State Government

The legislative session is reaching a point that’s as reliable as the lunch horn in a factory: That moment when it appears that everything is definitely-for-sure-absolutely-certainly going to fall to pieces. Or not.

You got your budget. You got your school finance/reform bill. You got your tax bill. And then you have everything else. If there’s a notable feature to this legislative session, it’s that those three pieces of legislation have sucked the oxygen out of the room. There are other bills of note — appraisal caps, workers compensation insurance, the water bill, some sunset bills, and so on — but the report card on this Legislature will focus on the three big deals.

The House will vote on a statewide property tax proposal before the Senate gets to it, a vote likely to kill a key provision of the Senate’s school finance package.

Democratic leaders in the House say they’re against gambling as a way to finance public education or to fill holes that might appear in the state budget. They said they’ll oppose it during the current legislative session.

A week after the Texas House passed the largest tax bill it has ever considered — a measure intended to replace some local school property taxes with new state taxes — Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn stunned lawmakers by saying the bill spends three dollars for every two it raises.

Tax bills are difficult to pass, and it never goes smoothly. Gov. Bill Clements signed a tax bill in 1987 that still holds the state record, and he did it over the objections of some of his fellow Republicans. In 1991, the political ambitions of then Ways & Means Chairman James Hury ended on the floor of the House when his fellow Democrats disassembled a multi-billion tax bill and left it to Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. That one finally got passed, and is the second-place finisher on the state’s all-time list.

The specifics keep moving around, but House management still wants to see the tax and school finance bills on the floor for debate by March 7 or 8. That means the committees in control must move the bills next week.

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison hasn’t yet said what she’s running for next year, but there might be a hint in the hiring.

Picture this day in the Texas House: A major education overhaul, a new business tax (and several other taxes) to pay for it, a vote on property appraisal caps, another on a statewide property tax, and a vote on expanding gaming in Texas to allow high-tech slot machines and dog and horse tracks.

Everybody in School Finance Land seems to agree the state needs a new “broad-based business tax” to help buy down local property taxes. You can hear those four words from Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, and from House Speaker Tom Craddick. You’ll hear them a lot more over the next six months.