State Government

The upcoming school finance study could be a two-parter, with a special panel looking at everything except taxes and then and only then messing with taxes, and only if they must. That, according to Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff, would separate the thicket of school funding formulas from the bramble of state taxes. Both are hairy problems, and they are interwoven, but Ratliff says he and House Speaker Pete Laney lean toward starting an interim study on school finance with taxes removed.

Some major legislation was still on the Maybe-Maybe Not list as the governor’s June 17 veto deadline approached. The list included the so-called Penry Bill, which would insert an evaluation of mental retardation into the state’s death penalty process and make it more difficult for the state to execute mentally retarded murderers. Gov. Rick Perry originally said the issue should be left to the courts, since the case involving Johnny Paul Penry was, at the time, pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. That court has since ruled (on a related, but somewhat different point about the judge’s instructions to the jury) and Perry no longer has that excuse. He’s getting advice both ways, both internally and externally, but hadn’t made a decision as of late Thursday.

After an arduous and grueling ten-day campaign (we’re joking, but only a little), Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff dropped out of the 2002 race for the job he already holds. Ratliff jumped into the race on the last Saturday of the session, surrounded by family and bolstered by the presence of nearly a dozen senators. Less than two weeks later, he was standing in front of a bank of cameras and reporters to say that he wasn’t willing to make the compromises necessary in a successful statewide campaign.

Eight days isn’t much of a cooling off period, but the Legislative Redistricting Board will convene on Wednesday to start up to 60 days of work drawing political boundaries for the 2002 races for Texas House and Texas Senate. That start date puts the deadline for the LRB in the first week of August.

The rural areas are in worse shape than they were expecting. The suburbs are in better shape than they were expecting. The urban areas are in both better and worse shape—maybe it’s just disturbingly different than they expected. There is not a GOP primary for governor on the horizon.

The Texas Legislature is back for a politically interesting and potentially fractious session, but the folks directly involved in the 77th session began with a focus on other things.

Not knowing who will be governor is a relatively small problem for state government. Planning can proceed and most of the governor’s power during a legislative session is loaded onto the back end anyhow, when vetoes can be delivered after the Legislature is out of time.

Thanks to the Sunshine State, Texas might have to wait for the Electoral College – or a concession speech – to find out who gets which Important Office in the Pink Building next year.

The occupants of the domed Pink Building on the hill in downtown Austin were supposed to be out of the business of election politics and into the business of government during the week after the election. They were supposed to know whether the big shots should switch offices or whether the Senate should shut down the mostly underground 18-month-old race for lieutenant governor.

Okay, okay, so we failed to predict that the Presidency of the United States would be decided by a smaller margin than most races for the Texas House of Representatives. Whodathunkit? The initial Florida margin of 1,784 votes would make for a nail-biter in a major county commissioner’s race.