And for a tax bill that's been on the ground for 48 hours — with few surprises after all the leaks of the four months — that's remarkable. This one's going to sit out for 19 days before legislators convene to officially consider it, plenty of time for opponents to chew on it. Full Story
Now that he's called a special session on school finance for April 17, Gov. Rick Perry has to sell lawmakers on the idea of raising state taxes to lower local property taxes while not putting new money into education. It's a swap, see, and not an increase in taxes. Full Story
While former Comptroller John Sharp and the rest of Gov. Rick Perry's tax reform commission works on proposed revisions to the state's business taxes, they're starting to hear more noise from lawmakers and lobbyists. That's not unusual with a special session approaching, but it's dangerous for tax bills: An unprotected tax bill lasts about as long as free pot at a rock concert and isn't nearly as much fun. Full Story
Maybe it's a failure of imagination, but we don't see an overarching narrative line in the results of this week's primaries. It's like sitting with a palm reader who, after five minutes of scrutiny looks up and says, "Well, this is interesting." Full Story
Back in the middle 1980s, a Dallas savings and loan tycoon who gave a lot to Texas Democrats said it was usually better to be the second- or third-biggest political giver in any given election cycle, since the guy giving the most took the shots in the papers. But sometimes, the guy you think is giving the most money is actually in second place. Full Story
It's an odd election season, with little of real interest at the top of the ballots and blossoming competition in Republican primaries. State leaders don't seem to know what to do with themselves. Full Story
Austin Republican Ben Bentzin started his latest attempt to win a seat in the statehouse with every advantage: Help from high state officials; a district drawn for a Republican; a special election called by a Republican governor for a date that was presumably to the advantage of his own party; a successful effort at keeping other Republicans out of the race; two Democrats splitting votes on their side and supposedly bettering his chances in a special election; and a huge financial advantage over everyone else in the field. Full Story
Never shoot a bear unless you're sure to kill it. If it lives, it might eat you. Dr. James Leininger and a political action committee he's funding (very, very generously) are on the hunt for five of the Republicans who broke ranks to vote against publicly funded vouchers for private schools. If they win, they'll scare the liquids out of legislators who defy them. If they lose, though, the lesson will be that it's safe to oppose them. Plus, there'll be all those bears walking around. Full Story
Some things in government, as at the pharmacy, are contraindicated. For instance, you can say INCOME or PAYROLL or GROSS RECEIPTS, but you can't use any of those terms in close proximity to the word TAX. Just look at what happened to John Sharp, head of the governor's tax reform panel, who had to back out of too close an encounter between TAX and GROSS RECEIPTS in his comments after a speech to a trade group. Full Story
Sherry Boyles, a former statewide candidate and co-founder of a Democratic PAC that supports female candidates, left that group earlier this month to pursue other opportunities. She's leaving an organization that spent 81 percent of the money it raised in 2005, even though that was a political off year with only one election. Full Story
Felix Alvarado's filing check bounced back to the Texas Democratic Party, and he's apparently off the March ballot for governor. Full Story
The party primaries include five congressional races, five in the state Senate, and 53 in the Texas House. In other words, it's a slow to normal election year. Full Story
Hardly anyone who's not employed by Carole Keeton Strayhorn thinks she would win a Republican primary in nine weeks against Gov. Rick Perry. It's more his audience than hers. He can match her dollar for dollar and then some, and she's based her campaign all along on the idea that she needs swing voters in addition to moderate Republicans to wrest the Mansion away from the current occupant. Full Story
Saying that you're a Republican, and that you're a candidate for governor, or even that you're a Republican candidate for governor, is not the same as saying you'll seek the GOP's nomination for that office in 2006. And that's why the state's scribbling scrum of political reporters won't close the door on speculation that Carole Keeton Strayhorn will run as an independent next year. Full Story
Former House Speaker Pete Laney, D-Hale Center, surprised the political villagers by announcing he won't run again, but most of the pre-election news so far has come from people who are running for office after all. Full Story
Kinky Friedman has to have almost 50,000 signatures to get on the ballot as an independent candidate for governor next year. His campaign folks are aiming higher, hoping to get two or four times that many — 100,000 to 200,000 signatures — to show outsiders how serious they are. Full Story
Texas lawmakers have trapped local school districts between the costs of rising state education standards and a constitutional cap on property tax rates, removing local discretion over those taxes, according to the Texas Supreme Court. Full Story
What once looked like a frolic for a political junkie in Texas — a year with contested statewide races all up and down the ballot with stars running for governor and U.S. Senate and on and on — now looks more like a quiet night at home. Full Story
Remember in the comics how — whenever they ran out of ideas — they'd throw Superman or some other hero into an alternate parallel universe? That memory came instantly to mind when we saw the results of two polls done for the Texas Credit Union League. They hired a Republican pollster to talk to primary voters of the red persuasion and a Democratic pollster to talk to the blues. They found two distinctly different parallel worlds. Full Story
The committee that will poke and prod the state's tax system, searching for something more lucrative and less painless, has swollen to nearly two dozen Texans, and we've been able to snag most of the names (it's hard to keep a secret when that many people get involved). Gov. Rick Perry is hoping to finish the list and make it public within the next few days, and the panel could get in a couple of meetings before the holidays shut government down. Full Story