The finance primaries started this week and the special session has another week to run, but the season's first skirmishes among Texas Republicans are starting to appear.

Gov. Rick Perry's interest in keeping the special session on issues where he can expect success suggests transportation funding won't be included. The chances for any transportation funding proposal in a special session are mixed at best. 

Politics is fast. Redistricting is slow. A rare set of openings has candidates wrestling for advantage at the same time that redistricting debates are raising some of the same questions that stalled the 2012 primaries.

A perfect time for speculation: The legislative session isn't quite over, and the political season hasn't quite begun.

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.

While Texas voters grumble more about property taxes than the state's franchise tax on businesses, Gov. Rick Perry is focusing on the latter.

One Texan's transparency is another’s right to privacy, and people in politics generally find it easier to demand openness than to provide it.

It’s a little funny to talk to people at the Capitol who have been steeled in a culture of political warfare about the outbreak of peace. Many differences remain, but those blood veins that were sticking out on everyone’s foreheads and necks in 2009 and 2011 have smoothed out. For the moment, Texas civics is downright civil.

The House debate on the budget flushed out a new coalition in a Legislature split between traditional and populist Republicans, and Democrats. The losers? The populist Republicans, many of them freshmen.

This session’s effort to make state government more transparent and ethical — spearheaded by some of the Legislature’s most conservative members and its most liberal ones — has attracted the strangest of bedfellows.  

George P. Bush is running for land commissioner, clearing the way for other politicians who want to run in 2014 but don't want to run against that famous last name. But the filing doesn't end the speculation — it just changes it.

The newest Texas Weekly Index measures each of the state's legislative and congressional districts, based on how statewide Republicans and Democrats fared in races in each district over the 2010 and 2012 election cycles.

When Florida Gov. Rick Scott reversed his stance on Medicaid expansion this week, many Texans were left wondering: If Florida can reach a compromise with the feds, could Texas?

The Texas House is about to hold its first debate, and on a spending bill, to boot. It will pass, because it must. But watch how they work.

When the Texas Supreme Court last considered school finance system in 2005, it upheld one of the trial court's findings and overturned another in a 7-to-1 decision. There has been high turnover on the court since that ruling.

The beginning, at least for the Texas Senate, came to an end this week. 

At first glance, the first drafts of the House and Senate budgets leave billions of dollars on the table. A closer look shows there may not be as much left as many have hoped.

Lawmakers came to Austin, took their oaths, started organizing and setting the table for the 83rd time, facing legal and fiscal uncertainties in court and hearing from leaders who want to focus on water, transportation and other infrastructure.