Former Rep. Jim Solis plead guilty in federal court today to charges of extortion. The Rio Grande Guardian published a full copy of the U.S. Attorney's news release.

The Texas House of Representatives completed its debate on HB 150, the state house redistricting map. The final map passed to third reading 92-52. A final vote on third reading will likely occur Thursday. Most Republicans voted for the map, with most of the GOP opposition coming from East Texas. On quick glance of the map, 10 Republicans -- Reps. Leo Berman (R-Tyler), Erwin Cain (R-Sulphur Springs), Wayne Christian (R-Center), Joe Driver (R-Garland), Dan Flynn (R-Van), Linda Harper-Brown (R-Irving), Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), George Lavender (R-Texarkana), Ken Paxton (R-McKinney), and Bill Zedler (R-Arlington) -- voted no. Democratic Reps. Ryan Guillen (D-Rio Grande City), J.M. Lozano (D-Kingsville), and Craig Eiland (D-Galveston) voted aye. And four other Democrats plus the speaker voted present.

Speaker Joe Straus announced conferees on SB 18 -- the omnibus eminent domain and property rights bill. Straus appointed Reps. Charlie Geren (R-Fort Worth), Allan Ritter (R-Nederland), Ralph Sheffield (R-Temple), Rick Hardcastle (R-Vernon) and Rene Oliveira (D-Brownsville) to the subcommittee. This lineup contains some extremely strong proponents of private property rights. The House added several amendments to the bill that expanded the property rights provisions in the bill. Last week, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst appointed Sens. Craig Estes (R-Wichita Falls), Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock), John Whitmire (D-Houston), Eddie Lucio (D-Brownsville), and Chris Harris (R-Arlington) to the conference committee. SB 18 grants land-owners more rights when property is condemned for public use. It is strongly supported by Texas Agriculture interests.

Sen. Steve Ogden (R-College Station) announced that the Senate's 2012-13 budget will be voted upon by the Senate Finance Committee tomorrow (Thursday). His budget balances, but requires the use of up to $3 billion in money from the Rainy Day fund to do so. The House agreed to spend Rainy Day Fund money to pay for current year expenses, but would not spend Rainy Day money for next year's budget.

Today, the House Redistricting Committee approved a Texas House map (sending CSHB 150 to calendars) but made major changes to it along the way. All redistricting maps and proposed amendments can be viewed at the Texas Legislative Council's DistrictViewer web site. In this blog post, we will refer to the plan numbers on that web site.

Chairman Burt Solomons' (R-Carrollton) most recent substitute (and the starting point for today's discussion) was plan H134. The adopted amendments were all to that plan. Solomons said his amendment redrew Tarrant and Harris Counties to improve minority representation. He also evened out the population of districts in Bexar and Hidalgo Counties.

The following amendments to plan H134 were adopted:

The House redistricting committee passed a new map for state House districts today. The vote was 16-5. All Democrats voted no, as did Rep. Harvey Hilderbran (R-Kerrville). (Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, was absent, which the chairman explained was due to surgery.)

Hilderbran said he voted against the map because of concerns over compactness and how the map treats West and Central Texas. He also believes it does not reflect the voting trends of the state and should be more Republican.

Rep. Burt Solomons (R-Carrollton) unveiled the first draft of the state House redistricting committee substitute today. We'll have more to say on this map in our subscription issue. For the time being, however, the map is Plan H113 and can be viewed at the Texas Legislative Council's DistrictViewer website. The plan contains eight "pairings," drawing 16 existing House members into eight districts. The pairings are as follows:

• Two to reflect stagnant population growth in West Texas (Chisum-Hardcastle, Landtroop-Perry)
• Two to reflect stagnant population growth in East Texas (Flynn-Cain, Ritter-Hamilton)
• Two to reflect the loss of two seats allocated to Dallas County (Harper-Brown-Rodney Anderson, Driver-Burkett)
• One Houston pairing (Hochberg-Vo)
• A Nueces County pairing, reflecting the county going from 2.2 to 2 seats (Torres-Scott)

Perhaps the biggest lawsuit reform issue of the session is the shenanigans that occurred with the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) ... Texans for Lawsuit Reform has issued a report on the situation at TWIA entitled "The TWIA Problem: Why You Should Care."  One of TLR's Board members, Allan "Bud" Shivers, Jr. has also written an opinion piece in the Austin American-Statesman on the topic.

