text:
Are we headed for a special session?
Maybe. Who knows? We'll find out soon enough.
Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday promised to make an announcement "later this week" on whether he will call a special session.
"I can tell you this, and that is when it gets to a special session, the time and the topics are solely up to the governor of the state of Texas, and we will be, if we have a special session, convening only on the topics that I choose at the time of my choosing," Abbott told reporters after a bill-signing ceremony in Austin.
Monday is the last day of the regular session. Lawmakers still have not come to an agreement on property taxes and a "bathroom bill" that would regulate which restroom transgender Texans can use. Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick had named those issues priorities in the homestretch, and Patrick has pushed for a special session on them.
Asked how much pressure he felt from Patrick to call a special session, Abbott replied, "none."
On Sunday, the House and Senate descended into finger-pointing over inaction on critical legislation needed to keep some state agencies from shuttering. Patrick has threatened to hold hostage the measure, known as a sunset safety net bill, if he does not get his way on property taxes and the bathroom issue.
"My biggest disappointment, of course, is the sunset bill did not pass," Abbott said Monday. "This is something that is incredibly easy to achieve that members could've very easily gotten together and agreed upon but simply was not done."
See this previous Trib story for some more of the details. Abbott's gonna do what Abbott's gonna do, and what he does will depend on what he thinks is best for himself. He'll let us know what that is when he's good and ready.
Uber and Lyft come rolling back
To Austin:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday signed into law a measure creating a statewide regulatory framework for ride-hailing companies, overriding local measures that prompted businesses such as Uber and Lyft to leave Austin and other cities.
Uber and Lyft said they resumed operations in Austin on Monday. Lyft also said it would relaunch in Houston on Wednesday (Uber is already operating in Houston.)
"What today really is is a celebration of freedom and free enterprise," Abbott said during a signing ceremony. "This is freedom for every Texan — especially those who live in the Austin area — to be able to choose the provider of their choice as it concerns transportation."
House Bill 100 undoes local rules that the two companies have argued are overly burdensome for their business models. It requires ride-hailing companies to have a permit from the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation and pay an annual fee of $5,000 to operate throughout the state. It also calls for companies to perform local, state and national criminal background checks on drivers annually — but doesn't require drivers to be fingerprinted.
"Today's bill signing creates a ridesharing network in Texas that benefits consumers, expands transportation options, maximizes access to safe, affordable rides and creates expanded earning opportunities for Texans," Lyft spokeswoman Chelsea Harrison said. "Riders and drivers are the real winners today."
And (for Lyft) to Houston:
Ride-hailing company Lyft will officially return to the Houston market.
San Francsico-based Lyft will return to Houston on May 31 at 2 p.m., according to Chelsea Harrison, Lyft's senior policy communications manager. The move comes shortly after Gov. Greg Abbott signed House Bill 100, a statewide comprehensive transportation bill, on May 29. Lyft has been ramping up its local marketing, recruiting drivers and offering discount codes to riders since the bill went to the governor's desk for signing.
"Today's bill signing creates a ridesharing network in Texas that benefits consumers, expands transportation options, maximizes access to safe, affordable rides and creates expanded earning opportunities for Texans. Riders and drivers are the real winners today," Harrison said in an email.
HB 100's rules are expected to go into effect in September.
Actually, that law went into effect immediately after Abbott's signature, as it was passed with a two thirds majority in both chambers. The normal rule is that bills go into effect after 90 days, but with a supermajority they go into effect immediately.
You know how I feel about this. I think it was reasonable for the Lege to clear the way for TMCs to operate outside of cities, and I can see some value in a uniform approach to regulating them. I don't care for the ongoing contempt for local control, and the gratuitous "definition of gender" amendment really sticks in my craw. In the end, I largely agree with this:
Following the passage of the bill in both chambers, however, Austin Mayor Steve Adler issued a statement saying he was "disappointed" the Legislature voted to nullify regulations the city had implemented.
"Our city should be proud of how we filled the gap created when Uber and Lyft left, and we now must hope that they return ready to compete in a way that reflects Austin's values," Adler wrote."
There's clearly a demand for what Uber and Lyft sell, but let's not kid ourselves into believing that HB100 has just ushered in some free-market nirvana for ride-seekers. I mean, surely at some point in the future Uber will succeed in buying up Lyft, thus making it a functional monopoly in that market. How exciting will it be then to have the equivalent of a cable company for ridesharing? The brief period in Austin where a bunch of companies actually competed for drivers and riders is what a free market looks like. Too bad none of the rest of us will get to experience that.
