The latest economy news from The Texas Tribune.
Waiting for the Senate budget debate? Get comfortable. Plans to bring the Senate’s substitute for the House’s budget, HB 1, up for a vote on the floor on Thursday have for now been pushed back to Friday or later, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/_KCB7024.jpg)
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, trying to build enough support to bring the budget up for consideration this week, appealed in writing to state senators, supporting the plan and a provision that would allow the state to spend $3 billion from the Rainy Day Fund. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/524a76be583eec30ae6abb370ce05e77/BD%20INC%20Dewhurst%2004%202011)
As the wildfires have worsened, costs have mounted at a rate of over $1 million per day. The state will pay the majority, though local governments and the feds will also pay a share. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/6ab253158c7e637354fc05fae609febe/BD%20INC%20Terlingua%20155%202011)
Gov. Rick Perry says he is unswayed by estimates that the state's Rainy Day Fund may end up being more flush than previously anticipated and blasted the Legislature's budget office as an unreliable source of numbers. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/714ed94b1d6e976ece9fce772a103ff7/BD%20INC%20Perry%20Trio%20528%202011)
One day after the Senate passed its version of the budget for the next biennium, the Texas Public Policy Foundation expanded its media campaign for a "conservative budget." They produced a series of new ads now running on statewide television. The timing appears to be strategic, as the Senate and House prepare to reconcile their spending plans in conference committee. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/RainyDayCommercial.jpg)
The Senate Finance Committee passed a budget this week that proposes spending about $12 billion more than the House in the next biennium. At first glance, House Appropriations Chair Jim Pitts says there's no way his chamber can meet the Senate halfway. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/videos/lemon1CMS.jpg)
A $176.5 billion budget for the 2012-13 biennium — 5.9 percent smaller than the current budget but almost $12 billion larger than the version passed earlier by the House — won approval from the Senate Finance Committee Thursday. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/c55a5c12bd47b647e5b7838edca07ead/BD%20INC%20SB1%20Lemon%2001%202011)
In this week's jam-packed episode, Evan, Ross, Reeve and Ben discuss higher education reformers, data security at the Comptroller's office, redistricting, the budget, and birthdays. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/Tribcast_2.jpg)
Senate Finance Chair Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, has dropped the news many have been waiting to hear: He wants to attach a contingency provision to the 2012-13 budget that would withdraw $3 billion from the Rainy Day Fund. Full Story
State senators have unveiled a list of almost $5 billion in cash-flow tricks, property sales and fees that could be used to ease cuts in the state budget, but it's not enough to completely close the gap between what they have available and what they hope to spend. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/_KCA6994.jpg)
Solving the state's 2012-13 budget woes is a hard job and perhaps the best way to show that is to let you decide for yourself how the $27 billion shortfall should be closed. Use our interactive budget shortfall app to see what you're willing to give up to close the gap. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/BudgetApp.jpg)
It doesn’t include a “sick tax.” But the Senate version of the state’s 2012-13 budget still takes direct aim at hospitals, in an effort to find hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and narrow the state’s revenue gap. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/Hospital-Money-Budget-Funding.jpg)
Republican lawmakers have vowed to close the budget hole without a new tax. But that hasn’t stopped Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, from proposing a penny per ounce tax on soft drinks. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/CokeBottles.jpg)
The 2006 tax swap — lowering local school property taxes and creating a new business tax to make up the difference — is at the center of Texas' current budget troubles. The architects are still pointing fingers over what and whom to blame for the state's “structural deficit.” Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/Strayhorn055TT.jpg)
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/20110412__cbm1133.jpg)
Hamilton on Victoria's efforts to divorce the University of Houston, Ramshaw on a disagreement between right-to-life groups over laws governing when life ends, E. Smith's TribLive interview with Sen. Kel Seliger and Rep. Burt Solomons on redistricting, Aguilar's interview with the mayor of Juárez, Tan on the continuing hunt for money to buy down budget cuts, Grissom on a psychologist who found more than a dozen inmates mentally competent to face the death penalty, Stiles and yours truly on the House redistricting maps and Galbraith on cutting or killing a tax break for high-cost natural gas producers: The best of our best content from April 11 to 15, 2011. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/Tribweek_0415_2011.jpg)
One reason companies move from California to Texas is the Golden State's higher tax burden. But are taxes really lower here than there? Depends on how you look at it. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/f47b1c2ff495ca71f2a400ce7f2da39f/BD%20INC%20Three%20Leaders%2001%202011)
The Texas Legislature is faced with a budget challenge that pits the Republican majority’s desire to cut government spending against a vulnerable target: the frail and the elderly covered by Medicaid and housed in nursing homes. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/MEDICAID_CEDARVIEW.jpg)
A bill designed to find cost savings and efficiencies in Texas' costly Medicaid program — and, more controversially, expand managed care into the Rio Grande Valley — is moving to Senate budget writers for consideration. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/Medicaid_pills_money.jpg)
The Big Men on Campus in the school known as the Texas Legislature have the unenviable job of finding money that might alleviate the massive cuts outlined in House Bill 1, the general appropriations bill for the next biennium. Full Story
/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/bb2e3c576855f4e133c46456c2e04af3/DONT%20USE%20Budget%20Players%202011)