As is typical with passage of the appropriations bill, we have received a series of statements from key state leaders (governor and speaker, for example) and interest groups. To avoid a really lengthy blog post, we're not printing all of them, but the key ones are posted below:

The Texas House passed the state budget 98-49. The vote basically went along party lines, with almost all Republicans voting in favor and almost all Democrats voting against. Reps. Aaron Pena (R-Edinburg) and David Simpson (R-Longview) voted no, and Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) voted present. By tradition, the Speaker of the House votes present as well. The House suspended the three-day rule, so HB 1 has finally passed the House and will soon be available to the Texas Senate. The budget basically survivied intact, with leadership comfortably winning most of the major votes.

Conservative Republicans stood with the House leadership today in passing a no-new-taxes budget over to the Senate. Two keys to getting near-unanimous support among Republicans were not using the Rainy Day Fund for 2012-13, and an amendment that knocks out about $100 million in fee increaes. Unbeknowst to most at the Capitol, it is possible to raise fees in the appropriations bill. One needs separate legislation only to create a new fee. The committee version of HB 1 had more than $100 million in fee increases. Rep. Phil King (R-Weatherford) passed an amendment making those increases contingent on passage of separate legislation.

The Texas House of Representatives basically completed debate on Articles I, II, and III of the budget today. It adjourned shortly after midnight until Sunday April 3 at 4 pm. When the House reconvenes, it will resume second reading of HB 1 -- the 2012-13 General Approprations Act. There were a couple of pending amendments on the first three articles that the House has yet to dispose of. Also, there were a handful of amendments with unresolved points of order. Then the House will move on to Article IV. The bulk of the work on the budget has been completed, and many pending amendments were pulled down before the House adjourned.

Most of the amendments went down on party-line votes, and it appears house leaders have the votes to do what they want on the budget.

In addition to reducing funding from family planning services (which are often provided by organizations that have affiliates that perform abortions), conservatives also reinforced traditional family values in the budget

LSR Managing Editor William Lutz appeared on WFAA's Inside Texas Politics Sunday. He blasted the University of North Texas Board of Regents' 5-4 vote to raise tuition, and praised Gov. Rick Perry for demanding reform and cost control for higher education. Inside Texas Politics airs every Sunday morning at 9 on WFAA, Channel 8 in North Texas. We post a clip of this week's Inside Texas Politics below. Lutz's RANT starts about eight minutes into the program (-8:15 remaining):

LSR Managing Editor William Lutz will appear on WFAA Television this Sunday. Lutz will be discussing Gov. Rick Perry's call for reform and cost control in higher education. Inside Texas Politics airs every Sunday at 9 am on Channel 8 in North Texas.

U.S. District Judge (and former legislator) Rob Junell ruled that the Texas Open Meetings Act is constitutional. A series of city councilors tried to challenge the constitutionality of the act, as it applied to councilors emailing a quorum of the city council with remarks about the agenda. Click here to read Junell's ruling.

"Today’s ruling is a great victory for democracy and the First Amendment," said Attorney General Greg Abbott. "Openness in government is a First Amendment virtue, not a First Amendment violation. This guarantees the public will continue to have access to information about how their government works."

Right now, there's a simmering debate in Austin over whether Texas higher education policy will consist of throwing money at the status quo or whether Texas taxpayers deserve reform to make higher education a better deal for students, parents and taxpayers. Not surprisingly, the biggest supporter of the status quo is the University of Texas senior administration. Yesterday, Texas Exes President Richard Leshin sent an email to UT alumni that was a thinly-veiled attack on higher education reform, Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. We'll deal with some of the unfair claims and statements in this email in due course. But in this week's LSR, contributing editor William Murchison discusses the need for higher education reform. We commend his article to our readers and post it here.

