Rep. Gene Seaman and his wife have houses in Austin and Corpus and have homestead and elderly tax exemptions on both of them. Rep. Rob Eissler pays rent from campaign funds for a condo in Austin he purchased years before he became a legislator to house his sons while they were students at the University of Texas. Sen. Kim Brimer and Rep. Vicki Truitt each use campaign funds to rent Austin living spaces from their spouses. Full Story
This is your last weekend to watch television without sorting through shouting, finger-pointing, and showboating from politicians. Full Story
Though their agency went through the "exercise" of writing a shrunken budget, the board at the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department is unanimously backing an $84 million annual increase in state funding. Full Story
Ethics police are baking up a list of things they want changed or clarified by the Texas Legislature next year, and in the meantime, it has become dangerous for lobbyists to split the tab on officeholder meals and gifts. Full Story
A huge tax refund to Texas Instruments has rekindled questions about the conflicts that arise when tax consultants make political contributions to the tax collectors who decide their cases. Full Story
A state sales tax refund to "a large direct pay taxpayer" will cost the City of Stafford over $2.5 million — a stunning bit of news for a municipality with an annual budget of about $20 million. Full Story
Political hacks all over the state are huddling over computers loaded with mapping software, finishing their federal court filings on congressional redistricting. Full Story
Tom DeLay can't get off the ballot. Full Story
Texas and other states can redraw their political maps when they want to, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, but they can't dilute the strength of minority voters just to protect an incumbent those voters oppose. Full Story
Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn both got enough valid signatures to get onto the gubernatorial ballot in November. Full Story
He's still mostly ignoring Kinky Friedman, but Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell has trained his sights on Republican-turned-independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn, emphasizing what she's got in common with incumbent Gov. Rick Perry. Full Story
Republican Comptroller candidate Susan Combs is raising the stakes, saying if she's elected she will trash Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's rulemaking work on the new school finance package as soon as she takes office. Full Story
More than half of the members of the next House -- 79, to be precise -- have already been determined, barring accidents, bizarre upsets, or other side effects our doctors haven't told us about. We count only 20 races that, on paper, could be competitive (including 13 where the incumbent's success has been a clear exception to local voting patterns). Full Story
Last week's government is this week's politics. Gov. Rick Perry is running TV and radio ads to define and claim credit for what the legislature just did on taxes and school finance, touting tax cuts, teacher pay raises, new business taxes, high school math and science standards, and so on. Full Story
If tax bills were lions and senators were acrobats, that would have been a helluva circus. Full Story
A week of Senate infighting closed with a unanimous vote on tax cuts, school finance and education that put Gov. Rick Perry's tax reform package close to completion. But there was something more — Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst got his ears pinned back by a group of (mostly) Republican senators who weren't willing to follow his lead on the key tax cut and education bill. Full Story
It's been a bummer of a week for optimists. It looked for a minute there like the Texas Senate had everything lined up for a quick resolution on school finance, but they reverted to form and fell into a series of old and new traps. Full Story
If the Senate Finance Committee can make it to Monday or Tuesday of next week with four or five of the school finance components intact, there's a good chance Texans will see a new business tax, a cut in school property taxes, teacher pay raises and a bag full of other legislative wonders. But it's gonna be a long weekend. Full Story
So here's a question: Does the huge budget surplus make it harder or easier to pass the governor's proposed tax bill? Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn added $3.9 billion to the $4.3 billion that was already in the surplus — and those numbers don't include about $1 billion that's already in the state's Rainy Day Fund. Full Story
That act following the Easter Bunny by a day is none other than your Texas Legislature, coming to Austin to work on a problem that has left them bewitched, bothered, and bewildered for years: School finance. Full Story