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.

Sens. John Carona, R-Dallas, and Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, would allow up to 15 casinos — seven of them in urban areas, two along the Gulf Coast, and three in places where they'd boost job creation and local economies. The state's three Indian tribes — the Alabama Coushattas in East Texas, the Kickapoos in Eagle Pass, and the Tiguas in El Paso — would also be allowed to open casinos. And they'd allow the state's racetracks to add video lottery terminals — slot machines — to their mix.

The racetracks haven't signed on — some are pursuing legislation that would allow them to add VLTs without creating casinos. The backers of this legislation say they want to create "destination gaming" in Texas, and that racetracks don't fit the bill. They're looking for the sorts of big and expensive operations now found in Las Vegas, which combine hotels, gaming, fancy food, and expensive entertainment and shopping.

You know the usual setup for a gambling bill in the Texas Legislature. You start with a budget problem, mix in the natural political aversion to new taxes, and offer up a new form of gambling as the solution to the state's fiscal problem. And be sure to include a vote, so that legislators can tell folks they didn't vote for gambling — only to allow the public to decide whether it wants gambling.

Carona and Ellis are trying a new formula. This time, the state has plenty of money. So they're pointing to a fiscal problem — rising tuition rates at state colleges and universities — and saying casino gambling would raise enough money to send 240,000 kids to college. "It's common knowledge around this Capitol that we don't have enough money to meet all the needs of this state," said Carona, who until now has opposed casinos in Texas. And there'd be money left over for anyone who wants to sign on. Everything else is still there — the aversion to taxes, the constitutional amendment. There's even a local option election built in. If state voters allowed casinos and VLTs (slot machines), local voters would still have the ability to allow or ban those operations. "If you don't want this, turn it down," Ellis said.

The pitch came with two consultants. Economist Ray Perryman put together estimates of how much money the thing would generate for the state and for the economy. Pollster Mike Baselice asked 1,000 people in November how they'd like the idea, and peppered them with variations to see what worked and what didn't. Both were hired by the Texas Gaming Association, an industry group that wants the state to drop its ban on casinos.

Insert the standard caveat here, which is that the only numbers that count in state government come from the comptroller — Perryman's analysis says the casinos could create 315,000 to 461,000 new jobs, generate $31 billion to $45 billion in new construction, and bring $3.2 billion to $4.6 billion into state coffers every year. He said Texans gamble $3 billion annually in adjacent states and Mexico, and $10 billion overall. "There are very few taxes that people line up to pay — people love paying this tax," Perryman said of gaming.

Ellis and Carona would put $1 billion of that into a trust fund to pay for higher education tuition. They said the bill is only a starting point, but added that the higher education provision is the one part they're determined to keep.

Baselice's polling focused on what voters might do with a constitutional amendment allowing casinos in Texas, and on the wording that might be used to sell it. His firm polled 1,000 Texans from November 12-15 and the poll has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.

Right out of the box, 54 percent had positive impressions of high-end casinos and 32 percent had negative impressions. Democrats and independent voters were friendlier to the idea than Republicans. Overall, 49 percent said they'd favor opening the state to casinos and to VLTs at racetracks, while 43 were against it. On the plus side, 27 percent were strongly in favor, compared to 33 percent who were strongly opposed. The anti-gamblers are more intense.

Ask them if, regardless of their position, they think the Lege should let them vote on it, 84 percent said yes, and 65 percent said they'd support their state legislator for giving them a chance to vote (18 percent said they wouldn't). Asked about using the proceeds of casino gambling to provide money for tuition, fees and books for Texas kids in college, the tally was 61-31.

Most — 84 percent — believe their fellow Texans have access to gambling through casinos, the lottery, eight-liners, or the Internet. And if you appeal to their competitive streak, 61 percent think the state should have casinos to prevent gambling dollars from fleeing to New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Mexico.

Finally, if you ding them with all of that, 64 percent said they'd support casino gaming if the proceeds went to higher ed.

Jack Pratt Sr., former owner of the Sands Casino in Vegas and the head of the Texas Gaming Association, said exit interviews at casinos in adjacent states found a lot of Texans and also found that they would rather stay here than travel to, say, Louisiana. And he said high-end casinos would hurt lower-end forms of gambling: "This will suck the money out of riverboats like Grant took Richmond."

Scrutiny, Two Years Late

Sometimes a list is the best way to get your head around something. Here's what's happened around the Texas Youth Commission sex and management scandal during the last week, ending with this week's call for resignations by the agency's board:

• The Legislative Audit Committee voted to put the agency into a conservatorship, but also gave the governor a chance to leave the current board in place and to develop a rehab plan for the agency. He went for the second option. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick appointed a Joint Select Committee on TYC, co-chaired by Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, Chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, and Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, Chair of the House Corrections Committee. The Senate appointees are Chris Harris, R-Houston, Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-Mission, Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, Royce West, D-Dallas, and Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands. The House appointees are Harold Dutton, D-Houston, Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, Sylvester Turner, D-Houston and Corbin Van Arsdale, R-Tomball.