In a session dominated by cuts, the Senate Finance Committee voted to spend additional tax dollars on public education today. Even with the additional appropriation, declining property values and student growth will result in a per-student reduction. But the finance committee is spending more general revenue on public schools.

The Senate Finance Committee adopted the subcommittee's funding recommendations 13-2 today. (Sens. Eddie Lucio [D-Brownsville] and Judith Zaffirini [D-Laredo] voted no). We'll have more details on the budget in our subscription newsletter tomorrow.

Recently, the San Antonio Express-News published a story quoting three legislative Republicans, some of whom are reported calling for re-opening the State Board of Education's social studies standards. One of the members quoted in the story was House Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler (R-The Woodlands). Previously, Eissler signed a letter from the Texas Conservative Coalition supporting the standards. Jonathan Saenz, director of legislative affairs for the Liberty Institute, caught up with Eissler and offered him the opportunity to clarify his position on the standards and the confirmation of Gail Lowe (R-Lampasas), current chairman of the State Board of Education. We post an embedded link to Saenz's interview below:

Lone Star Report managing editor William Lutz will appear on Rule of Law Radio's "Live and Let Live" with Gary Johnson this evening at 9 pm Central Time. The program is live and can be heard at 90.1 FM in Austin or at http://www.ruleoflawradio.com. Lutz will be discussing the recent Lone Star Foundation-Americans for Prosperity study suggesting ways to solve the budget crisis through reduced bureaucracy. Lutz is a co-author of that study.

The Texas budget crisis affords lawmakers a great opportunity to make government more efficient.

In that spirit, the Lone Star Foundation -- publisher of this Web site -- along with Americans for Prosperity present a series of recommendations to do just that. This study proposes ideas to cut spending while providing better value to the taxpayer. We commend it to our readers.

It wouldn't be a tight budget cycle without Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst talking about using "non-tax revenue." Dewhurst is still quite quiet about the Rainy Day Fund deal between the House leadership and Gov. Rick Perry. He's hoping creation of a new finance subcommittee chaired by Sen. Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock) will serve as his response.

In light of the deal brokered yesterday between House Speaker Joe Straus, Gov. Rick Perry, and Comptroller Susan Combs, we've received a lot of statements. Under the deal, Perry gives his blessing to use of the Rainy Day Fund to pay for the deficit from fiscal year 2011, but promises to veto use of the fund for 2012-13 expenses. Here are some of the statements we've received:

Rep. Tom Craddick's office issued the following statement yesterday evening:

Every session is different. But in few areas are those differences as marked as with the fate of the Smoke Free Texas Bill. In terms of the political chess-game and swaying alliances, the Smoke-Free Texas bill is one of the most interesting I've covered.

Because the bill got stuck in the committee process last session, I took a wait-and-see approach to the bill this session.Today, the bill emerged from the House Public Health Committee. Last week, it was reported favorably by the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. Those votes have put the bill back on my radar screen for this session.

This week, we celebrate 175 years of Texas Independence. And the week’s festivities wouldn’t be complete without pausing to remember that our freedom isn’t free. We need to remember and honor the people who died to create and preserve it.

But we need to do more than memorialize – we need to teach our children why America and Texas are special.

In this week’s issue, I penned an opinion piece calling on our elected leaders to support that very mission. But this issue is important enough that it deserves treatment on our blog as well. So we’ve made the opinion piece public. Click here to read.
 

U.S. Sen John Cornyn (R-San Antonio) grilled Secretary of Education Arne Duncan over the Doggett amendment to the Education Jobs bill and the Department of Education's ruling that Texas has not complied and is ineligible to receive $800 million in federal education aid.  Last year, former U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin) amended a federal education funding bill to prohibit the Department of Education from giving money to Texas unless Gov. Rick Perry made promises about future education funding -- promises that Perry said violate the Texas constitution.

Cornyn and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Dallas) have introduced a bill to repeal the Doggett amendment. U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Lewisville) successfully amendment the House's continuing resolution to repeal the Doggett amendment, but the U.S. Senate has yet to act on the House bill.

