A new report says the number of Texas children living in areas of high poverty has increased about 40 percent over the past decade. And as Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports, advocacy groups hope the data will bolster anti-poverty programs.

The state Legislature heads back to work in less than a year. And as Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports, the state’s improving economy won't likely save legislators from the protracted budget battle that awaits them.

The debate over whether job creation in Texas economy is a "mirage" or a "miracle" raises several questions: What jobs do Texans commonly hold right now? How much do those jobs pay? And what jobs is Texas creating?

Anne Heiligenstein, the commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services, is retiring from the agency after three years. 

Gov. Rick Perry likes to rail against the Obama administration's "failed" federal stimulus program, but he and state lawmakers have more than $17 billion in fed-stim dollars to thank for the last two balanced Texas budgets.

With school districts across the state passing belt-tightening budgets due to cuts expected at the Legislature, Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports that some districts are gearing up for legal challenges.

Talk has resumed in the Senate — albeit quietly — about a so-called quality assurance fee, a revenue generator that would effectively tax hospitals to prop up the state’s cash-strapped Medicaid program.

Lawmakers and lobbyists continue to spar over the accuracy of a recent Legislative Budget Board analysis of the effect House Bill 1 could have on jobs in the state of Texas. 

State Rep. John Zerwas, R-Simonton, is no fan of "Obamacare." But he told his House colleages this afternoon that if they don't set up a health insurance exchange — one of the tenets of reform — by 2014, the federal government will do it for them.

For our latest TribLive event, I talked about federal health care reform and the consequences of the state's budget shortfall on health and human services programs with state Rep. John Zerwas, R-Simonton, Anne Dunkelberg of the Center for Public Policy Priorities and Tom Banning of the Texas Academy of Family Physicians.

At Wednesday's TribLive conversation about health care, state Rep. John Zerwas, R-Simonton, and Anne Dunkelberg of the Center for Public Policy Priorities talked about what they like and don't like about federal health care reform.

We liveblogged this morning from the Austin Club, where the subject of today's TribLive was health care: the costs — and solutions — for Medicaid, payment reform in Texas vs. the federal health overhaul, and what kind of hit Texas' neediest patients will take. 

We asked three big thinkers in the Capitol community — Talmadge Heflin, Eva DeLuna Castro and Bill Hammond — to tell us what they'd do if they had the power to take on the budget shortfall themselves.

The budget draft filed last week provided the first glimpse at the kind of deep cuts that state agencies could see in the next biennium. As Matt Largey of KUT News reports, advocates are particularly worried about what the final budget could hold for the agency that protects children from abuse and neglect.

It's not hard to find strange bedfellows in the Texas Legislature when the bills start flying. Republicans and Democrats frequently cross the aisle to support legislation that they feel will help their constituents. As Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports, the same could be true as lawmakers try to figure out how to balance the state budget.