Grandma Hits the Pool First

Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who bills herself as “One tough grandma,” is expected to announce her candidacy for governor in Austin this Saturday (June 18).

Looking for a newspaper clip on the Internet the other day, we stumbled on what appeared to be the story we sought. It was about Gov. Rick Perry telling a Tyler audience about the prospects for a special session of the Legislature. But instead of what we expected — an account of Perry’s efforts to negotiate a deal the House and Senate could swallow — it said Perry had given up trying to solve school finance until legislative leaders had a viable plan.

On the biggest issue of the legislative session, lawmakers and their leaders went home empty-handed.

Until this is over, it’ll be impossible to say whether legislative leaders sent their tax and education bills to conference committees or to bomb squads.

The Texas Senate dropped its state property tax, overhauled its overhaul of business taxes, and approved a school finance bill more in line with what the Texas House approved earlier this year. Big differences remain to be worked out in that package, and also in companion legislation that includes some school finance and some new education law. But the Legislature is closer to a deal on school finance now than it was a day, a week, or a year ago. Upgrade the condition of the patient from impossible to merely improbable. That’s an improvement, and previous legislatures have overcome bigger differences.

Officeholders who weren’t in the Pink Building in 1997 are finding out now what George W. Bush found out then: Even when everything appears to be lined up just right, it’s almost impossible to pass a tax bill.

Act surprised if you hear much more from the House this session about limiting corporate and union money in elections. An attempt to dynamite that legislation out of a hostile committee backfired badly enough that 50 of the bill’s 93 sponsors ducked, either voting against the effort or absenting themselves from the House floor during the vote. On the strength of a 95-36 vote, it remains in committee.

The legislative session is reaching a point that’s as reliable as the lunch horn in a factory: That moment when it appears that everything is definitely-for-sure-absolutely-certainly going to fall to pieces. Or not.

You got your budget. You got your school finance/reform bill. You got your tax bill. And then you have everything else. If there’s a notable feature to this legislative session, it’s that those three pieces of legislation have sucked the oxygen out of the room. There are other bills of note — appraisal caps, workers compensation insurance, the water bill, some sunset bills, and so on — but the report card on this Legislature will focus on the three big deals.