The latest Dan Patrick news from The Texas Tribune.
One state senator calls it "a 20 percent backdoor secret tax" on those paying for college. Another argues that eliminating it would help create a Texas with a "have-and-have-not culture." And some students say the the tuition set-aside program mandated by the state in 2003 is just plain theft. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/89ff64a1469cdd6c90d14c317a3b9bd3/DO%20NOT%20USE%20Wentworht%20Patrick%202011)
At the Texas Education Agency's first appearance before the Senate since the release of a budget that reduces school funding by $9.3 billion, senators called for a "full picture" of the state's spending on public education. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/_KCB7840.jpg)
In case you missed it, we mashed up Wednesday's speeches for and against the Texas Senate's hallowed "two-thirds rule," which senators ultimately preserved. Members voted to keep an exception to the rules that allows a simple majority to consider changes to voter identification laws. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/videos/Screen_shot_2011-01-20_at_10.05.06_AM.png)
In a party-line vote, the Texas Senate adopted its rules today without making any changes to the rule that requires the consent of two-thirds of the body to bring an issue to the floor. Of course, no change means that controversial legislation on voter ID — as it was last session — is exempt. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/80-AAH-24.jpg)
An early look at the 25 people the magazine deems the most powerful in Texas. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/TexMonthlyWhoRunsTexas.jpg)
Tea Partiers expect to have a seat at the table during Texas' 82nd Legislative Session, the first since the movement's rise, via the new Tea Party Caucus organized by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston. The caucus is advised by a select group of Tea Party leaders from around the state, including Greg Holloway, a leader of the Austin Tea Party Patriots and the Common Sense Texans Network. He talked with the Trib about the upcoming session. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/TeaPartier_Austin.jpg)
The 82nd Texas Legislature convenes in Austin this week, and while it’s not as much fun as the circus — usually — it’s more important and does have its share of comedy and drama. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/CapitolComputers.jpg)
A speaker preference vote in the House Republican Caucus is "simply the right thing to do," state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, said Friday night, wading into a roiling controversy that has pit Republican against Republican in the aftermath of November's election. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/patrick.jpg)
After the election last month, state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, promised to start a Tea Party Caucus in the Texas Legislature. Today, Patrick has the names of the founding members. Full Story
The budget shortfall — estimated to be as much as $28 billion — will require the Legislature to take a paring knife and possibly a machete to government agencies and programs. The largest single consumer of state dollars is public education, so it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which funding for teacher salaries, curricular materials and the like isn’t on the chopping block, especially if lawmakers want to make good on their promises of no new taxes. But where is that money going to come from? Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/c6a2a3fa90eb46d95249c9b92bf8132e/BD%20INC%20San%20Antonio%20Classroom%202010)
State Sen. Dan Patrick issued a release saying he would host a sit-down meeting of the three candidates for speaker in a "neutral" location. But House Speaker Joe Straus' office says it never agreed to to the meet-up. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/bba19f9a03cbce6e8eb448c4b7ea733b/BD%20INC%20Lege%20Straus%202010)
Whatever the size of their majority in the Texas House, Republicans in the Texas Senate have to contend with the rule requiring two-thirds of members to agree to bring a bill up for vote. That's 21 out of 31 — and there are only 19 Republicans in the upper chamber. As Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports, some in the GOP want the rule changed. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/TwoThirds_Pull.png)
Republican state lawmakers, buoyed by their party’s resounding victories on Election Day, have filed several bills ahead of the next legislative session that signal how far they're willing to go in tackling illegal immigration. State Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, filed a nine-bill bundle that included a proposal to require picture IDs at polling places. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/billfiling_line.JPG)
Talking point No. 1 for an elected official facing an ethics investigation in Texas: Blame the politicization of the Public Integrity Unit, which is funded by the Legislature but operates out of the district attorney's office in heavily Democratic Travis County. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/delay_earle.jpg)
This weekend, some 14,000 true believers will congregate in Dallas for the state Republican convention, the largest such gathering in the nation. Other than electing a chairman, the main event will be developing a platform — a manifesto meant to be the ideal vision for the future of the Texas GOP. Just don't ask them all to agree to it. If they did, “it'd be a very dull convention and a very short document,” says Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/TXRNC-2010.png)
Increasing numbers of college students are attending classes, and even completing some degree programs, online — an innovation that could be welcome in an era of rising enrollments and shrinking budgets. But virtual higher ed has its critics, who say the distance learning model will never match what one lawmaker terms the "interpersonal Aristotle style" of education. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/computerclassroom.jpg)
It's embodied in the Tea Party movement, in this week's runoff election results from Lubbock and Plano, in last month's primaries, in Gov. Rick Perry's embrace of states' rights and the 10th Amendment, even in Barack Obama's campaign against the status quo in 2008. Voters are furious, and politicians are listening. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/purplefinger.jpg)
Karen Hughes, a communications advisor to Speaker Joe Straus, told our TribLive audience this morning that it was "a little undemocratic" of the newly formed Independent Conservative Republicans of Texas not to invite every Republican in the House and Senate to join. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/ab60e711b71555531f3d5625d9edea44/TT%20Event%20Hughes%209081%202009)
State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, is promoting a new group — the Independent Conservative Republicans of Texas — on conservative talk radio this morning. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/4d236f5817060f7b0cbfeabeadbf473a/.nopedan)
While the director of the Department of Public Safety and some state senators argue that X-ray machines and metal detectors are critical in the wake of a shooting at the Capitol, the Governor and others in the Legislature worry that a gamut of security hurdles would make the place unwelcoming to the public. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/20110301-DSC_2985.jpg)