Here’s the full Chron story about Saturday’s re-vote on recapture.
About 84 percent of constituents voted “for” HISD’s Proposition 1, giving the school district the green light to send $77.5 million to the Texas Education Agency rather than let the state forcibly remove some of most valuable commercial properties from the district’s tax rolls.
The reversal from the “come-and-take-it” mentality followed trustees’ meetings with state officials and lawmakers earlier this year. Board members feared vindictive action from Austin and also had second thoughts about going with the more costly “detachment” option.
Christopher Busby, an HISD teacher at the Sam Houston Math, Science, and Technology Center who voted for Proposition 1 on Saturday, said paying recapture was the lesser of two evils.
“Recapture is not on the ballot; recapture has already happened. This is about how we handle recapture,” Busby said. “The solution that does the least damage to the district is a ‘for’ vote.”
Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said HISD gained nothing through the two referenda, which cost the district an estimated $1.7 million.
“In the end, what HISD has done is use a lot of its political capital and has gained absolutely nothing,” Jones said. “They used political capital in (the) fall to persuade people to vote no, and they used political capital this spring to get those same people to vote yes. But they could have just said yes and paid the state like everyone else.”
[…]
Most trustees agree that referendum produced some desirable outcomes – the Senate authorized a work-study committee to look into overhauling the state’s school finance system in January, and Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, proposed a bill that would increase state education spending and lessen the amount districts would pay under recapture.
After the November vote, board President Wanda Adams and trustees Skillern-Jones, Anna Eastman and Mike Lunceford grew worried that refusing to pay the state recapture fee willingly would have dire consequences for the district and the board.
Trustees Jolanda Jones and Manuel Rodriguez Jr. insisted that the district hold fast in its decision to withhold the recapture money. Otherwise, they argued, HISD risked losing ground in getting the state to rethink recapture and its school funding formulas.
“The whole point was to get the Legislature to move on this. The only reason they’re paying attention was not because we have a great lobbying team, it’s because we voted no,” Jones said in February. “The second we relent and bend over, it’ll ruin this for rest of state and our momentum because everyone is looking at Houston.”
Jones with Rice’s Baker Institute said the state’s actions were more likely the result of a May 2016 Texas Supreme Court ruling that found while the state’s school finance formula was constitutional, it desperately needed to be overhauled.
Please note that the November election was required by state law once HISD was put into recapture. Only the May election was optional. As you know, I agree with the trustee’s interpretation of what the November “No” vote meant, and I disagree with Mark Jones. I’ll cite David Thompson as my evidence for that. What happens from here is unclear, but I believe that there is now a greater appreciation of how messed up our school finance system is – I mean, raise your hand if you knew six months ago that recapture funds helped offset state spending on education instead of going to other school districts – and I believe there is a greater consensus about what needs to be done to fix it. Not at the top, of course – we’re never going to get a real fix with the Governor and Lt. Governor we now have – but among legislators themselves. There’s still a lot of work to do – HISD in particular can and should keep pushing the TEA to give it and other recaptured school districts credit for transportation costs and pre-k programs – but progress has been made. I’m happy with the way things played out.