A transcript of the exchange between Duncan and Cornyn (provided by Cornyn's office) is posted below:

LSR Managing Editor William Lutz appeared on WFAA's Inside Texas Politics Sunday to discuss the state budget. Lutz calls for more budget cuts, and particularly addressing the fact that there is almost one non-teacher for every teacher on school district payroll. Inside Texas Politics airs every Sunday at 9 am on WFAA Channel 8. We post an embedded link to the video file below (Lutz's commentary starts with about 7:30 remaining in the program):

It appears Texas Democrats will use the nomination of Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley as presiding officer of the Texas Forensic Science Commission as the first confirmation fight of the 2011 Legislative Session. The Senate Nominations Committee approved Bradley's nomination today 4-2, with both of the committee's Democrats -- Sens. Jose Rodriguez (D-El Paso) and Kirk Watson (D-Austin) -- voting no. The Texas Forensic Science Commission is the one looking into the arson evidence used at the trial of executed murderer Cameron Todd Willingham. The victims: his three daughters, two-year-old Amber Louise Kuykendall, and one-year-old twins Karmon Diane and Kameron Marie Willingham.

Lone Star Report Managing Editor William Lutz will be making an appearance on WFAA's Inside Texas Politics this Sunday morning. Lutz will state his opinion that the sky is not falling in regards to the state budget and that the budget presents an opportunity to cut spending and operate government more efficiently. Inside Texas Politics airs every Sunday at 9 am on WFAA Channel 8 in North Texas.

WFAA television is reporting that Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert has announced for U.S. Senate. Click here to view WFAA's story.

In another sign that the U.S. House of Representatives is under new management, the House voted today to repeal U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett's (D-Austin) restriction on funding Texas schools. The Doggett amendment prevents the U.S. Department of Education from awarding $800 million in education stimulus money to Texas unless Gov. Rick Perry makes promises about future education funding that Perry has said would violate the Texas constitution. Perry praised the House vote.

For our subscribers, we have started our analysis of the census data in this week's issue. But we also thought our readers would enjoy links to the census numbers so they can examine the information themselves.

Click here for the Texas census homepage.

Click here for an interactive map of the data.

Also, the Texas Legislative Council has produced a series of reports on the redistricting population numbers. Click here to see the Texas Legislative Council's report and maps of existing Congressional, Legislative, and SBOE districts.

UPDATE: (10:15 a.m. 2/14/11): An earlier verison of this post had an incorrect link. We have since placed the correct link to the Master's Report in this blog post.)

On Friday, Rep. Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) issued his Master's Report recommending that the Texas House of Representatives declare Rep. Donna Howard (D-Austin) re-elected by four votes over Republican Dan Neil. The report will be reviewed by the select committee previously appointed by Speaker Joe Straus, and that committee's conclusions may be reviewed by the whole House.

Per the Texas Constitution, the House's decision on its own election is final. Hartnett's report provides a detailed description of the legal controversies surrounding this election result as well as detailed legal justification for his conclusion that Howard won the race.

Click here to read the report.

Rep. Will Hartnett (R-Dallas) served as master of discovery for the election contest between Rep. Donna Howard (D-Austin) and Republican Dan Neil. Hartnett ruled Howard won the election by 4 votes. Hartnett issued the following statement to the press: "After a thorough review of the numerous challenged ballots, I have concluded that Donna Howard won the election by 4 votes and therefore should continue to serve in the House of Representatives. Voters who moved out of Travis County, but voted at their former address subtracted a net amount of votes from Ms. Howard's margin of victory. The report will be released later this evening."

Joe Nixon, attorney for Neil, issued the following statement:

Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Joe Greenhill died today. Greenhill served as chief justice 1972-1982. He was 96. “Not only this Court, but the people of Texas have lost a great treasure,” said current Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson. Click here to read the Supreme Court press office's tribute to Greenhill.

Gov. Rick Perry has ordered flags at half-staff until Tuesday and issued the following statement: