And the crowd goes wild. Top House and Senate negotiators agreed to a two-year budget for the state of Texas Friday that restores about $4 billion of $5.4 billion in cuts to public education made in 2011. It also creates a path for lawmakers to put $2 billion toward water infrastructure projects. The five House [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Sylvester Turner’
Maybe I buried Medicaid expansion too soon
I still think it’s dead, but I could be wrong about that. The fate of Medicaid reform in Texas could rest solely on an up-or-down vote on the 2014-15 budget. State Rep. John Zerwas, R-Simonton, a member of the conference committee that is hashing out the differences between the House and Senate budget plans, said [...]
Lehmberg out of jail
Her incarceration may be over, but Rosemary Lehmberg’s problems are far from it. Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg was released from jail early Thursday after serving half of a 45-day jail sentence for pleading guilty to driving while intoxicated. Lehmberg, who was sentenced April 19, served half of her jail term under a law [...]
Margins tax breaks passed
Someone’s getting a tax break. Probably not you, though. The Texas House on Tuesday tentatively cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s primary business tax — cuts that proponents say will keep the Texas economy humming and opponents argue cost too much. House Bill 500 is the primary legislative vehicle to address the [...]
Water, water, not so fast
So much for that. A major bill on the top of Gov. Rick Perry’s priority list that would authorize spending billions of dollars on state water projects faltered in the Texas House on Monday night after a contentious debate over where to pull the money from. “My understanding is it’s doorknob dead,” the bill’s sponsor, [...]
Texas Lottery Commission dies and is reborn
And we have our first curveball of the legislative session. The House voted Tuesday to defeat a must-pass bill reauthorizing the Texas Lottery Commission, a stunning move that casts doubt on the lottery as a whole and may potentially cost the state billions in revenue. House Bill 2197 began as a seemingly routine proposal to [...]
House discusses Medicaid expansion
Sounds like a sincere effort, though whether it can get anywhere is an open question. Amid hours of testimony from advocates in support of Medicaid expansion on Tuesday, state Rep. John Zerwas, R-Simonton, described his proposal to create an alternative program that could draw down federal financing to provide health coverage for poor and uninsured [...]
We have a budget
It is what it is. The 15 members of the Senate Finance Committee unanimously voted on Wednesday for a $195.5 billion two-year budget that undoes some of the cuts from the 2011 legislative session. The budget, which now heads to the full Senate, is 2.9 percent higher than the estimated size of the current two-year [...]
On African-American turnout in city elections
Bill King makes an observation about Ben Hall’s chances in the upcoming Mayoral election. When Lee Brown was elected mayor in 1997, many pundits predicted that with Houston’s growing minority community, Houston had seen its last white mayor. That, of course, proved not to be the case as Bill White and Annise Parker defeated minority [...]
Straus wants someone to do something on Medicaid
Don’t we all, Joe. Don’t we all. Seeking to light a fire under fellow Republicans to provide health care to more uninsured Texans, House Speaker Joe Straus said Wednesday that it is time to “get our heads out of the sand” and find an alternative to Medicaid expansion that would bring billions of federal dollars [...]
More on Hall’s announcement
Here’s the full Chron story from the weekend about Ben Hall’s announcement that yes, he really is running for Mayor this year. “Hall is a formidable challenger but is a long shot to unseat the mayor,” University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said in an email. Rottinghaus noted Hall’s funding capability, his vision and [...]
It’s drug testing all the way down
Looks like the urinalysis industry in this state is going to get a big stimulus package next year, at least if the Republicans get their way. As top state leaders push to drug-test some Texans seeking jobless benefits and financial assistance, critics suggest the initiative would single out the powerless and hurt their children. It’s [...]
Endorsement watch: Another critic on board
State Sen. Mario Gallegos sent out the following email on Monday: “The 2012 Bond Referendum will modernize outdated high school buildings and build new schools to meet students’ needs across the city. This proposal is a good investment that will create much needed new classrooms and improve safety and technology at campuses city-wide. Houston cannot [...]
HISD board approves its bond package
In the end, it wasn’t a close vote. The school board voted 8-1 to seek a $1.9 billion bond issue that would rebuild or renovate most of the district’s aging high schools, remodel several elementary and middle schools, and upgrade campus technology. The plan calls for phasing in a tax rate increase expected to cost [...]
Bye-bye, WHP
Thanks, Rick! Federal health officials announced Thursday what state leaders have predicted for weeks: that they are halting funding for Texas’ Women’s Health Program. Cindy Mann, director of the federal Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, said Texas left her agency no other choice by forging ahead with a rule designed to force Planned Parenthood [...]
No, there won’t be a special session to help the public schools
Someone managed to catch Rick Perry during the few minutes he was in the office this week to ask about about having a special session to appropriate some of the extra Rainy Day funds to mitigate the cuts to public education. His answer was exactly what you’d expect. Perry said Tuesday that Texas is spending [...]
African-American State Reps state their map objections
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Black-lawmakers-blast-revised-Texas-voting-maps-2346838.php Contending that African Americans have been an afterthought during the contentious yearlong redistricting process, four Houston lawmakers on Monday voiced their objections to the interim House map a three-judge panel drew recently. “A lot of emphasis over the past year, even up to now, has been focused on redistricting’s impact on Republicans and Democrats [...]