• Gov. Rick Perry, after the LAC acted, put Jay Kimbrough in charge of an investigation of the agency. Ed Owens, who was installed by the agency's board as interim director, is supposed to work with the State Auditor on a rehabilitation plan. Owens is a top official at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Kimbrough has worked for Perry and for Attorney General Greg Abbott, and oversaw the only conservatorship in state history when he was assigned to clean up the Texas Commission on Alcohol & Drug Abuse during Gov. George W. Bush's tenure. Some House Democrats say he's a partisan; Kimbrough, as a deputy attorney general, called the FBI when the Democrats vamoosed to Ardmore, Oklahoma, to stop a redistricting vote, to see if there was a way to force them back.

• Perry gave TYC legislation emergency status, which allows lawmakers to work on it during the first two months of the session (a period that's almost over). He listed three pieces of legislation: one creating an inspector general at the agency, one giving Abbott concurrent jurisdiction that would allow him to step in on TYC matters when local prosecutors drag their feet, and another that would give a special prosecution unit jurisdiction over crimes at the agency.

• The Texas House, working on Jessica's Law legislation, added an amendment by Rep. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco, which would make it a crime for state employees or contract employees to cover up "continuous sexual assault of a young child or children." That would come with a 2- to 20-year penalty.

• There have been numerous calls to dump the board (a friend and former Senate staffer points out a constitutional provision that allows a governor to impeach his own appointees, with Senate consent). That would have happened automatically had the governor chosen to put the agency into conservatorship. And at least some senators are willing to go along. The joint committee gave the board a "no confidence" vote this week after board members refused to quit.

• Leaked reports hinting at what the agency and lawmakers knew and when, as well as reports of alleged sexual abuse at other TYC facilities.

• Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle launched an investigation after reports that TYC officials altered documents about alleged sexual assaults at the TYC facility in Pyote. In a press release, he said "tampering with a government document is a crime, as is lying to the Legislature."

Restoring CHIP

Legislation relaxing requirements for the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, sailed through a House committee and are on the way to the full House.

The legislation by Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, would remove restrictions put on the program four years ago in the midst of a budget crunch and a Republican takeover of the Legislature. Republicans still have a majority in both the House and Senate, but the state's budget isn't as tight now as it was then.

Turner's HB 109 would make several changes to CHIP:

• Change eligibility requirements to allow families to qualify after deductions for childcare, work-related and other expenses; current law doesn't allow any of those "offsets" against gross income when qualifying. Eligibility, in other words, would be based on net family income instead of gross family income.

• Start an education program and promote enrollment in CHIP, including outreach through school-based health clinics and private sector community organizations.

• It would amend a provision that allows state agencies to consider what assets a family has while determining eligibility, allowing them at least $10,000 in assets in addition to up to two cars.

• CHIP recipients would have to demonstrate their eligibility to stay in the program every year instead of every six months.

• The waiting period for new insureds would change. Now, they have to wait 90 days after they sign up for CHIP. The new law would keep the 90-day number, but it would toll from the end of their last insurance coverage instead of their enrollment date in CHIP. Someone who'd gone without insurance for three months wouldn't have to wait as they do now.

The changes would cost around $180 million annually, including $59.1 million in state funds; the balance would come from federal matching funds.

When legislators put current law in place, they touted money savings and downplayed the number of kids who would be knocked out of eligibility by the changes. Now, with a budget surplus and heightened anxieties about the numbers of uninsured Texans, they're moving to make more people eligible for CHIP. The moves aren't all smooth, though: Some conservative groups want the current law — particularly the six-month eligibility check and the asset test — left in place. And some liberals, like Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, say the assets test remains too strict and that the legislation puts into statute some restrictions that currently exist only in rules, which are easier to change.

Houses of Spouses

Legislators wouldn't be allowed to rent property from their spouses using campaign funds under legislation by Rep. Vicki Truitt, R-Keller. She's one of several lawmakers who have done just that, complying, she says, with an opinion from the Texas Ethics Commission.

This tripped up a number of lawmakers during last year's campaigns. The commission said they could use campaign money to pay rent to spouses so long as the properties in question were "separate property" not subject to community property laws in marriages. Two of the lawmakers who were doing that — Reps. Toby Goodman, R-Arlington, and Gene Seaman, R-Corpus Christi — lost their reelection bids, in part because of publicity about those arrangements. Truitt, Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, and Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, had similar arrangements at the time and got out of 2006 with their political hides intact.

Truitt's proposed legislation would end the practice, making it illegal for a lawmaker to use campaign funds to rent from a spouse, whether the property in question was separate or not.

Lakes in Waiting

A slightly modified form of Sen. Kip Averitt's omnibus water legislation will be considered by the Senate Committee on Natural Resources when members meet next week. However, aides say the Waco Republican doesn't plan to change the legislation's most contentious portion, which designates 19 reservoir sites throughout the state.

The legislation in question is actually two bills, SB 3 and SB 675. The first deals with a range of water issues, including environmental flows and conservation plans for small communities. The second is a single-shot bill that duplicates the first bill's provisions on the reservoir sites. If they want to split the issues, they've got a vehicle.

Averitt's aides said there's a change the committee will vote on the bills next week. Provisions on environmental flows will be changed to match Rep. Robert Puente's HB 3, which was passed by the House last week.

Critics of Averitt's bill say they've got real problems with the designation of 19 reservoir sites in Texas, arguing that the value of property within the site will diminish, even if no reservoir is ever constructed. The designations alone amount to property takings, they say.

Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, described the potential decrease in property values as "a cloud of darkness over these areas," saying, for example, that people would be much less likely to move onto a piece of land that may be underwater in the near future.

Hegar also stated concerns about a part of the legislation requiring reporting of water pulled from the ground, arguing that the process may place an undue burden on rice farmers in his district.

Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, has come out as a major opponent to the 19 reservoir sites, especially the proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir in northeast Texas. Water from this reservoir would be piped to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, in an adjacent water region. Eltife has suggested raising the level of nearby Wright Patman Lake as an alternative to building a brand new reservoir.

Eltife's aides said that, in addition to the land actually within the reservoir, so-called "mitigation land" will be affected by new reservoir sites. Basically, if you flood a piece of pristine land, the federal government says you have to reserve additional land to make up for the land you put underwater.

They said 60,000 to 70,000 acres would be flooded for the Marvin Nichols Reservoir, but 2 to 4 times as much area could be designated as mitigation land.

Also, he contends the statute is unnecessary because the state water board currently has the authority to designate reservoir sites. (Staffers for committee Vice-Chair Craig Estes, R-Wichita Falls, countered that sensitive decisions impacting private property rights should be made by the legislature, not by a state agency.)

Eltife has help. Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, has signed onto Eltife's amendment to excise the 19 reservoir sites. Aides say he's comfortable with the rest of the bill.

• In other water news, Estes filed SB 1338, which would allow groundwater conservation districts to require annual reports on water withdrawal by currently exempt entities, such as oil, gas and/or mining operations and agriculture.

Hegar filed SB 1341, which would create the Edwards Aquifer Recovery Implementation Program, a process though which the aquifer's major stakeholders (namely, San Antonio, people downstream from San Antonio, and people west of San Antonio who rely on water pumped from the aquifer) can reach a consensus on how to protect the groundwater, especially during times of emergency or drought. Similar programs have had reported success in places like New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming.

Hinojosa's SB707 and SB847 (both with Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville) were referred to the National Resources Committee. The first bill would give teeth to the Rio Grande Regional Water Authority, in Willacy, Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, Zapata and Webb Counties. As it stands now, the water authority has no way to raise money. The second is aimed at resolving long-standing conflict among irrigation districts and the cities and developers to whom they sell water.

—by Patrick Brendel

Flotsam & Jetsam

It's the end of bill filing, for what it's worth. Members can still file legislation with permission, but for normal stuff, the end of the week is the end of the first leg of the trip.

It also marks the end of the constitutional slowdown enforced this year by House Democrats. The Legislature often suspends the rule that prevents consideration of bills during the first two months of a session, but this time there weren't enough votes to suspend it. Gov. Rick Perry made a list of "emergency" measures to let the House do some business, but most things were forced to wait. And in the time-constricted world of the Texas Lege, that shortened the fuse to less than three months for most legislation. When the calendar reaches the bottleneck dates in late April and early May, don't be surprised when the black plague sweeps through proposed legislation.

• House budgeteers added a provision that allows the state to pay for an HPV vaccine, but only with the signatures of the governor and the members of the Legislative Budget Board. Without those signatures, it would prevent any of the state's budget to be spent on those vaccinations. That's a way of preventing a quiet shift of funds to HPV vaccinations from some other program after the Legislature leaves town.

• The Texas Education Agency would do an inventory of all of the state's public education mandates under legislation proposed by Rep. Dianne White Delisi, R-Temple. That'd be in place for the next legislative session, two years hence.

• Changing the way snuff is taxed in Texas could raise $91.4 million for the next state budget and over $50 million a year after that, according to Comptroller Susan Combs. She hasn't taken a position, but the fiscal note on the bill indicates it would raise some tax money. US Tobacco wants to change the tax from a price-based levy to one based on weight. That would have the effect of narrowing the price difference between regular and premium brands. The company's opponents want it left alone.

• Federal Judge William Wayne Justice will start a conference April 9 to decide what the state should do to resolve an 11-year-old case involving part of the Medicaid program. The state settled the case — it's titled Frew v. Hawkins — in 1996, when then-Attorney General Dan Morales and then a state district judge signed a consent decree. The state's later efforts to duck that order were fruitless, and now that the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to jump in, the state has to go to Justice to take its medicine.

It could be expensive, with some pessimists saying the state could have to spend $5 billion annually to do what it agreed to do. The case started with the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment (EPSDT) program for kids. The folks who sued said Texas wasn't adequately promoting that and other programs for children — that it was blocking their access to programs guaranteed them by federal law. Their proposed remedies include everything from increased promotion to higher reimbursement rates for doctors, dentists and other Medicaid providers. Texas Health Steps — the state's name for the federal EPSDT program — covers about 1.5 million children (and doesn't have anything to do with the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP).

Justice will look at the proposed fixes from the state and from the plaintiffs and will put a remedy in place. Once he does that, the budgeteers will be able to cost it out.

• One Medicaid rate — for ambulances — hasn't changed since 1991, according to the trade group for ambulance companies (a 1999 raise was obliterated during the 2003 budget cuts). Medical transportation for children is an issue in the Frew lawsuit, but the ambulance folks want their rates stepped up for everything in Medicaid. They contend the state's reimbursement rate for ground ambulances is 70 percent lower than the federal Medicare rate.

• Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell endorsed John Edwards for next year's presidential primaries.

• The private citizens who got the ball rolling on a $3 billion fund to pay for cancer research in Texas have a name — Kill Cancer — and a website, at www.killcancer.org. That's the bunch we wrote about several weeks ago; the coalition was started by Cathy Bonner of Austin and expanded to include the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, former Comptroller John Sharp, scientific, medical and higher education institutions, and a mess of lawmakers.

• Comptroller Susan Combs, responding to a request from someone she didn't name, wrote a memo spelling out two ways to save the state's prepaid college tuition program. The state could put in between $53.2 million and $69.2 million annually for 19 years, with smaller payments to finish it off. Or the state could limit increases in college tuition to 4.2 percent to 4.9 percent per year. That program has been suspended since the state deregulated tuition and the gap between what had been paid in and what was owed widened dramatically. But the Texas Tomorrow Fund was already in a hole before tuition deregulation, mainly because of adverse investments. Now the investments are doing better, but the soaring tuition costs are bedeviling the program.

Political People and Their Moves

Former political consultant and state Rep. Ed Emmett of Houston is now Harris County Judge Ed Emmett. He replaced former lawmaker Robert Eckels, who quit to join a law firm. Eckels was just reelected in November, and Emmett will have to stand for election for the rest of Eckel's term next year.

Gov. Rick Perry appointed Albert Betts Jr. of Austin to run the workers' compensation division at the Texas Department of Insurance. Betts had been the agency's chief of staff; he's a former assistant attorney general and was general counsel for the State Office of Risk Management.

The governor named Cynthia Delgado of El Paso to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. She's a former employee of his, having worked as his Gulf Coast regional representative before moving to the desert.

Perry chose James Wendlandt of Austin for a spot on the Texas Board of Orthotics and Prosthetics. He's a financial advisor.

And the Guv tapped Allan Polunsky, a San Antonio lawyer who used to be on the state's prison board, to the Texas Public Safety Commission. That's the three-member panel that oversees the state police.

James Bernsen and Chad Wilbanks will advise the Texas House Republican Caucus on media and strategy, respectively. Wilbanks used to work for the Texas GOP and for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison; Bernsen worked for Hutchison, former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm and for the Lone Star Report.

James Grace Jr. is rejoining Baker Botts, where he'll work in government relations. He's most recently been with Winstead Sechrest & Minick, and worked for Centerpoint Energy, in the utility's lobby shop.

Quotes of the Week

Jay Kimbrough, appointed by Gov. Rick Perry to investigate the Texas Youth Commission, quoted by the Associated Press on the child molestation scandal there: "If you are part of this gig, you need to move on or we're going to find you and prosecute you."

Texas Ranger Brian Burzynski, whose investigation of abuse at TYC was ignored for two years, testifying before a legislative committee: "I promised each one of those victims that I would do everything in my power to ensure that justice would not fail them, the Rangers would not fail them. I can only imagine what the students think about the Ranger who was unable to bring them justice."

Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States, talking about horse slaughters in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "Because of the special place of the horse in American culture and all that horses have done to build and expand this country, it seems like the height of ungratefulness."

Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, on the cameras appearing on traffic lights all over the state: "It is too much big brother. The next thing is we will be mailing out speeding tickets and it will go on and on after that."

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Surfside, talking in the San Antonio Express-News about his potential bid for president, and his message: "If you don't like the government spying on you, telling you what you can read and what you can do on the Internet, and this invasion of your privacy and looking at your library cards and arresting you without search warrants and going into your houses and holding you without habeas corpus. How is that gloomy?"

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Texas Weekly: Volume 23, Issue 36, 12 March 2007. Ross Ramsey, Editor. Copyright 2007 by Printing Production Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. One-year online subscription: $250. For information about your subscription, call (512) 302-5703 or email biz@texasweekly.com. For news, email ramsey@texasweekly.com, or call (512) 288-6598.

The Texas Youth Commission, Trans Texas Corridor, Jessica's Law, and Hallie Berry all gave bloggers something to scribble about.

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The State as Sex Offender

Bloggs continue to speculate about how big the sex abuse scandal at the Texas Youth Commission will get... who's to blame and who ultimately might be tainted by the ongoing investigation. Patricia Kilday Hart posts in the Burka Blog that Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, D-McAllen, saw a recipe for disaster at TYC during hearings last summer.

Alex Winslow posits on the Burnt Orange Report that the scandal plagued TYC is a major meltdown in state government. Grits for Breakfast has a post about alleged threats from the acting executive director of TYC to fire agency employees.

In response to the almost daily horror stories coming out of TYC, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick appointed a Joint Select Committee to investigate the wrong-doings. Rep. Aaron Peña, D- Edinburg, is a member of that group along with Hinojosa, according to a post on Lone Star Rising.

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The State as Sex Offender Prosecutor

The House passed HB 8, or Jessica's Law, Monday evening. Thirty-six amendments were offered from the floor during the debate. Capitol Annex live-blogged during the discussion and had the aftermath. Grits for Breakfast examined the substitute bill that was passed as offered up by Rep. Dan Gattis, R-Georgetown.

