Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock

Limiting the growth of homeowners’ taxable property value can shift the property tax burden to businesses and other commercial property owners even when cities and counties and hospital districts aren’t increasing the revenue they receive from those taxes. We erred — semantically — when we called it a split roll in last week’s issue. But the 3 percent limit on homeowner appraisal increases touted by Gov. Rick Perry and others ends up shifting the cost of public schools from Texans who own homes to businesses and, indirectly, to renters.

Geography played as big a role in the primaries as politics. The Panhandle outvoted the Permian Basin again, keeping new Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, in office for five years instead of just one. Travis County overpowered Hidalgo County in a congressional race, giving U.S Rep. Lloyd Doggett room to run against a Republican in a heavily Democratic district in November. In another, Bexar County was enough to barely overcome Webb County, and with 126 votes to spare after the unofficial count, U.S Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, staved off a challenge from his former buddy in the Texas House, Democrat Henry Cuellar of Laredo. (Keep watching: Cuellar’s campaign manager told us “Ciro received a stay of execution, but not a pardon.”) Cities outvoted towns in East Texas, sending state Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, home in a congressional race that will now pit two Republicans from Tyler and Longview in a runoff.

House Speaker Tom Craddick isn’t showing any preference for school finance plans, but he’s been quietly meeting with members to talk about some of the possibilities. Nobody wants to talk out loud until Election Day, which should tell you that there’s no way to fix or even patch the state’s school finance system without a tax bill.

The grand jury investigating campaign contributions and expenditures in the 2002 legislative elections sent subpoenas to House Speaker Tom Craddick and a number of other House members, asking for their testimony and/or records relating to Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee set up that year to win more GOP seats in the Texas House.

Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which spent huge amounts of money to knock off trial lawyers in two recent East Texas Senate races, is on its way to a new record. With a week to go before the special election in SD-1, the group had spent $843,397 kicking Democrat Paul Sadler around. TLR gave nominal amounts — $5,000 — to two of the Republicans in the first round. Other than that, all of the group’s money has gone into a third-party campaign tearing into Sadler, a trial lawyer and former House member who hopes to succeed Republican Bill Ratliff in the Texas Senate. Former Tyler Mayor Kevin Eltife was one of the recipients of the $5,000 contribution, but TLR hasn’t done any advertising touting him. Their goal is to whack Sadler, and they’re doing it to such an extent that the Democrat’s campaign is fighting a two-front war, against Eltife on one hand and TLR on the other.

Ever dent the fender driving a new car off the lot? The coalition of school boards and school administrators formed to lobby state government to spend more money on public schools is looking, unexpectedly, for professional help. Public Strategies Inc., the Austin-based public affairs firm that had been doing the group’s polling, public relations and marketing – an effort that put them on the wrong side of the governor – dropped out less than a week after the coalition was publicly announced, citing conflicts between the school clients who want more money and clients who hired the firm to work on the tax bill that would fund that and other state spending.

Gov. Rick Perry wants to call a special session on school finance this spring to try to cut property taxes and end the Robin Hood formulas that have rich-district voters in uproar. But he’s leading with “education excellence” instead of finance, adding $500 million to the price and diverting attention from the funding emergency that’s driving the issue. And the lack of consensus over that plan, and over schemes to re-jigger the school finance system, threatens plans to call lawmakers to Austin.

Every election is a new thing. The numbers that flow out of political consultants’ laptop computers share a problem with the stuff flowing out of an investment advisor’s box: Past results do not guarantee future results.