State Government

The budget approved by the Legislature last month doesn’t balance, and Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn says she won’t certify it. This, ladies and germs, is a first. In all the years that the Texas Constitution has called for a balanced budget, the Legislature has spent less than it had.

The conventional wisdom among legislators and lobbyists is that congressional redistricting will be a “second” issue in a summer special session, since politicians don’t want to look like they’re spending taxpayer money for a purely political purpose. It’s not a baseless theory–some of the smart people have been talking about it right along with the rest of us.

Will there be a special session other than the one on school finance? And will it really start on June 30? And will the subject be government reorganization? The budget? Franchise taxes? The 10 percent rule for college admissions? And is congressional redistricting the only reason to come back, with whatever else just thrown in to provide a cover story for what voters might see as a political session?

Fifty-five Texas Democrats went on legislative strike this week, leaving the state for four days to kill a congressional redistricting plan they couldn’t kill by staying on the job.

The 20-week legislative session is down to its final three weeks. The big legislation with the hard edges and the sharp corners—even the emergency insurance bill—is still pending. The House has only a few more days before its rules block consideration of any legislation that hasn’t already been through the Senate.

Now that he’s been briefed, Gov. Rick Perry isn’t sufficiently impressed with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s school finance plan to push it during the regular session. Perry has been putting off the school finance issue since early in the session—he said then that legislative leaders weren’t experienced enough to pull it off. Now that Dewhurst is gathering Senate support for a fairly specific plan, Perry says there’s not enough time to deal with it during the regular session.

Democrats in the Texas House are starting to look like the Christians who appeared in the Roman Coliseum–they speak their faith quickly and to an inattentive audience, and then the lions eat them.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is working on an overhaul of the state’s school finance system, lowering local property taxes by billions of dollars and raising new sales taxes on service businesses in Texas.

Supporters of the Children’s Health Insurance Program must feel like kids on a hotel balcony with Michael Jackson: Odds are against actually being dropped, but a safety net would be nice.

Former Texas Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Dan Morales was indicted on federal charges related to his handling of the state’s tobacco lawsuit and settlement when he was AG. He was also accused of converting campaign money to his personal use, lying on a federal income tax return, and lying on a loan application.