5th Court rules Paxton judge overstepped
Yet another bizarre turn in this increasingly bizarre case.
A state appeals court sided Tuesday with Attorney General Ken Paxton in his bid for a new judge in his securities fraud case, ruling the current judge lost jurisdiction when he changed venue to Harris County in April.
The court also directed the judge, George Gallagher, to vacate all subsequent orders, including one that set a September trial date.
The ruling by the Dallas-based 5th Court of Appeals appears to add some uncertainty to the case, though it represents a breakthrough for Paxton's lawyers. For weeks, they have been arguing Gallagher did not have the authority to follow the case out of Collin County.
The appeals court did not explicitly order Gallagher's removal from the case but voiced agreement with Paxton's lawyers that he is "without authority to continue to preside over" it. Paxton's attorneys have repeatedly argued Gallagher cannot follow the case to Harris County because they have not provided written permission as required under the state's Code of Criminal Procedure.
In issuing his opinion Tuesday, Justice Robert Fillmore also lifted a stay the appeals court had put on the trial court proceedings earlier this month.
See here for the background. The Chron adds some details.
The decision vacates all decisions made by Tarrant County Judge George Gallagher after his April 11 ruling to move the case across the state amid concern about Paxton's political connections in the attorney general's home county.
"Under the plain language of the statute, (Gallagher) is without authority to continue to preside over the cases and is also without authority to issue orders or directives maintaining the case files in Collin County. Consequently, all orders issued by (Gallagher) after he signed the April 11, 2017 transfer order are void," read the ruling written by Justice Robert M. Fillmore.
Absent an appeal to the state's court of criminal appeals, the ruling dictates that Gallagher is no longer responsible for the case. The ruling also calls for court documents to be moved to Harris County where another judge would be appointed.
The ruling also nixes a trial date for Sept. 12, when the state's special prosecutors were expected to try Paxton on charges he failed to register as an insurance adviser. When the trial will be held would be up to a new judge, possibly delaying a resolution on the case as Paxton's political adversaries determine whether the criminal charges will hurt him in the next election. The filing deadline to run for office is in December.
OK, so this is obviously a win for Paxton, since he's been fighting like a cornered wolverine to get Judge Gallagher off the case. Mission almost certainly accomplished! That said, this feels like a win on paper that may not translate to much in practical terms. For one thing, the trial will still be in Harris County – Paxton had opposed the change of venue – and argued that all of Judge Gallagher's rulings since January were invalid. As far as I know, the last ruling of any consequence by Judge Gallagher was the move to Harris County, which was on April 11. Other than having the administrative judge for the region appoint someone new to the bench, it's not clear to me what else has changed.
And not to put too fine a point on it, as aggrieved as Paxton is by Judge Gallagher's rulings, who's to say any other jurist would have ruled differently? Unless you believe that Judge Gallagher had it in for Paxton, I don't see why any other judge would be likely to make a difference in the outcome. So fine, bring on a new judge. And let Paxton go unchallenged in the primary because he hasn't been adjudicated yet. If he winds up being convicted next May or so, that will be fine by me. The DMN has more.
Runoff endorsement watch: Moon for Mayor
The Chron picks their second choice for Mayor of Pasadena.
John "J.R." Moon
The second-largest city in Harris County could use a good shake-up.
That's why voters should elect John "J.R." Moon Jr. for mayor in the city's runoff election.
Moon, 58, would bring the outsider perspective that Pasadena needs. He has spent the past decade as a trustee for the top-rated San Jacinto College. In addition to his public service, Moon also has the business credentials to make for a fine mayor of a growing city – he is a certified CPA and former chief financial officer at Moody Bank. Moon currently works as a commercial real estate agent.
While scandal has dominated the headlines, Moon kept his focus on the core issues of education, economic growth and quality of life when he met with the editorial board. He specifically recommended updating the city's infrastructure plans into a modern capital improvement system that's the hallmark of transparent governance.
"It does not appear that we have had an effective plan over the last five years and you need to renew that plan on an annual basis," Moon said.
Pasadena needs a mayor who can enter this office with eyes wide open if the city hopes to avoid further scandal.
Moon is Pasadena's best choice to make these issues a thing of the past.
The Chron had previously endorsed Pat Van Houte, but she didn't make the runoff. They remain steadfast in their desire to see as big a change from the Isbell era as possible. Early voting for the runoff is going on now through June 6 – you can see times and locations here. Felipe Villarreal is a Project LIFT candidate in the runoff for Pasadena City Council in District A, so if you live there please don't forget about him, and don't forget about Pearland if you live there. The runoff is June 10, so make a plan to make your voice heard.
Session ends in chaos
Seems fitting.
The normally ceremonial last day of this year's regular session of the Texas Legislature briefly descended into chaos on Monday, as proceedings in the House were disrupted by large protests and at least one Republican representative called immigration authorities on the people making the noise.
Rep. Matt Rinaldi, R-Irving, said he called U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement while hundreds of people dressed in red T-shirts unfurled banners and chanted in opposition to the state's new sanctuary cities law. The action enraged Hispanic legislators nearby, leading to a tussle in which each side accused the other of threats and violence.
Rinaldi said he was assaulted by a House member who he declined to name.
"I was pushed, jostled and someone threatened to kill me," Rinaldi said. "It was basically just bullying."
Hispanic Democratic lawmakers involved in the altercation said it wasn't physical but indicated that Rinaldi got into people's faces and cursed repeatedly.
"He came up to us and said, 'I'm glad I just called ICE to have all these people deported,'" said state Rep. César Blanco, D-El Paso, whose account was echoed by state Reps. Armando Walle, D-Houston, and Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth.
"He said, 'I called ICE — fuck them,'" Romero added. Rinaldi also turned to the Democratic lawmakers and yelled, "Fuck you," to the "point where spit was hitting" their faces, Romero said.
"Matt Rinaldi gave the perfect example of why there's a problem with SB 4," said state Rep. Ramon Romero, D-Fort Worth. "Matt Rinaldi looked into the gallery and saw Hispanic people and automatically assumed they were undocumented. He racial profiled every single person that was in the gallery today. He created the scenario that so many of us fear."
And in a press conference, following the altercation, state Rep. Justin Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, said Rinaldi in a second scuffle had threatened to "put a bullet in one of my colleagues' heads."
But Rinaldi defended the decision to called immigration authorities.
"We didn't know what to do," he said. "A lot of people had signs that said 'We are illegal and here to stay.'"
He said he called law enforcement "to incentivize them to leave the House."
"They were disrupting," he said. "They were breaking the law."
Asked if the protest was too little, too late since the measure has already been signed into law, Adrian Reyna, an organizer with United We Dream, said the movement is just getting started.
"We have to show resistance the whole summer," he said. "We have identified key representatives that we will take out of office who voted for SB4. People are outraged, people are tired of the Legislature walking all over people."
First of all, good Lord Rinaldi is a weenie. What a pathetic display of phony bravado. And as Rep. Romero suggests, his words will only help the plaintiffs in the anti-SB4 litigation. Words matter, and judges in the travel ban litigation have made it clear they will take what politicians say about these actions as seriously as they take what the lawyers say.
You can see video of what happened here, Democratic response to what happened here, and a statement from the AFL-CIO here. If there's going to be an injunction in one or more of the court cases, we ought to know fairly soon, but the bigger fight, both in the courtroom and at the ballot box, will play out over a much longer period. We're going to need to see a lot more of the kind of action that makes people like Matt Rinaldi cry. The Chron, the Observer, and RG Ratcliffe have more.
Things get ugly in the Pearland runoffs
Dalia Kasseb
The hijab that Dalia Kasseb wears in public never seemed to disturb Woody Owens, her opponent in a June 10 runoff for a Pearland City Council position. Owens, Kasseb told me, has been perfectly cordial when their paths have crossed on the campaign trail.
Imagine Kasseb's surprise, then, when she watched a video that includes screenshots of various groups' harsh anti-Muslim messages that Owens had shared on Facebook. One particularly crude post features an image of a goat and the words: "I don't want to grow up to be abused as a Muslim sex slave. Please ban Islam. #GoatLivesMatter."
Another post recommends banning the Quran.
"Our few meetings have been very pleasant," said Kasseb, a 30-year-old pharmacist who appears to be the first openly Muslim candidate for elective office in Brazoria County. "But for him to be sharing that stuff on Facebook really shows what he believes."
The video criticizing the posts, which was produced by the Brazoria County Democratic Party, shows them interspersed with clips of longtime Mayor Tom Reid expressing his support for Owens at an event in April. "We need more guys with his background, his type of approach, and his vision," Reid says of Owens.
