Category Archives: Budget ballyhoo

If that pension shortfall problem isn’t enough to raise your general stress level, how about that oft-promised special session on school finance reform, which still may or may not happen, especially now that they have other things to worry about? … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Chron hotshot columnist Rick Casey gives Governor Perry a dunce cap for his three-pronged strategy for fixing school funding, which boils down to higher cigarette taxes, video gambling, and closing a loophole in the corporate franchise tax which allows limited-liability … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Boy, if this is any indication, the special session on Robin Hood reform that Governor Perry has promised to call is going to be a big frigging catastrophe. There’s almost too much here to chew on. Gov. Rick Perry on … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Get out your hip-waders and prepare to defend your wallets – there’s going to be a special legislative session in the springtime to finally address that big unfulfilled Republican fantasypromise of replacing the Robin Hood school finance system with something … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Testimony on school finance reform has started, and that can mean only one thing: How can we raise taxes without making it seem like we really raised taxes? Answer: Raise taxes on select groups of individuals, such as cigarette smokers. … Continue reading → Continue reading →

David Dewhurst really really doesn’t want to take his legislative fingers out of the state universities’s tuition decisions. “We’ve expected tuition increases by all of our universities and I appreciate the fact that the UT Board of Regents has held … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The University of Texas says it still plans to exercise its newly given freedom to raise tuition, and the people that gave them that freedom still don’t get it. The legislative oversight committee will meet next month to assess how … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Poor Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is dazed and confused. Stunned by higher-education tuition increases, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Friday he wants state universities to justify the rate hikes to lawmakers. How’s this, Dave? The state lege cut funding for … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Regarding my earlier post about Gov. Perry’s mediocre poll numbers, Kevin made a reasonable comment: I suspect when Perry reminds voters he held the line on taxes when most states raised them, his numbers will rebound. With all of the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The House passed a boatload of bills that would give the Governor’s office more power over agency heads as part of an effort to reorganize state government, and rejected a bill that would have allowed budget drafts to be kept … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Got a few free minutes and access to a computer, so I thought I’d check in for a second. I swear, every time I go out of town, everything goes to hell in a handbasket. Governor Perry finally quits teasing … Continue reading → Continue reading →

While the top three state leaders have generally claimed victory for accomplishing many of their stated goals in this legislative session and have received generally positive feedback from the GOP faithful (see here, here, and here for coverage), at least … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The Lege has passed a budget, literally at the last minute, meaning there’s one less reason for a special session to be called. A late influx of federal cash (decried on the op-ed pages by Ken Bentsen) helped soften the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry when I read stories like this about the latest debacle in the continuing saga of How To Balance A Budget When There’s No Money. The latest propsal to be floated only to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Elsewhere on the op-ed pages today we get some more serious stuff, as Lt. Governor David Dewhurst pushes his school finance reform plan, while a couple of think-tank theorists argue instead for a state income tax. Meanwhile, Clay Robison notes … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The story you’ll see in the Chron about the Senate’s version of the budget is about how Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn doesn’t like the budget, may not certify the budget, and so on. What you unfortunately won’t see in the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Well, the state Senate finally passed its not-as-godawful-as-the-House-but-still-pretty-bad budget yesterday, and from all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed you’d think that maybe it didn’t have to be that way. “I wish I could say I was proud … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Following the revelations that Governor Goodhair’s ultra-secret budget proposals would have made a complete mockery of most of his campaign promises, our one and only Guv is now denying all responsibility for it. “That was a lot of different people’s … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Earlier I noted that Governor Perry lost a battle to keep drafts of budget proposals secret. Now we see why Perry wanted to do this: his initial budget proposals broke nearly all of his campaign promises. At a debate at … Continue reading → Continue reading →

About 30 members of American Disabled For Attendant Programs Today protested in front of Governor Perry’s office yesterday, with six of them being arrested for criminal trespass after Perry refused to meet with them. The group […] had sought assurances … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Among the many items that have been cut or threatened to be cut by our slash-and-burn Legislature this year has been school textbooks. This has led to at least one oddly satisfying outcome: A social studies textbook that identifies Ann … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I haven’t had much to say about the state budget lately, but in the last few days we’ve had some interesting developments. There’s a fight brewing between the Lege and the Comptroller, as the House Appropriations Committe approved a budget … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn thinks video gambling would be a peachy way to raise revenue without imposing taxes. She continues to deride proposals to delay payments until the next budget cycle as “irresponsible”. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Teel Bivins (R, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

We all know that the motto of this Texas legislative session has been “We’re gonna balance this budget without any new taxes if we have to kill everyone to do it”. The reality of bringing expenditures for our growing population … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Bombs may be dropping in Baghdad, but the business of the state must go on. A couple of days ago, a bill was filed in the Texas Lege that would have profound effects on how the state spends money. House … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Things are a little busy today, so I’m going to point to a couple of posts up on the Political State Report about recent news items. First, the heartwarming news that Rick Perry does not want Texas to become the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn says that revenue projections are worse than she originally thought. With layoffs of state employees and potential cuts in services to thousands of Texans already looming, Strayhorn … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Today’s edition of Worst Case Budget Scenarios is what the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid look like after a 12.5% budget cut as mandated by Governor Goodhair. It ain’t pretty. The worst-case-scenario budget that reduces funding 12.5 percent for … Continue reading → Continue reading →

We’ve been talking about budget cuts as the Only Acceptable Solution for the budget crunch for awhile now, so let’s talk a bit about what that’s actually going to mean. Two articles from today’s Chron give us some insight, starting … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Some pesky Republicans in the Lege have been straying off the ranch lately, calling for an expansion of the state sales tax so that drastic cuts in the education allotment can be avoided: Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said the state … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Oooh, this one’s gonna sting: The state of Texas may have to renege on promises to pay college tuition for eligible students: An estimated 5,000 students would be denied free college tuition promised to them by the state because of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

And here we go again on another well-worn subject. With the budget crisis and the doctrinal unwillingness to examine the state’s revenue streams, a bill to legalize casinos is once more making its way through the Lege. The difference is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

School funding in Texas is done from a combination of local property taxes and state funds. It’s roughly a 50-50 mix, though right now the state’s share is at a low point. In the early 90s, after the inequities of … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Governor Goodhair has finally gotten around to admitting that the only way to eradicate the $9.9 billion budget deficit without raising taxes is to cut funding for education and health care, two things he never actually mentioned while on the … Continue reading → Continue reading →