The normally tongue-in-cheek to Billy Clyde's Political Hot Tub had an interesting and thoughtful post with regard to get tougher on sex offender's legislation proposed by Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball. BCPHT reports on the usually very reserved Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, and respects his level-headiness during the debate.

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Three Little Letters

Inside the Texas Capitol muses about what it and others are apparently calling Gov. Rick Perry's three Letter Session... three letters as in "TYC", "TXU" and "HPV". The Texas Youth Commission, Texas Electric Utility and the human papillomavirus have all turned into heat-seeking missiles coming right back to the Governor, according to this post.

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Coal Snap

Protestors returned to the streets of Austin on Monday as details of the sale of TXU continue to cause controversy and raise more questions that answers. Meanwhile, Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, filed legislation that would place a moratorium on the construction of coal-burning electric plants. The bill calls for a two-year hold on coal plants and bring Perry's executive order fast-tracking the regulatory red tape for constructing them.

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Trans-Corona

Eye on Williamson County points its eye on last week's Senate Transpiration Committee hearings and the argument for privatization of the state highway system due to neglect.

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CHIP Off The Block

Rep. John Davis, R-Houston, takes some heat from the right on a Lone Star Times blog for filing HB 2049 that will put more kids on the Children's Health Insurance Program roll. LST says Davis is changing his spots and voting for bigger government and shedding fiscal conservatism.

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Observing Redistricting

The Texas Observer gets into the symposium on Texas Congressional redistricting at the University of Texas Law School last week with a couple of interesting posts.

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Harris County's Merry-Go Round

Outgoing Harris County Judge Robert Eckels is taking his share of some white hot heat from the bloggers. Eckels is leaving his job at the court house for a lobbying gig. The Houstonist says Eckels' appointed replacement will be former House member Ed Emmett, who already plans to be a candidate next year to serve the remainder of the term.

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Bush Library Paper Trail

The Burka Blog has an update on the George W. Bush Library's search for a home and why some in the Southern Methodist University community are uneasy about W's library ending up there.

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Alamo Recalled (Hey, It's Your Duty)

Texas celebrates its Independence Day and remembers the Alamo in March. As the Island Floats posts it is a good idea to re-read Alamo correspondence from William Travis and James Bowie to William Fannin on the first day of the fateful siege.

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Coming Soon: Tulia, The Movie

The arrest, conviction and ultimate release on drug charges of several Tulia African-American residents is coming to the silver screen. Grits for Breakfast says actress Hallie Berry is slated for a role in the upcoming movie about the fight for freedom by the victims of a rogue cop and a skewed system.

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This edition of Out There was compiled and written by Kevin Kennedy of Austin. We cherry-pick the state's political blogs each week, looking for news, info, gossip, and new jokes. The opinions here belong (mostly) to the bloggers, and we're including their links so you can hunt them down if you wish. Our blogroll — the list of Texas blogs we watch — is on our links page, and if you know of a Texas political blog that ought to be on it, just shoot us a note. Please send comments, suggestions, gripes or retorts to Texas Weekly editor Ross Ramsey.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, staring at a legislative request for his opinion of whether the governor has the power to mandate HPV vaccines for pre-teen girls, talked his way out. His opinion — spelled out only in conversation with Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, and Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland — is that Perry's diktat is an advisory order with no force of law. Perry, in essence, was playing air guitar and hoping everyone would keep dancing.

Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins can ignore it if he'd like (though that's got it's own risks). And — according to Abbott as distilled indirectly through a statement from the two lawmakers — the governor can't authorize an agency to do something through an executive order that the agency doesn't already have the authority to do.

Abbott's aides say there's no paper trail on this and say the request for his opinion wasn't official, at least in the sense that it would require a written response.

Abbott stole a page from an old Boston pol named Martin Lomasney, best known nowadays for this line: "Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink."

It appears that HHSC does have the authority to order the vaccines, at least for now, which sets up an interesting layout:

• Perry can't order HHSC to make HPV immunizations a condition for girls entering the sixth grade.

• Hawkins' reappointment to his job is pending before the Senate Nominations Committee, which is now teed up to ask him what his decision will be on HPV (since he doesn't have to follow the Guv's orders, but knows what the Guv wants).

• House Appropriations has a rider in their budget draft — added by Rep. John Davis, R-Houston — that prevents anyone from shuffling their budgets to pay for HPV vaccines without written permission from the governor and the Legislative Budget Board.

• UPDATE: The House voted 119-21 to prevent the state from mandating the vaccine. That's on its way to the Senate. Perry's holding his ground, but if more than two-thirds of the Senate is against him, each of the two chambers appears to have enough votes to override a gubernatorial veto.

The state is splitting the sheets with one of its biggest contractors — Accenture — unable to come to terms on revisions to a huge Health and Human Services contract that was supposed to save hundreds of millions of dollars.

Accenture — the leader of a consortium called the Texas Access Alliance — and the Health & Human Services Commission apparently couldn't settle a $100 million difference in what the state was willing to spend on call centers and related computer equipment and programming. According to state officials, the company has tentatively agreed to pay about $30 million and will walk away from its contract. A spokesman for Accenture, however, said no money would change hands to terminate the contract.

