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Ross Ramsey co-founded The Texas Tribune in 2009 and served as its executive editor until his retirement in 2022. He wrote regular columns on politics, government and public policy. Before joining the Tribune, he was editor and co-owner of Texas Weekly. He did a 28-month stint in government with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. Before that, he reported for the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Times Herald, as a Dallas-based freelancer for regional and national magazines and newspapers, and for radio stations in Denton and Dallas.
State budget writers will propose eliminating agencies, cutting others to a quarter of their current size and mandating furloughs for state employees to balance the budget without raising taxes or using the state's Rainy Day Fund, Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts told a hometown crowd. Full Story
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For this week's installment of our non-scientific survey of political and policy insiders on issues of the moment, we focused on the budget. Specifically, we asked how big the shortfall is going to be, how the Legislature will close the gap and which areas of the budget are most likely to be cut. Full Story
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For lower-ranking Republicans who would like to be higher-ranking and Democrats who barely remember ever having a shot at winning a statewide office, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's inscrutability about her future plans is getting to be a bit much. Full Story
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You know the home inspector told you to fix that leak but hey it wasn't a flood or a lot of water and everything seemed okay and you let it go and now the insurance company is slow-paying and the contractor is shaking his head and your wallet and this is really a painful way to run a race for speaker... Joe Straus hasn't had a really good news day since the Republicans won 99 seats on Election Night and he announced the next day that more than four out of five House members wanted him back. Full Story
House Speaker Joe Straus is sooo conservative ... that he advertises on the Drudge Report. Full Story
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The bomb-throwing president of Empower Texas and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility on why Joe Straus hasn't proved himself as a conservative, why the entry of outside groups like his own into the insiders' race for speaker is proper and what he'd like to see out of a Texas House with 99 GOP members in it. Full Story
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It was a bad Election Night for residents of the largest city in McLennan County. After years of regional dominance, their congressional seat belongs to Bryan, halfway to Houston; their state senate seat is 86 miles away in Granbury; and one of their House seats has moved three counties east, to Centerville. Full Story
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An interview with Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility and Empower Texans. Full Story
The former budget-slashing Texas House member and current executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation on how she reads the mood out there, what reductions in state spending should be on the table, whether cost-shifting to local school districts is a plausible option, why lawmakers should forget about new sources of revenue, the trouble with Medicaid and what members of the Republican near-supermajority in the Legislature must do to keep the confidence of voters — and get re-elected. Full Story
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An interview with Arlene Wohlgemuth of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Full Story