From the Trib:
The School Land Board voted Tuesday to release $300 million into the Available School Fund for public schools.
The money will be released in two $150 million installments, one in February and the other on June. The funds had been caught in a standoff between the Legislature and the School Land Board, which operates out of the General Land Office and oversees the state’s public school land.
A constitutional amendment proposed in 2011 by state Rep. Rob Orr, R-Burleson, allowed the board to put a portion of earnings from investments on real estate assets into the Available School Fund, which along with property and sales taxes helps pay for public education.
Voters passed the amendment last November, but the little-watched School Land Board decided not to distribute the money in July. Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who sits on the three-member board, said it wanted to protect the funds for upcoming investment opportunities.
“It’s the age-old question of whether you save the money to send your kids to college or borrowing when they do,” he said at a House appropriations meeting in December.
Usually the proceeds from the sale and management of public school lands would go into a $26 billion trust whose revenue feeds into the Available School Fund. Proposition 6 made it so that the School Land Board, if it chose, could bypass that step and put money directly into the fund.
Background here. Given Commissioner Patterson’s previous opposition to the transfer of these funds, I was curious how he voted, since the story didn’t specify. I sent an inquiry to his office to check, and was told that he did vote no. You can read Commissioner Patterson’s statement here, the crux of which is as follows:
Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, chairman of the board, cast the lone vote against the payment. He said the decision was frustrating because lawmakers passed a flawed budget last session that addressed short-term problems without providing a coherent long-term vision.
“We need to strive to do better,” Patterson said. “Spending down our kid’s trust fund to pay today’s bills is a path I don’t want to go down any further. Fortunately, the fund is healthy enough to protect Texas schools from one year of bad budgeting.”
I sympathize with that, but I don’t have a whole lot of optimism about better budgeting. Anyway, the money that the Lege assumed would be there after the constitutional amendment passed is now in fact there, so that’s one thing less to worry about.