By William Lutz on
4/28/2009 12:19 PM
The House Transportation Committee has approved the Texas Department of Transportation Sunset bill 10-1. Rep. Jim Dunnam (D-Waco) was the only no vote.
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By William Lutz on
4/27/2009 7:08 PM
Speaker Joe Straus has named the House's conferees on the appropriations bill. Straus named Reps. Jim Pitts (R-Waxahachie), Richard Raymond (D-Laredo), Ruth Jones McClendon (D-San Antonio), John Otto (R-Dayton), and John Zerwas (R-Fort Bend).
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By William Lutz on
4/27/2009 7:04 PM
The Democrats (with help from a handful of Republicans) succeeded in passing the constitutional amendment taking the Permanent School Fund away from the elected State Board of Education, but it sure didn’t look pretty.
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By William Lutz on
4/27/2009 7:00 PM
In the past 48 hours, I have written several blog items on the Permanent School Fund. If this proposed constitutional amendment passes, there may not be a Permanent School Fund forty years from now.
Here’s what’s going on: some of the key legislative leaders see the PSF as a slush fund used to find the last few hundred million to balance the budget.
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By William Lutz on
4/27/2009 10:18 AM
Now that we’re getting close to the end of session, interesting stuff is starting to happen. Here are some highlights of the week ahead.
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By William Lutz on
4/27/2009 8:21 AM
In my recent commentary on the Permanent School Fund, I wrote that the fund's staff uses state office buildings. Two years ago, the Permanent School Fund staff moved into leased space in the Wells Fargo Building on 15th Street. I regret the error.
That said, Adam Jones with the Texas Education Agency notes that the lease on the space was negotiated by the Texas Facilities Commission and that several federally-funded agency employees also office there and that the PSF has "by far the smallest staff and lowest operating cost of any major state fund (UTIMCO, ERS, TRA and the Comptroller’s Safekeeping Trust)." I appreciate the staff of the Texas Education Agency for providing this helpful information after seeing my initial post. Reponsibility for any mistakes in the prior column is entirely my own.
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By William Lutz on
4/26/2009 9:35 PM
Monday, the Legislature is considering a constitutional amendment and a bill to take the Permanent School Fund management away from the elected State Board of Education, giving it instead to a corporation set up by the Comptroller of Public Accounts and overseen by a board appointed by the state's major elected officials. (HJR 77 and HB 2037 by Rep. Donna Howard [D-Austin]). The Permanent School Fund is an endowment created largely from oil royalties on state lands that funds textbooks and other public school expenses.
The bill's structure has many similarities to the one the Legislature set up for the University of Texas in the mid-1990s. Ever since then, UTIMCO (the corporation that manages the Permanent University Fund) has been a non-stop source of controversy at the Capitol.
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By William Lutz on
4/24/2009 4:31 PM
The logjam appears to have been broken. Today, the Senate Higher Education Committee passed out SB 1443 – Sen. Judith Zaffirini’s (D-Laredo) bill limiting college tuition. The bill is a consensus product representing the work of several senators. The tuition limit probably would not have happened were it not for the work of four Senators – Sens. Juan Hinojosa (D-McAllen), Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands), Dan Patrick (R-Houston), and Royce West (D-Dallas). But more on that later.
Here’s a quick summary of the bill. For schools with tuition rates above the median, tuition increases are limited to five percent or the Consumer Price Index, whichever is less. For schools below the median, they get a couple of years where they can increase tuition by five percent of the median school’s tuition (so that schools that behaved responsibly are not unduly penalized). In addition, schools may create a four-year tuition freeze option where students can opt into a plan where tuition is frozen for all four years.
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By William Lutz on
4/24/2009 3:20 PM
Sen. John Carona's (R-Dallas) local options transportation funding plan was debated in the April 21 House Transportation Committee and was left pending. The House version is HB 9, sponsored by Rep. Vicki Truitt (R-Keller). The Senate version has already passed muster in the upper chamber the week prior.
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By William Lutz on
4/24/2009 2:42 PM
 Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has named the senate's conferees on the state budget. The ten conferees are the folks who really write the state budget. They are Sens. Steve Ogden (R-College Station), Juan Hinojosa (D-McAllen), Florence Shapiro (R-Plano), Royce West (D-Dallas), and Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands).
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By William Lutz on
4/23/2009 11:19 PM
LSR is now on Twitter.  We have set up Twitter feeds that we encourage our subscribers and friends to follow. Whenever we update this blog we will post a notice to @LoneStarReport. In addition, LSR Managing Editor William Lutz has set up his own personal twitter feed @willlutz. We hope this provides a useful way for our subscribers and friends to keep up. And thanks for your patience while the print journalists at LSR learn how to operate all this new-fangled technology stuff.
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By William Lutz on
4/22/2009 1:41 PM
Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle wrote a story that the College Board has endorsed the idea of in-state tuition and legalization for illegal immigrants. Here’s a little extra context:
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By William Lutz on
4/21/2009 2:15 PM
Later this session, the Legislature will pass an omnibus school finance bill. Both the House and the Senate budgets contain almost $2 billion for allocation in a school finance bill that increases equity and reduces recapture.
