It's easier, it seems, for lawmakers to regulate others than to regulate themselves. Ethics and transparency legislation has had a bumpy ride in the current legislative session.

The proposed state budget would increase state judge's base salaries by 12 percent — and would do the same thing to state legislators' pensions. Check out the added benefit by member.

Texas lawmakers have 10 days left in the regular session. They haven't embarrassed themselves, spent much time in bitter fights or generated the sorts of headlines that have made voters think so little of Washington. 

Texas Insurance Commissioner Eleanor Kitzman is unlikely to win confirmation before the end of the session, a key senator said Thursday. That would end her nearly two-year tenure as head of that agency.

Greg Abbott’s letter doesn’t have any new information in it, but the timing takes away what some — probably those further from the budget conversations than closer — saw as a possible solution for the Legislature’s financial logjam.

Lawmakers are talking seriously about a 21.5 percent pay raise for state district judges, which would increase the pensions of those same lawmakers by that same amount.

Another major House deadline has gone by, ending that chamber's consideration of major legislation filed by its own members. We've updated our House Bill tracker, showing which bills stalled in committee and which ones stalled in the full House.

Spending from the state's Rainy Day Fund does, in fact, count against a constitutional limit on growth in the state budget, Attorney General Greg Abbott advised on Thursday. 

The betting here is that state finance is the closing drama of the session and that in spite of the sharper debates here at the end, that everybody goes home singing Kumbaya.

Most of the legislation filed this session by members of the Texas House never made it out of committee. This new app tells you the number of bills filed, referred to committee and left, forever, in committee after the deadline passed.

The legislative session is in its last month and most bills will die. But setbacks for the big stuff — water, transportation and the like — are usually temporary.

M. Smith on a shock awaiting the state’s fifth- and eighth-graders, E. Smith’s interview with two of Washington’s Gang of Eight, Dehn and Rocha on legislative inquiries into the explosion and fire in West, Ramshaw on state leaders’ apparent disinterest in transparency, KUT’s Philpott explains points of order, Murphy and Ramshaw on the current status of ethics bills, Hamilton finds that not all college degrees are equal, Galbraith on the budget and the shale boom, Batheja on the Legislature’s do-over votes, Aguilar on a Texas application for more border drones: The best of our best for the week of April 29-May 3, 2012.

Budget decisions revolve around numbers, but talking about money is just a way to talk about policy. Consider the case of volunteer fire departments.

Texas politicians can easily represent the people who elect them without necessarily representing the people of Texas. To get re-elected, they have to please their voters, not the general population.

Two years ago, lawmakers couldn't find the money they needed to run the government they had promised their voters. Now they have the money — and a completely different set of political problems.