Some of the extra tax revenue the state has recently found will be needed to help pay for accounting gimmicks used to help balance the current budget. Ahead of the next legislative session, lawmakers are looking to put an end to such tricks.
The Texas Tribune is pleased to provide the opportunity for you to share your observations about this story. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask that you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or wandering away from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of the Tribune, and your user name will be displayed. Thanks for taking time to offer your thoughts.
Comments (2)
Stuart Greenfield
One might find details on how robust the state budget will be at,
http://www.sgreenfield.net/texasfiscal/FY12betteroff.pdf . Tax revenue for this biennium will be at least $10 bil more than the current estimate and tax revenue for the 83rd biennium will around $105 bil. Happy days are here again.
David Spratt
So we can safely expand Medicaid right ? Channel 8 did an expose on the Medicaid dental program. It ballooned from 400 mil in 2006 to 1.43 bil in 2011. It appears 90% of the braces placed on children were done needlessly. Dental clinics were setting up tables in Cici's pizza in Denton handing out $60 gift cards to Krogers to draw people in to have their children's teeth cleaned and then double billing ,,,, billing for visits when the children were not even seen, and preforming procedures not even asked for or needed.
No red flag raised here when suddenly thousands more children are reciving services or an office having one or two chairs is cleaning a hundred sets of teeth a day. It took a news station to expose this and not one single person in the offices paying the bill ever thought twice about it.
By all means we should expand these programs further.
We send these people to Austin and each and every time we hear they feel the calling and just want to serve , to clean up the waste , fraud and abuses of the system. I admit they are paid paltry sums for the jobs they are expected to do. So that begs the question , " Why would anyone want the job?"