The Legislature’s one mandated duty has been completed.
Both chambers of the Texas Legislature voted Saturday evening to approve a $217 billion, two-year budget that would boost funding for the state’s beleaguered child welfare agency, increase the number of state troopers on the Texas-Mexico border and avoid serious reforms to the state’s much-criticized school finance system.
The final vote in the House was 135-14. The vote in the Senate was 30-1.
Scrounging for cash in a tight-fisted legislative session, budget leaders from both chambers agreed to a compromise that settled a bitter debate over how to finance the state budget. The two-year budget is shored up by both $1 billion taken from the state’s savings account, often referred to as the Rainy Day Fund, and an accounting trick that would use nearly $2 billion from a pot of funding intended for highway projects. The House had favored tapping the Rainy Day Fund and leaving the transportation funding alone. The Senate had taken the opposite position.
[…]
The compromise proposal was skimpier than the original budget draft that the House voted out in April. In the House, the final version won the approval of Tea Party Republicans who had originally opposed the House version, while losing the support of almost one-third of the chamber’s Democrats.
State Sen. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston, was the lone no vote in the upper chamber.
“This budget is more of the same and fails Texas families,” Garcia said in a statement. “There’s no new money for pre-k, there’s continued spending on more border militarization, and it continues to shortchange education and healthcare.”
The budget includes funding to cover growing enrollment at public schools, but it reduces state funding for schools by about $1.1 billion. That funding is offset primarily by growth in local property taxes.
See here for some background, and read the rest for the details if you want. The thing I want to focus on is in that last paragraph, and for that let me quote from a post Deece Eckstein wrote on Facebook:
The state budget adopted today relies on school property taxes increasing by 7% annually to balance the State budget. In other words, the Legislature is reducing its aid to schools because it assumes your taxes will increase by at least 7% a year.
So, when you’re frustrated by rising property taxes and someone tells you to blame your local school board, just read them the language below. School property taxes now exceed 55% of the average person’s property tax bill. We will not get property tax relief until the Legislature fixes school finance!
Kudos to Kirk Watson and Donna Howard, who have been calling out their colleagues on this hypocrisy. Jeers to Dan Patrick and Paul Bettencourt, who insist on manufacturing villains at the local level to blame for rising property taxes.
It’s an effective con, you have to admit. But if you’ve paying attention, now you know the real story. Don’t be a sucker.
So the big remaining question is whether this will herald the end of the legislative season, as it normally does, or whether Dan Patrick will succeed in strong-arming Greg Abbott into calling a special session to try and force through a bathroom bill. Patrick’s gonna do what Patrick’s gonna do, so do what you can do and call Abbott’s office at 512 463 2000 and tell him no special session. There’s no reason to go down without a fight. RG Ratcliffe has more.