate on education instead of ideology and religion.

Make no mistake about it: We are about to see a reprise of the speaker’s race in the redistricting debate. Redistricting has gone viral.

Did you think it was strange the other day when TLR came out and endorsed the Solomons plan? I certainly did. Why would TLR be interested in redistricting? The reason, I believe, is that they realize the potential for a right-wing coup that would put the crazies in charge–not that they aren’t already.

Thanks to the social media, redistricting is about to become a statewide issue, for the first time ever. Just as the conservative organizations flexed their muscle in the speakers’ race, so will they engage in the redistricting debate. Here is an example, an e-mail to Fort Bend County Republicans from county chairman Rick Miller: (more…)

The Texas Conservative Review is the work of Gary Polland, a former Harris County GOP chair and state Senate candidate. This is TCR’s take on the budget situation, from its April 22 issue.

The battle in Austin regarding balancing the next biennial budget continues. The Senate says “it favors” additional money through budget tweaks, fee adjustments, and the like. The House has the tighter budget and doesn’t want to dip into the Rainy Day Fund again. To TCR, the House position makes sense, as we don’t know what the fiscal picture will be two years from now, and it could be worse. It’s a better idea to make the budget reductions now with the state prioritizing its spending and eliminating unnecessary spending.

The problem with this reasoning is that it is designed to work in perpetuity. Budget writers never know what the fiscal picture will be two years from the moment they begin their work. Who knew in 2006 that 2008 would bring a long-lasting recession? I could point at this moment to increasing sales tax receipts and rising oil prices as reasons why spending the rainy day fund is sound policy: (1) the crisis is now, not two years from now; and (2) the price of oil is such that if we do use the rainy day fund now, the fund will be replenished by the end of the fiscal year. And TCR could still say, the fiscal picture could be worse in two years, we must make budget reductions now.  TCR’s observation is a variation on something Governor Perry said earlier about why the fund shouldn’t be used now: there might be a hurricane. There are always reasons not to do something.

A lot of this is just parroting shibboleths like “prioritizing spending.” What is a budget if not prioritizing spending? TCR also calls for “eliminating unnecessary spending?” I’m for that. Who isn’t? But what spending is “unnecessary?” Schools? Health care? The commission on the arts? TCR’s analysis of the budget is just another bunch of slogans.