The state will have to hire as many as 800 workers — that's one estimate, and it's early in the game — to pick up the slack, delaying or possibly forfeiting some of the cost savings lawmakers were hoping to see when they consolidated eligibility systems from various state and federal welfare and health programs. Workers in the call centers that deal with clients of those programs, for instance, now work for Accenture. The state will have to hire them or their replacements — or bring in a new private company to do the work — to keep those programs going. An early estimate from House budget-writers is that those hires will cost $17 million to $18 million in the next budget.

And savings the state had hoped to realize from the Accenture deal — around $200 million over five years — will be delayed or lost now that the partnership between the state and the company is ending.

HHSC still hopes to see some savings from the switch to call centers and the new integrated eligibility program, which was supposed to consolidate the various applications for help Texans had to file under the old system. You'll also find lawmakers and policy makers who never thought this would work. Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, said she wasn't surprised: "Since the initiation of Accenture's contract, independent audits, investigations by the Comptroller's staff and reports from eligible persons who were denied services revealed Accenture's growing list of problems."

A spokesman for Accenture says the state would have realized the savings it originally hoped for if it had stuck with the contract and the procedures put in place by the company.

Jim McAvoy said the company agreed to scale back the contract in November, from $899 million to $543 million. The negotiations that followed that announcement didn't produce a deal, however, so the company and the state agreed to call the whole thing off.

"Negotiations start tomorrow on how to implement the unwind," he said.

Albert Hawkins, the state's commissioner of HHS, said the state and the company ended up around $100 million apart, with most of that attributable to work on the computers and programs used to run the state's integrated eligibility system. HHSC says that money was for services not included in last year's agreement to shrink the contract; the company says it was. That's the stuff divorces are made of.

Accenture will run the computer end of that through November, according to McAvoy, and when it'll stop doing other things it's doing will be determined in negotiations starting this week.

Maximus, another state contractor, will take over part of what Accenture is doing now; the state will take over the rest. And in its statement announcing the divorce, HHSC indicated that the grand privatization experiment might be over. The state will eventually take over most of what it farmed out to Accenture and others.

The broken deal will delay and probably shrink any savings the state hoped to realize. Hawkins said about $200 million in expected savings will be delayed. The state's top budgeteers were less specific, saying it's almost impossible to tell whether any money would have been saved at all.

In a press release, HHSC said the transition out of the contract will be done by November. They'll decide between now and then which services should be performed by state employees and which might go to new contractors.

Most of what was covered in the contract has been done by the private sector all along. But the call centers where claims and details are handled are new, and most of the savings were supposed to come from cutting state payrolls and letting the contractors do the work. Those cuts never came, and the state and Accenture were already shrinking the contract a year after they signed it.

The two legislators in charge of the budget — Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, and Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa — said the numbers are too fuzzy at this point to say whether the breakup would have any impact on the budget. Senate Health and Human Services Chair Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, was a proponent of the privatized eligibility system.

"I'm disappointed that it didn't work, but my goal is just to make sure that our clients get services. I don't care if it's state, I don't care if it's a vendor," she said. "But we had great frustrations, and we continue to have great frustrations."

The remaining members of the board at the Texas Youth Commission will resign en masse Friday morning, after voting on a rehabilitation plan for the scandal-plagued agency. The announcement came from the governor's office, which proposed governing TYC with a single full-time commissioner instead of a part-time board.

For now, the agency will be run by Ed Owens, the interim executive director on loan from the Texas Department of Corrections. And Jay Kimbrough, appointed as special master to straighten things out, will keep going as well. Owen is drafting the rehab plan that will be presented to the board Friday.

The announcement followed another legislative outburst from the Texas Senate, which voted for a second time to fire the board.

And Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst got hit with several questions about whether he'd move to fire the board in the governor's absence. Dewhurst won't sign the fire-the-board bill in the governor's place if the House passes it quickly.

He's the governor while Rick Perry is out of the country, and could sign a bill if he wanted to. He told reporters he won't do that — an aide said "it wouldn't be productive in the short term or in the long term." But reporters aren't the only ones asking; a group of state representatives — four Democrats and four Republicans — sent Dewhurst a letter asking him to put TYC into a conservatorship.

The Senate already voted to do that, but Perry opted instead to appoint a special master to overhaul the agency. That's similar to a conservatorship, but it leaves the board in place. A conservatorship begins with the firing of the board.

A copy of the letter is attached, signed by Democratic Reps. Valinda Bolton of Austin, Jim Dunnam of Waco, Pete Gallego of Alpine, and Scott Hochberg of Houston, and by Republican Reps. Pat Haggerty of El Paso, Delwin Jones of Lubbock, Tommy Merritt of Longview, and Robert Talton of Pasadena.

Perry's announcement about the board resignations took the wind out of that movement. It leaves the seven board slots open, but aides to the governor say he'll likely wait to see what the Legislature wants to do with the structure of the agency before trying to fill any of those.

• The TYC circus now includes road shows, with House Democrats offering to take reporters along on a tour of TYC facilities near Austin. Their Friday tour will take them to the Marlin facility (northeast of Austin, southeast of Waco), where inmates stop on their way to wherever they'll finally be sent. And the Lone Star Project — a Democratic outfit based in Washington, D.C. — piles in with news that federal prosecutors prepared indictments based on the abuses at TYC's Pyote facility, but dropped the case after talking to superiors. That's a two-fer for those guys, who get in a shot at U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as well as a shot at the Perry Administration.

