Host of Issues Awaits Texas Lawmakers
The 83rd Texas legislative session begins Tuesday. Here's a short list of the expected session priorities.
It's Always the Budget
The recession and Republican opposition to raising taxes ended with about $15 billion cut from the last budget.
Audio: Ben Philpott's story for KUT News
Now, state revenues are up, but Gov. Rick Perry and other leading Republicans are calling for a constitutional amendment to restrict how quickly the budget can grow.
“As a small-government conservative, I believe that government growth — if any — should be kept to the bare minimum," Perry said in a speech last ...
Comments (1)
Dormand Long
Now that we have established beyond any doubt that there is a Starbucks in Ardmore, we should move to a topic of the unsurpassed gravity for the future of the state: that of effectively developing our human capital resources to meet the future needs of the organizations in dire need of the best thinkers and implementers.
I suggest that independent advisors of the highest caliber be retained to analyze the root causes of our underperformance in our public schools. The elite advisories of The Manhattan Insititute of Public Policy and the Rand Corporation are two with impeccable reputations for pragmatic analysis and recommendations.
It will take a substantial amount of time to improve our public schools to equal the quality of the global benchmark public school systems in Finland, in South Korea, and in Singapore, but we must get started unless we are willing to throw in the towel and fall to second or even third tier status in global competitiveness.
One vital area should take priority: that of achieving self-sufficiency in the organic development of the absolutely viital registered nurses needed to sustain the growth of our hospitals so as to meet the needs of our aging and rapidly growing population.
Currently, the only way that our hospitals can keep their doors open for business is to send recruiters out to developing nations to steal RNs from these impoverished nations, each in dire need of medical professionals to sustain life of its population.