Health care

Wow! Live weather metaphors! Just when the television folk ran out of descriptions for the presidential freeze-frame, it got really cold in Austin. It looked possible that it would drizzle and that the drizzle would freeze on the streets. It was dark and stormy and gray. People came to work late. Then the sun broke through, Al Gore resigned, George W. Bush accepted, and Republicans all over the Capital City started smiling again.

Texas budgeteers are poking around in the seat cushions for $700 million in loose change to try to avoid a politically hazardous vote on spending during the first few weeks of the legislative session.

Six weeks away from the election and most of the political conversation in Texas is about a contest that isn’t even being fought in the state. You might have expected attention to turn from national stuff to local stuff by now, but local stuff isn’t as interesting as the closest presidential race in the last 20 years. If you’re in our business, that means you call folks to see what’s happening in this race or that one, they want to talk about the presidential polls in Ohio and Florida.

Advocates for the poor will tell you that one of their biggest complaints with the Medicaid system in Texas is the sign-up process. Texas is one of only 12 states that still require a face-to-face interview with a caseworker before someone can receive benefits. It’s one of only five states that require both the interview and the so-called assets test that uses what someone owns in addition to their income level to determine whether they’re eligible for benefits. And the forms are complicated.

Most Texas politicos came out of the Labor Day weekend in seasonally optimistic moods. This is their moment and it begins with every entrant a potential winner. And the watching is promising, too: As the gates spring open and the races start, the Republicans and Democrats are planning or fearing or predicting anything from skirmish to war in nearly a dozen-and-a-half legislative seats.

Don’t get all cocky just because there is no budget deficit. The cure for high financial hopes can be found in the newest files at the Legislative Budget Board or in any number of budgeteers’ offices at the Capitol. State agencies are presenting their boring old Legislative Appropriations Requests, detailing what they believe they’ll need during the next two-year budget cycle.

Sen. Frank Madla, D-San Antonio, is under investigation by a federal grand jury that has peppered Texas government with subpoenas over the last several weeks. The panel is apparently trying to find out whether Madla or a member of his family benefited from some action he took while in office, but none of the information that has so far become public appears to support any such claim.

Sheesh, before you get all bothered about the grand mal disaster in the state budget, take a breath. There is no grand mal disaster in the state budget. What you’ve got — as we’ve noted in detail over the last couple of months — is a situation where the state has several agencies with budget messes of varying degrees of difficulty, and plenty of money to clean it all up. What you’ve also got is a presidential campaign and lots of people who’d like to put this in the worst light.

Lawmakers knew that letting new companies sell electricity in Texas would bring some financial drama to a staid industry, but they predicted it would take two years to get that far down the road. As you might have heard by now, they were wrong, and the price tag on the mistake is hovering in the $50 million range.

If you stick with the riff that the bad ol’ Democratic Party is dead, then be ready for this to turn into a slasher movie; the corpse will certainly rise for a sequel, if not soon, then certainly in a year’s time when the Republicans are picking their way through a post-George W. Bush landscape.