Reid, 91, who has spent 34 years as Pearland's mayor, also faces a runoff opponent: Quentin Wiltz, a 36-year-old executive at a pipeline coating firm. The winner will have to confront many challenges facing the fast-growing suburb on Houston's southern edge, from mobility to tax policy to noxious odors from a landfill.
"We can't not talk about the presence of misinformed people or what seems to be bigotry in this community," said Wiltz, who is African-American.
Kasseb, who placed first among six candidates on May 6 with 41 percent of the vote to Owens' 21 percent, said she is confident most Pearland residents don't share the views expressed in her opponent's Facebook posts.
"I've knocked on over 3,000 doors, and we've met people from throughout Pearland," she said. "It has been a wonderful experience."
See here for a bit of background. The seat in question is a new one, so there is no incumbent. Mike Snyder couldn't get a comment from candidate Owens, which may have been just as well for him since when he has had something to say about this, it's pretty lame.
Owens said he's not apologizing because he didn't share those posts on his Facebook page or at least he doesn't recall doing so.
Owens said three posts had been removed from his page by Facebook at his request. He said Facebook told him it appeared the posts were doctored and he said he did not post them.
When Owens was asked if he shared all those posts, he said he doesn't believe he did.
"I don't think so to be honest with you, because when Facebook came back it looked like those posts were doctored with a name above it," said Owens.
While Owens said the posts had been removed, ABC13 found they were still on his page and had not been removed.
When ABC13 asked to see the message sent to him from Facebook indicating they removed the doctored posts, he said he deleted the message because it contained the name of the person who was likely involved in doctoring the post and he didn't want that person's name out there.
"I did delete it off because it said something about the person who did it and I don't want them mentioned," said Owens.
Must be those Russian hackers I keep hearing about. The video in question is embedded in the Chron story, and if you view it you will see that all of the images are of Owens' personal Facebook page, with none of them had being shared to his page by someone else . Even if one were inclined to believe that someone else infiltrated his page, these posts date back to 2015. One might think that if he himself hadn't put them there, he might have noticed and taken action on them before now. If he didn't approve of them being there in the first place, of course.
So yeah, I think we can agree that this has revealed Owens' character, and I think we can agree that Mayor Reid would do well to at least state that he doesn't approve of such trash. I don't know what effect this will have on either of those races, but I do know that runoffs are so often determined by who cares enough to show up. The runoff elections are Saturday, June 10, and early voting for them begins today, Tuesday, May 30. In addition to Kasseb and Wiltz, there are other candidates worth supporting, Pearland and Pasadena and elsewhere. Now is not the time to lose focus. Look at that last link, and if you live in one of those places then make a plan to vote.
Voter ID 2.0 gets final passage
Hopefully, this will turn out to have been a waste of time.
The Texas House and Senate have approved a deal to relax the state's voter identification requirements, meaning the closely watched legislation now only awaits Gov. Greg Abbott's approval.
The Republican is expected to sign Senate Bill 5, capping a flurry of late activity that pushed the legislation to the finish line after some state leaders feared its demise — and legal consequences from inaction.
The House approved the compromise bill Sunday in a 92-56 vote — one day after the Senate backed the deal along party lines.
Sen. Joan Huffman's bill, which would soften voter ID requirements once considered strictest in the nation, responds to court findings that the current law discriminated against black and Latino voters.
Under the final bill, Texans who own qualifying photo ID must still present it at the polls. Those include: a state driver's license or ID card, a concealed handgun license, a U.S. passport, a military ID card, a U.S citizenship certificate or an election identification certificate. Such IDs may be expired up to four years, thanks to a provision in the House bill that survived the compromise. Voters 70 years and older may use such IDs expired for any length of time.
The final bill stripped some provisions from the House legislation, including requirements that the secretary of state to study ways to boost the state's perennially low voter turnout and that the agency reveal details — currently withheld — about its spending on voter education efforts.
House Democrats on Sunday voiced disappointment with those changes.
"The attempt was to try and bring some type of transparency, said Rep. Justin Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, who had pushed the spending disclosure provision. "My concern is basically handing a blank check over to the Secretary of State's office."
See here and here for the background. I'm sure the state and the Republicans didnt want to go into the June 7 status call with Judge Ramos empty-handed, but I really don't see how this bill changes anything. It (barely) mitigates the effect of the 2011 voter ID law, but does not – cannot – address the discriminatory intent of the law. Add in the completely half-assed way the state implemented the court-ordered mitigations in 2016, as well as its refusal to be transparent about those efforts should make it clear that they are trying to do the tiniest minimum to get out from under the court order. The only answer here, the only way to get their attention, is to throw the law out entirely, and invoke Section 3 to make it harder for a new voter ID bill to get passed. Here's hoping.
ACLU joins first "sanctuary cities" lawsuit
The ACLU of Texas and the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project have joined the lawsuit challenging Texas Senate Bill 4 (SB4), which demands that local governments and their employees engage in federal immigration enforcement practices. The case, City of El Cenizo, Texas, et al. v. State of Texas, et al., was filed earlier this month on behalf of a group of local governments and law enforcement officials whose rights and ability to serve their own constituents are imperiled by SB4. The Plaintiffs include the City of El Cenizo, El Cenizo Mayor Raul L. Reyes, Maverick County, Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber, Maverick County Constable Mario A. Hernandez, and the Texas State League of United Latin American Citizens (Texas LULAC).
"As the leader of a diverse community along the South Texas border, I am challenging SB4 because it will undo the decades of work to build trust with the immigrant community and to use our scarce resources to increase public safety. We will not be part of Trump's deportation force," said Raul Reyes, mayor of El Cenizo. "This lawsuit will give a voice to the people and families that live in fear because of SB4."
"By joining as co-counsel for the City of El Cenizo, Mayor Reyes, and the other courageous plaintiffs who sued the state, we aim to protect the civil liberties of immigrant communities," said Edgar Saldivar, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas. "The Constitution does not allow the State of Texas to enact laws that threaten immigrants and the local officials entrusted to protect them. Today, we assert our resistance to the state's pervasive attacks on vulnerable people and say to Gov. Abbott, see you in court."
"Under SB4, local authorities will lose control over public safety and Texans will suffer from discrimination because of the color of their skin, accents or background," said Lee Gelernt, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project deputy director.
The El Cenizo lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division. The ACLU will serve as co-counsel with Luis Roberto Vera, Jr., LULAC's National General Counsel, and Renea Hicks of the Law Office of Max Renea Hicks.
See here for the background. There is also the El Paso County lawsuit, which is different in nature due to a previous lawsuit settlement that may put El Paso in conflict with SB4. The city of San Antonio may get into the act in the near future, and once the pension reform bill is signed there will be pressure on Mayor Turner to address the issue as well. I'm happy to see as many lawsuits against this atrocity as possible.
"Two big reasons Trump will have a tough time pushing the special counsel around".
"The growing frustration with the Trump administration's management — reflected in letters to state regulators and in interviews with more than two dozen senior industry and government officials nationwide — undercuts a key White House claim that Obamacare insurance marketplaces are collapsing on their own."
"I'm almost positive I'm the first person to stand on a stage at an Upfront and say 'elephant twat.' You are welcome."
The bad effects of the Trump regime extend well beyond the borders of the USA.
"The same theory of law, order, and personal responsibility without excuses that his Attorney General has decided is good for petty drug offenses ought to be good for the conduct of the Oval Office, too."
"1. The neural network really likes brown, beige, and grey. 2. The neural network has really really bad ideas for paint names."
"We weren't pandered to with the myriad of diagnosed anxiety disorders of today's kids. Naw, we just had eating disorders and mental illnesses that we suffered in secret, silence, and shame."
"If you discount demographics, which we have no control over, social stigma accounts for about half the drop in drunk driving. This suggests that what we need isn't so much stricter laws, but a revitalized campaign to even further stigmatize drunk driving."
"This is where we get to the great irony of the story – because in the end it wasn't the size of the asteroid, the scale of blast, or even its global reach that made dinosaurs extinct – it was where the impact happened."
"In my lab we have found that 4-year-olds recognize that their own past beliefs might have been wrong. Mr. Trump contradicts himself without hesitation and doesn't seem to recognize any conflict between his past and present beliefs."
"Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola. She was 4 foot 11, with mocha-brown skin and almond eyes that I can still see looking into mine—my first memory. She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us. No other word but slave encompassed the life she lived." A truly amazing story, and when you're done with it read this for some additional context.
A Timeline of Trump–Russia Connections.
"The Trump administration has taken thousands of government records offline since taking office. We're getting them back."
"So yes, Sean Hannity, we do need to know more about duck genitalia."
"These folks seem to look at the economy and conclude that the wealthy don't have enough and the poor have too much, and they're going to fix that."
A story about Mister Rogers that will almost certainly make you tear up a bit.
