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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