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By William Lutz on
4/21/2009 1:53 PM
The Senate Finance Committee passed 12-1 Sen. Dan Patrick’s (R-Houston) SB 700 Monday. The key provision of the bill requires an election before local government can raise property taxes more than eight percent. The bill now goes to the Senate Floor for further action. The bill is supported by conservatives and taxpayer groups and opposed by lobbyists for cities and counties.
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By William Lutz on
4/21/2009 1:47 PM
Conventional wisdom had it that the wheels would come off and the House’s factions would come out when the House took up the budget. Conventional wisdom was wrong, with a continuation of the early-session peace and harmony combined with the first unanimous House vote on the budget in a decade. Here’s my take on why things stayed peaceful:
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By William Lutz on
4/17/2009 2:26 PM
Here we go again. Another session; another attempt from the social left to neuter this state's elected State Board of Education (SBOE).
There's a lot more going on here, though, than the usual attack from the social left on a conservative enterprise. Educator groups have always wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They want an endless supply of public funds. They don't want parental choice. But they certainly don't want those pesky parents and community members telling them what to do, even though they're spending the public's money.
To the education establishment, the State Board of Education is a thorn in its side. It's the only place where average people, who can't hire lobbyists, can go and have their voices heard. During the 1990s (era of bipartisan feel-good), SBOE members were some of the only elected officials willing to shine the light on the state's dropout problems or expose what a joke the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) was. They were the only ones willing to say that the Emperor had no clothes.
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By William Lutz on
4/15/2009 4:42 PM
After being stalled for several weeks, the House Business and Industry Committee unanimously (9-0) approved Rep. Helen Giddings’ (D-Dallas) HB 1657 Tuesday, the workers compensation bill that reverses the effect of the Texas Supreme Court’s Entergy v. Summers decision.
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By William Lutz on
4/10/2009 12:46 PM
 
Rush Limbaugh uses the phrase “mind-numbed robots” to refer to the mass media stereotype that all talk radio listeners are monolithic conservatives who are not well informed and are waiting for the host to tell them what to think.
On Wednesday, Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas) was pushing a bill that allows local governments to place on the ballot a series of tax and fee increases to fund road and rail projects. The Texas Senate’s resident tax hawk and talk radio host, Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston) is opposed to the bill and questioned whether Republicans should be raising taxes. During the debate, Carona said to Patrick “I don’t want to be a talk radio Republican. I want to be a problem-solving Republican.” Carona was careful to qualify his statement that he was not referring to Patrick personally.
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By William Lutz on
4/10/2009 9:42 AM
Last Friday, the Texas Supreme Court reissued its Entergy v. Summers decision, which is viewed as a major victory for employers. The decision last year caused a bipartisan firestorm among lawmakers active in workers compensation issues, and the court agreed to do a rehearing. The courts reaffirmation of its original holding -- that a premises owner can also be a general contractor and enjoy workers compensation immunity from lawsuits -- has implications that go far beyond the narrow issue at hand. It's possible that this controversy disturb the relative peace that has prevailed on workers compensation for the past 20 years.
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By William Lutz on
4/6/2009 11:28 PM
Former Secretary of State Roger Williams addressed the Young Conservatives of Texas April 3 to discuss his possible candidacy for the United States Senate, should the seat become vacant. One key point about his speech -- the YCTs had to ask about social issues. This was not viewed as a slight by the group, which is VERY conservative socially, but rather a welcome change.
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By William Lutz on
4/6/2009 11:12 PM
This weekend I attended the Young Conservatives of Texas state convention here in Austin. Even though we're almost a year out, the 2010 campaign was well in evidence.
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By William Lutz on
4/6/2009 10:59 PM
by Mark Lavergne
If TDI sunset and TWIA wasn't enough, the health insurance industry had come under fire as well in recent weeks from, who else, the doctors.
Two major medical lobby groups, the Texas Hospital Association and the Texas Medical Association, held press conferences at the Capitol last week to call for the passage of bills that would that they think would address the problem by regulating health insurance providers.
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By William Lutz on
4/3/2009 8:25 AM
One of the most interesting developments in the current legislative session is the way that saving money in the Rainy Day Fund appears to have eclipsed tax cuts as the #1 priority among many Republican legislators.
The senate budget is an interesting case and point. Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston) has filed SB 19 -- a bill that cuts the franchise tax for small business -- and it has 24 co-authors. While Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden told Patrick he would make every effort to alter the budget so that the tax cut can pass, the draft of the budget that passed the Senate floor assumes current revenue from the franchise tax (i.e. no tax cut).
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By William Lutz on
4/3/2009 12:51 AM
Well, it looks like former Texas Tech basketball coach Bob Knight has thrown his chair into the political ring on behalf of Roger Williams for U.S. Senate, announcing his endorsement April 2.
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By William Lutz on
4/2/2009 7:26 AM
To serve our customers better, we're rolling out a new website. We'll be adding features to the site over the next few months. This blog is the first of these new features.
We always wanted a public face for The Lone Star Report, for everyone, including those who encounter us on talk radio or television.
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