Precinct analysis: The 2011 Mayor’s race
I finally have a draft canvass of the 2011 Harris County vote. You know what that means. Here’s the breakdown in the Council districts for the Mayor’s race: Dist Simms Ullman Wilson Herrera Parker O’Connor ===================================================== A 4.41% 1.28% 16.31% 18.03% 41.89% 18.09% B 22.41% 3.02% 11.92% 12.71% 43.80% 6.14% C 1.65% 0.83% 9.11% 11.21% [...]
Thanks for helping us balance the budget, fishermen
The Chron’s Shannon Tompkins explains how budgetary shenanigans have an adverse effect on Texas’ hunters and fishers. Every year, tens of millions of dollars in hunting and fishing license fees are left sitting in the state account used to fund Texas wildlife, fisheries and boating programs. Those millions of dollars in Fund 9 account balances [...]
Senate passes supplemental appropriation with extra rainy day funds
I guess I hadn’t realized that the Senate hadn’t gotten around to passing a bill to close the deficit from the last biennium, since the House had done that a long time ago amid a huge debate about using Rainy Day Funds, but it’s just now that they passed the House’s bill, with a little [...]
“Sanctuary cities” ban passes the House
I suppose we should get used to the phrase “cutting off debate” because that seems to be the norm these days. After taking the unusual and controversial strategy of cutting off debate, the Texas House late Monday voted 99 to 47 in favor of a ban on “sanctuary cities,” despite objections that the measure was [...]
Another point of order delays Eissler’s school bill
HB400, the bill by Rep. Rob Eissler that among other things raises the 22:1 student:teacher limit in grades K-4, came up for debate last night after the “sanctuary cities” bill got sidetracked by a point of order. Here was the original AP story about this bill going into the debate. Districts could increase class sizes, [...]
Senate fails to bring the budget to the floor
It started Monday when Senate Finance Chair Sen. Steve Ogden said he might pull same Rainy Day funds out of the budget in order to get more Republican (read: Dan Patrick) support for it. After some discussion about alternate ways of incorporating Rainy Day funds and some griping about the Comptroller, CSHB1 was brought up [...]
The House finds a few extra bucks
Where has this been all along? State Rep. Rob Orr, R-Burleson, introduced two bills to the House Appropriations Committee that could add several million dollars to the public schools budget over the next two years. HB 2646 proposes allowing the School Land Board to transfer at least half of the net revenue it collects from [...]
Budget debate resumes tomorrow
Postcards: The Texas House [has called] it a night. They finished up the section of the budget bill that deals with public and higher education around 12:40 a.m. then adjourned until Sunday. Some members were planning to attend a Saturday morning funeral in Houston for the late husband of Democratic state Rep. Alma Allen. There [...]
The itty bitty budget deal
It’s not nothing, but not by much. Gov. Rick Perry and House leaders struck a deal Tuesday to spend $3.2 billion from the state’s rainy day fund to fix one piece of the state’s budget shortfall. [...] Perry said at the start of the session that lawmakers should not use any rainy-day fund money, but [...]
LSG on the budget
The Legislative Study Group, chaired by Rep. Garnet Coleman, now has an analysis of the Pitts budget outline, which you can read here. The main point to remember: How We Got Here: Built-In Budget Shortfall Comes from the 2006 Tax Package The current $26.8 billion budget shortfall is partly the result of a built-in budget [...]
Chisum running for Speaker
We may have ourselves another Speaker’s race this January. State Rep. Warren Chisum is delivering a letter to colleagues today saying he will run for House speaker next year, challenging Speaker Joe Straus, his fellow Republican. He says the speaker should be elected from the majority of his own party. It was mostly Democrats who [...]
Interview with State Rep. Sylvester Turner
State Rep. Sylvester Turner is one of the senior members of the Houston-area delegation, having served HD139 since he was first elected in 1988. He doesn’t have a campaign webpage, so let me refer you to his Texas Tribune biography for a brief summary of his career. He was Speaker Pro Tempore under Tom Craddick [...]
Locke v. Brown
So here’s the new Gene Locke ad: Everybody noticed the pause, right? Hey, if the electorate isn’t paying close attention to the details, you may as well make the most of it where you can. And here’s the Chron story about Locke taking to the radio to attack Peter Brown: The 60-second spot, the first [...]
And the rest
The Chron devotes a fairly long article to the three candidates for Mayor you’ve probably never heard of. It’s fine to give a chance for everyone to be heard, but with the election a month out and the sum total of the Chron’s non-Mayoral coverage being one story on the Controller’s race, I have to [...]
The biennial budget shuffle
In addition to billions of stimulus dollars, the budget this year relied on some old tricks to get certified as balanced. Nearly $3.7 billion in levies collected for everything from fighting air pollution to helping low-income people with their electric bills to funding trauma care will instead help balance the state’s upcoming two-year budget. The [...]
Council Member Adams sued by former consultant
Miya has the interesting story. Houston City Council Member Wanda Adams is the defendant in a civil lawsuit. Her former campaign consultant, Kathryn McNiel, has filed suit asking for back consulting fees and legal costs totalling around $47,000. This is a case that first began in 2008, and both sides have been working hard to [...]
Turner not running for Mayor
The Mayoral field for this November should now be set. State Rep. Sylvester Turner announced today he would not attempt a run for mayor of Houston. The 11-term Democrat representative’s announcement comes a little more than three weeks after he publicly acknowledged he was weighing a third run for mayor. Turner said he was considering [...]