Corrections to a tax bill could save thousands of small businesses in Texas from the gross receipts tax approved by lawmakers a year ago. Lawmakers might raise the minimum revenue requirements, letting more companies escape the new levy.
Catch and Release
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Health care
Crunch City
When this last break of the legislative session is over next week, there will be seven weeks left in the 80th regular session of the Texas Legislature. And you know, even if you’re new to this, that the rules start killing things before the last day.
Posted inState Government
Spending Time
The House kicked out its budget early Friday morning after 18 hours of debate; the Senate Finance Committee planned to send its version to the printers a few hours later. Put the Senate plan in play the week after the Easter break, and the conference committee that really writes the budget will get started.
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Health care
Record Spending, Record Restraint
A $150.1 billion state budget is on its way to the full House, which already approved another $14.2 billion spending plan for school finance. Those bills, along with a “supplement” appropriations bill to patch thin spots in the current budget, would bring state spending for the next two years to about $164.3 billion, up from $144.6 billion in the current budget.
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Health care
Bummer, Dude
Pity Tom Pauken. The Dallas lawyer tapped to head a task force on property tax reform turned in his report in January, with plenty of time for lawmakers to work on it. The governor listed property tax reform as a priority in all of his pre-session interviews with reporters. The Guv mentioned it again in his state of the state speech.
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Health care
Wanna Bet?
Legislation that would expand legal gambling on two fronts while also funding a quarter of a million college scholarships could go to voters if two-thirds of the Texas Legislature approves.
Posted inState Government
Push Back
Rick Perry and George W. Bush are the only recent governors to stay in office long enough to name every member of every board and commission — every appointed official. It takes six straight years in office to go all the way through the batting order, and when a governor is done, it all belongs, for better or for worse, to that governor.
Posted inState Government
A Persistent and Spreading Affliction
The call for a mandated vaccine against HPV in pre-teen girls might get the opposite result. A House committee voted this week to make it against the law to mandate the shots. The only company with a government-approved vaccination said it’d stop its 50-state lobbying effort on the drug. The issue leapt from Texas to national news and talk shows and all that in a matter of days and — more importantly — stayed there. And Gov. Rick Perry’s power to issue executive orders found a tall speed bump in an Austin courtroom, when a state district judge said —in an unrelated case — that a state agency isn’t required to follow Perry’s orders.
Posted inState Government
Never Say Always
It’s usually true that the Lege is a slow-moving machine, but not always. Look at the moves to jump around constitutional constraints on increased state spending: Mired two weeks ago, coupled with a tax break for elderly homeowners one week ago, and now out of the Senate, out of the House Appropriations Committee and on its way to a floor vote next week.
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Health care
Need to Hide Something Big?
Ask Gov. Rick Perry for advice. He managed to bury headline-grabbing proposals for the sale of the state lottery, a $3 billion war on cancer, $100 million for border security, a $2.5 billion tax rebate, and health care for up to two million of the state’s working poor behind a vaccine for pre-teen girls against a sexually transmitted disease.