Details, details: When you're gifting your friends in the Legislature with mugs full of candy, remember to check the labels...

The logo on the side of the mug says: "March of Dimes, Saving Babies, Together." The label on the bottom says: "CALIFORNIA PROP 65 WARNING: Some materials used as decorations on this product contain lead or cadmium, chemicals known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm."

Texas senators, already in an investigative lather over the Texas Youth Commission, want a detailed review of the state's dealings with private contractors in two high-profile health and human services programs.The letter, started by Sen. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville, now has the signatures of everyone else in the Senate. They're asking for an "integrity review," perhaps followed by "a full-scale investigation concerning procurements, management, development, effectiveness, efficiency, usability, and cost-effectiveness" of two contracts that are now being terminated by the Health and Human Services Commission. That went to Bryan Flood, the inspector general of HHSC. And it got a soft reception; Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins said through a spokesperson that he's all for a review that will make legislators more comfortable about spending at contract at the agency. The full text follows:

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.

All that's been in the news since then is a speakers' race, a goofy panic over constitutional spending limits, and the ongoing Plague of the Three-Letter Acronyms: HPV, TXU, TTC, TYC, and HHS. The legislative session is at the halfway point. The last rush of bills is being sent to committee, and the bottlenecks that kill most legislation will become apparent any second now.

Pauken isn't pessimistic, but he said the delays and distractions have hurt. "It's had a very deleterious effect on getting the Legislature to focus on these issues," he said. And that last rush of bills did not include one that encompassed all of his task force's recommendations. Some of the ideas can stowaway as amendments to other legislation. He's particularly disappointed that there'll be no constitutional amendment to let property owners average their values over five year periods — an idea designed to take some of the sting out when values rise rapidly.

Some things didn't come out the way they were proposed, like legislation regulating growth in spending by local governments. He wanted automatic elections; what's been proposed would instead allow voters to petition for elections.

Pauken still thinks that cap will be the toughest fight, and said he is surprised at the "institutional opposition" from cities and counties and their trade groups, the Texas Association of Counties and the Texas Municipal League.

Proposals to reform the appraisal system to get elected people in the system and to allow more slack when market and appraised values don't match, he said, appear to be in good shape. (Rep. John Otto, R-Dayton, is carrying eight bills in that package.)

"I wouldn't handicap it at the moment. Our chances are much more difficult than they were... [but] if we can get to the floor, our chances are pretty good." At that point, he thinks, "it's very difficult for a legislator to vote against it."

Most of the legislation will go to Local Government Ways & Means, where Rep. Fred Hill, R-Richardson, is the chairman. Hill wouldn't handicap most of the bills, but said sales price disclosure has a chance and so does the appraisal process reform stuff. Caps could have a harder time and binding arbitration could fare well, he said. Hill said some of the ideas don't hold up well under legislative scrutiny: "There's a lot more politics than substance in some of these proposals, and that might explain the lack of interest."

The Texas Tomorrow Fund is in about the same shape it was in a year ago, according to an actuarial report done for the fund last year for inclusion in a still-uncompleted annual report. And the actuaries aren't nearly as gloomy as a group of financial advisors who did a special report for Comptroller Susan Combs when she took office.

The report from Buck Consultants says the prepaid tuition plan's unfunded liabilities total $110.3 million. That's the difference — in current dollars — between the amount of money in the fund over time and the amount it has to spend sending all of its contract holders to college.

The actuaries say they were off a little from last year for two reasons: They weren't optimistic enough about what the fund's investments would earn, and they were too optimistic about college tuition rates, which rose faster than predicted.

And they conclude that allowing new people to enroll would spread the costs of operating the plan and would narrow the gap between the fund's assets and its liabilities.

The consultants working for Combs were critical of some of the actuary's assumptions (See Assuming the Worst, in our Notebook section). And they came to the conclusion that the fund will be short by $1.7 billion to $3.3 billion by 2029 (in an apples-to-apples comparison of those future numbers, the actuaries paid by the fund predict a 2029 deficit of $683 million).

The Tomorrow Fund has refused new contracts for four years; some lawmakers want to reopen it or to replace it with something that'll help Texas students pay for school.

The Texas Senate — angered over high rates, a new report that shows utilities manipulating markets to keep prices up, and a company buyout that might slide past state approval — took a step toward new regulation of electric utilities. Three bills by Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, would force utilities to sell plants if they control too much of a given area's wholesale market. It would force them to compete outside their home areas, a measure designed to use competition to keep rates down. The legislation would force a company in a buyout — that'd be TXU at the moment — to seek regulatory approval from the state. And the package includes a number of consumer measures added by senators concerned about people being cut off. Fraser and others said they grew concerned about rates when gas prices fell and electric rates didn't follow. He estimated some companies are charging up to 20 percent more than they should be charging, and he wants the Public Utility Commission to have the power to question the utilities about that. One fear from state officials is that deals like the TXU buyout could leave heavy debt loads on the "wire companies" that move power between generators and retailers. If the costs of transmission rise because of debt from buyouts (or anything else), they fear their market-based deregulation will unravel. The PUC, meanwhile, says in a scathing report that TXU abused its market power to overcharge customers, netting $19.6 million more than if it had played fairly. That's in the form of an accusation at the moment; it could go to administrative court or to conference if the company decides to fight. But the timing wasn't great for the company. The PUC's memo and a long report were made public this week, on the eve of the Senate vote to tighten the regulatory net around utilities.

