State Government

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.

The last time the House got committees, Texas had a different speaker who was in his fifth term in office, running a chamber where his party had been in control for over 100 years. Turnover in the membership was slight, and the changes in committee assignments were slim.

The governor’s budget might be more than a doorstop this session. The three Republicans who’ll be running things in the Pink Building seem to be on the same page, saying they’ll team up on one starting budget instead of doing the usual thing. The usual thing: The governor presents a budget. The Legislature ignores it. The Legislative Budget Board prepares a budget, and that’s the working document for budgeteers for the rest of the session.

The ethics dust-devil whirling around Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, is unlikely to harm his upcoming election as Speaker of the House, but it could make more trouble for him during the legislative session. It has made some House members on his side skittish—not an unnatural state for politicians in a time of change, and not a permanent condition. And it has emboldened and encouraged some of the people who don’t want the Republicans to do well in their first session in charge of things since the inventions of such contrivances as telephones, automobiles, income taxes and Velcro. That’s not a permanent condition, either.