State Government

He’s still mostly ignoring Kinky Friedman, but Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell has trained his sights on Republican-turned-independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn, emphasizing what she’s got in common with incumbent Gov. Rick Perry.

Republican Comptroller candidate Susan Combs is raising the stakes, saying if she’s elected she will trash Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn’s rulemaking work on the new school finance package as soon as she takes office.

More than half of the members of the next House — 79, to be precise — have already been determined, barring accidents, bizarre upsets, or other side effects our doctors haven’t told us about. We count only 20 races that, on paper, could be competitive (including 13 where the incumbent’s success has been a clear exception to local voting patterns).

Last week’s government is this week’s politics. Gov. Rick Perry is running TV and radio ads to define and claim credit for what the legislature just did on taxes and school finance, touting tax cuts, teacher pay raises, new business taxes, high school math and science standards, and so on.

If tax bills were lions and senators were acrobats, that would have been a helluva circus.

A week of Senate infighting closed with a unanimous vote on tax cuts, school finance and education that put Gov. Rick Perry’s tax reform package close to completion. But there was something more — Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst got his ears pinned back by a group of (mostly) Republican senators who weren’t willing to follow his lead on the key tax cut and education bill.

It’s been a bummer of a week for optimists. It looked for a minute there like the Texas Senate had everything lined up for a quick resolution on school finance, but they reverted to form and fell into a series of old and new traps.

That act following the Easter Bunny by a day is none other than your Texas Legislature, coming to Austin to work on a problem that has left them bewitched, bothered, and bewildered for years: School finance.

Folks who want to spend the state’s surplus on school tax cuts are meeting arguments that the surplus is already used up.

And for a tax bill that’s been on the ground for 48 hours — with few surprises after all the leaks of the four months — that’s remarkable. This one’s going to sit out for 19 days before legislators convene to officially consider it, plenty of time for opponents to chew on it.