Frew-ty numbers, property taxes, as much open government as you can stand, stacks of bills, mining Texas for money, and a milestone...

The increasingly infamous "Frew" case gets its hype punctured in a new report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which has been involved in and has followed the case for years. Their basic take: It won't cost as much as you might have heard. Estimates have run from about $450 million a year to as much as $5 billion a year. The budgeteers who watch this say they won't have numbers until the court makes its orders (the conference with the judge and the lawyers for both sides is April 9). And the CPPP folks do the same while downplaying the scare. The state's total tab for children's Medicaid — which is what the suit is about — is $2 billion annually. Their theory is that even a shocking order from the judge wouldn't double the tab. And they use the state's numbers, saying it would cost $1.5 billion to raise doctors fees in Medicaid enough to cover actual costs; only 30 percent of that, or $450 million, would apply to kids. Their whole report is online.

• The state will have a constitutional amendment election on May 12. The issue in question is whether property owners who've got an over-65 property tax freeze should be able to take part in the property tax cuts for public schools. They were left out of last year's reforms, and the Legislature voted to add them. Now it's up to voters. 

• Does anybody really want to read through the expenditures of state agencies? They can if they want, sometimes. Comptroller Susan Combs has posted spending for eight agencies on her agency's website: Texas Education Agency, Texas Workforce Commission, Health and Human Services Commission, Department of Family and Protective Services, Department of Aging and Disability Services, Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, and Department of State Health Services. Knock yourself out.

• How about this one? You'll be able to watch live streamed video of the Texas Supreme Court starting next week (March 20). The court and St. Mary's School of Law are cooperating to put oral arguments on the Internet. You can get in two ways: Through the court's site, or through the law school's site.

• More bills have been filed this session than two years ago. The Texas Legislative Service tallies a 13 percent increase, counting 5,921 bills filed this session, against 5,263 two years ago. The House filed 503 more bills this time; the Senate, 155 more. That puts the totals at 3,977 bills in the House and 1,944 in the Senate, averaging 26.5 bills per state representative and 62.7 bills per state senator.

• Presidential wannabes are prospecting for money in Texas. On the program for the next ten days or so: Hillary Clinton will hit Austin and Houston; Bill Richardson, another Democrat, will raise money in Austin; and Republican John McCain has funders in Austin Dallas, San Antonio and Houston in a two-day sweep at the end of the month.

• Wow your friends and amaze your hosts at parties with this fun fact: The state's permanent school fund, started with $2 million in 1854, topped the $25 billion mark for the first time in its history.

Sometimes, your own headlines come back to bite you. We hit the Go button on the latest issue of Texas Weekly and quit work for the day, only to find that the email sprinklers had stayed on all night and flooded subscribers with up to 400 emails. Holy cow, are we sorry for that.We were saved from self immolation, however, because our own headline was right there in each email to make us laugh at the whole thing: "Bummer, Dude." Thanks for your patience with us. The web folks have been down in the engine room to make sure it won't repeat (cross your fingers), and we'll have it all fixed shortly. In the meantime, you might want to review your Email Settings on our website. You can set it to tell you when the weekly newsletter is out, when daily news clips are posted, and when we put something new in Notebook, or any combination of those things. Just log in and click on "email settings" over on the right side of the screen. Thanks again for putting up with our accidental Charlie Chaplin automation adventure. We'll try to do better. Ross Ramsey Editor

James Waller of Dallas got a pardon from Gov. Rick Perry after DNA tests proved he wasn't guilty of the aggravated assault that sent him to jail in 1982. He was released under mandatory supervision in 1993. Perry also commuted a death sentence for Doil Lane, who was convicted of murder but is mentally retarded. He'll spend his life in prison.

Former Gov. Dolph Briscoe Jr. will get a Lifetime Steward award from the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association later this month.

Rep. Frank Corte, R-San Antonio, got the Bronze Star for his service in the Middle East last year. He's a Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.

Rep. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, will head the House Republican Caucus' policy committee. That panel makes recommendations on legislative votes, and the 15 members elected Taylor to lead them.

Kevin Holtsberry joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation as an analyst. He worked for a public utility commissioner in Ohio and as a legislative aide there before that.

The Guv appointed Troy Alley Jr. of DeSoto to the Texas Real Estate Commission. Alley works in real estate in that Dallas suburb.

Perry named four to the board that runs the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired: Caroline Daley of Kingwood, who coordinates care for special needs kids; Michelle Goodwin of Fort Worth, a caregiver for a special needs child; and Robert Peters of Tyler, retired dean of Tyler Junior College and a news and weather reporter for the paper and a radio station there. Perry reappointed Deborah Louder of San Angelo for another term on the board; she works for an educational service center.

The governor named four to the Texas Board of Professional Geoscientists, which licenses and regulates people in that business: Charles Hallmark of Hearne, a professor at Texas A&M University; Ronald Kitchens of Harper, former executive director of the Texas Railroad Commission; Barbara Roeling of Austin, local operations manager for a consulting firm; and Gregory Ulmer of Houston, a partner with Baker & Hostetler.