Rep. Beverly Woolley (R-Houston) announced her support for Speaker Joe Straus (R-San Antonio) today, bringing Straus' level of support up to 121 House members by LSR's count.

In the three-way race for Speaker Rep. Ken Paxton (R-McKinney) maintains 17 public supporters, and Rep. Warren Chisum (R-Pampa) is opposing the use of pledge cards in the Speaker's race, calling instead for a GOP caucus to select the next leader of the House.

This afternoon, four East Texas legislators jumped on board the candidacy of Rep. Ken Paxton (R-McKinney) for House Speaker,.

According to a press release, Reps. Dan Flynn (R-Van), Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), Leo Berman (R-Tyler), and Wayne Christian (R-Center) issued statements supporting Paxton in the three-way race which also features Rep. Warrren Chisum (R-Pampa) and incumbent Speaker Joe Straus (R-San Antonio). [...]

Paxton now has 17 supporters, by LSR's count -- all Republicans. Straus maintains by far the highest level of support, claiming the pledges of 120 House members from both parties. A closed caucus may change the game entirely, Chisum said in a press release earlier this morning.

After a recount in the HD 48 race, the gulf between Rep. Donna Howard (D-Austin) and GOP challenger Dan Neil narrowed from 15 votes to 12, still favoring the Democratic incumbent.

Now the Neil campaign is hoping a formal election contest will narrow that gap further and provide the Republican a slim victory.

“With all the mistakes made by Travis County election officials that we have seen and discovered," Neil said in a press statement this afternoon, "we believe that a contest must be filed for every legal vote to be counted. I believe that when all of the legally cast ballots are counted that I will be the new representative for House District 48."
 

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, state transportation officials ran out the clock on the 81st Legislature interim session.

The House Transportation Committee, in its last meeting of the interim, was scheduled to hear the final report by the Texas Department of Transportation's Restructuring Council relating to the the Grant Thornton management and organizational review (or "the external audit," as it's often referred). According to William Howard Wolf of the TxDOT Restructuring Council, the report will not be ready until Jan. 5, when a new Legislature is sworn-in.

Crying foul was Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon (D-San Antonio), who accused the Restructuring Council (consisting of Wolf, David Laney and Jay Kimbrough) of adopting "the culture of TxDOT" in doing things on its own with little accountability. However, committee Chairman Joe Pickett (D-El Paso) said he did not suspect anything "sinister" regarding the punting of the report.

The Texas Transportation Commission, in its Dec. 15 meeting, took a look at a taxation method to eventually replace the state motor fuels tax.

The Texas Transportation Institute reviewed its draft report, "Is Texas Ready For Mileage Fees?" which asserted that fuel consumption will continue to decrease and make a gas tax an unsustainable revenue generation method in the upcoming decade. [...] The Legislature required Transportation Commissioners to take a look at the viability of a Vehicle Miles-Traveled (VMT) tax, which would rely on either on-board devices or remote-tracking systems to measure the amount of miles each registered vehicle travels, and then tax vehicle owners accordingly. ...

Chris Lippincott, the spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), announced this morning that he's leaving the department in January to work for a previous employer, a public relations firm.

The announcement came while TxDOT's Restructuring Council was scheduled to deliver a final report regarding the external audit conducted over the year. Below is Lippincott's statement:

Based on unofficial Secretary of State election results, the son of the late Rep. Edmund Kuempel will take his father's seat in time for the 82nd Legislature.

With two Democrats -- Reps. Aaron Pena and Allan Ritter -- switching to the GOP today, this raises the number of Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives to 101. John Kuempel of Seguin avoided a runoff amid a field of 9 other candidates for the HD 44 seat -- one of whom, Jim Fish, withdrew. Kuempel took 65.7 percent, or 7,245 votes. ...

Making cuts to a record-high state budget will make the session challenging, the Senate Finance Committe Chairman said, "but we're gonna make it."

Sen. Steve Ogden (R-Bryan) assured a room full of county tax appraisers and others involved in the revenue-collection business that while the state may be in the red to start off with ($3-4 billion, he said), challenges can be met thanks in part to safeguards in the Texas Constitution.

A report released this afternoon by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and Texas Department of Insurance is making waves for analyzing the costs of a plan some critics are calling unthinkable and supporters are calling inevitable: the state opting out of Medicaid.

The report suggested that if Texas were to adopt its own state-run health insurance program to cut costs, 2.6 million residents could be left without insurance. The report was mandated by HB 497 from the 81st Legislative Session. LSR is currently taking a closer look at the claims made by the report.

Impact on Texas If Medicaid Is Eliminated (78 pages, PDF format)

In an audio interview with the blog Texas GOP Vote, Rep. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola) gave some further thoughts on the House General Investigating and Ethics Committee meeting last week.

The blog also posted a large portion of Rep. Larry Phillip's (R-Sherman) prepared testimony to the committee, expressing surprise that Hughes interpreted a private conversation about redistricting as a threat. ...