We’ll see if this goes anywhere.
Rep. John Zerwas
The chief budget writer in the Texas House on Friday proposed using $1.4 billion from the state’s savings account to pay bills coming due for a wide array of the state’s health and human services programs.
The proposal from state Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, would continue pay raises for Child Protective Services workers that state leaders ordered last year. It would also pay for renovations at the state’s aging mental health hospitals and state-supported living centers for people with disabilities.
And it would partially reverse a sweeping $350 million budget cut to a therapy program for children with disabilities ordered by the Texas Legislature in 2015.
The funding would come from the state’s Economic Stabilization Fund, also known as the Rainy Day Fund, a savings account lawmakers may use in tight budget years. That fund currently has about $10 billion.
“Using a small portion of the Economic Stabilization Fund, combined with spending reductions, is the responsible way for us to close out the current budget cycle and respond to the slowdown in our economy,” Zerwas said in a prepared statement.
This is for the supplemental budget, which is to say the budget passed by the 2015 Legislature, not for the one this Lege is working on. It will free up some money for the current budget if Zerwas’ proposal is adopted, in the sense that current revenues would not have to be used to close out the previous budget. Given the emergency that everyone agrees CPS is and the outcry that followed the cuts to the therapy program for children with disabilities, you would think this would be a relative no-brainer, but don’t count on it. The Rainy Day Fund morphed from being a tool to use to smooth out economic bumps to a lump of gold buried in the backyard that is never to be touched unless there’s a natural disaster, with the 2011 session in which cutting $5 billion from public education was seen as the better choice as the turning point. A supermajority is needed to tap the Rainy Day Fund, and I have a hard time believing Dan Patrick and his Senate sycophants will go for that. But at least someone had the guts to bring it up, so kudos to Rep. Zerwas for that. Keep an eye on this, because it may be a precursor of the larger budget fight between the chambers. If Zerwas gets his way, that bodes well. If not, things could get ugly.
14% is a pretty significant portion of our “rainy day fund” to spend on a fairly normal downturn in the oil economy. If we agreed to spend that, the rainy day fund could be gone in 7 years at that rate, assuming something really bad didn’t happen in the mean time.
If we were talking about 5% to smooth things over, well, maybe. 14% is too rich for my blood, though.