#FillTheSwamp
RIP, Sir Roger Moore, James Bond in "Live And Let Die", "Moonraker", and others.
"What do our friends the young-Earth creationists make of this stuff? Here, after all, is a tangible, fluffy-white embodiment of deep time. It's one more thing that such illiteralist fundamentalists cannot allow themselves to look at or think about. So I wonder what kind of filter system Ken Ham uses for his hot tub."
"But to do that they'd have to admit something that Republicans seem incapable of admitting: When it comes to health insurance, market-oriented solutions are the most expensive option."
It's the 40th anniversary of Star Wars. We are all old. And yes, of course I saw it in the theater when it came out.
"I photoshopped in the kid from THE OMEN and it's so perfect it's unnerving."
"Our vantage point is that we're mostly looking at special elections in terms of how they might predict 2018. A night where Democrats are losing Montana by "only" 6 or 7 points is consistent with the sort of map you might see if Democrats were either taking over the House or coming pretty close to it."
"Here's my question: why? Why would do the Trump people think the Supreme Court would rule any differently [in the Muslim ban case]? At this point, why does Trump think the Supreme Court will even take the case?"
"Whether Vladimir Putin has something on Donald Trump or somehow has him in his pay hardly matters. If he doesn't, he apparently doesn't need to do since Trump insists on doing more or less exactly what Putin would want of him entirely on his own." Then read this. If you're not freaked out, I don't know what it would take.
RIP, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter.
RIP, Jim Bunning, Hall of Fame pitcher and US Senator.
RIP, Gregg Allman, Southern rock pioneer.
Budget passes
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.
On to the revenue cap
With one major accomplishment (basically) finished, Mayor Turner moves on to the next major challenge facing him.
"This is the most consequential campaign of the mayor's career," University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said. "These things are more complicated and more politically fraught than either his mayoral campaign or the lobbying to get the pension bill passed to begin with, and those were both complicated."
Turner has made his own climb steeper by pledging to ask Houstonians to repeal a voter-imposed cap that limits what the city can collect in property taxes. That rule is a lightning rod for conservatives, who spearheaded its passage 13 years ago.
Turner thanked city employees for shouldering $2.8 billion in cuts to their retirement benefits, and said it is now time for all Houstonians to join in sacrificing for the good of the city. The revenue cap, Turner said, hurts the city's credit rating and hamstrings its ability to provide sufficient services and compete on a global scale.
Many conservatives don't see it that way, arguing that the cap protects taxpayers and gives the city an incentive to operate more efficiently.
The Harris County Republican Party plans to campaign against Turner's repeal effort, and is expected to have company.
Voters approved the revenue cap in 2004, limiting the annual growth of property tax revenue to the combined rates of inflation and population growth, or 4.5 percent, whichever is lower. Voters tweaked the rule in 2006, allowing the city to raise an additional $90 million for public safety spending.
Houston exhausted that breathing room in 2014, and, with property values still on the rise, has had to trim back its tax rate each fall since to avoid collecting more revenue than allowed.
Despite the cap's complexity, conservative political strategist Denis Calabrese said he doubts there will be a shortage of voter education on the issue.
"Voters will come into that election very well informed and knowledgeable and they'll be able to express their opinion," he said. "The predisposition going into this is that voters don't support the repeal of the cap, and we'll see if that changes as a result of the education efforts on both sides."
You know that I support repealing the cap. The question is how to sell that idea. I agree that the predisposition is likely to be to keep it, though I'd argue that most people know very little about the cap. I'd approach this primarily as a plea from Mayor Turner, as part of his overall plan to get the city's finances in order. Have him say something like "I promised you I'd get a bill passed in the Legislature to rein in pension costs, and I did that. But the work isn't done just yet, and I need your help to finish the job. The revenue cap limits Houston's economic growth and lowers our city's credit rating. To really get our finances in order, we need to repeal it." You get the idea. Basically, the Mayor has as much credibility with the voters right now as he'll likely ever have. That's a huge asset, and he should leverage it.
Alternately, if the local GOP is going to oppose repealing the cap, then one might keep in mind that the city is much more Democratic than it is Republican, so if this becomes a partisan fight then the Mayor has a larger pool of voters available to him. There are also a lot of potential villains to demonize in such a campaign, from the President on down. This would almost certainly be the kind of low-information, high-heat campaign that makes newspaper columnists wring their hands about civility and discourse, but it would get people to the polls. I'd take my chances with it.
Meanwhile, the City Secretary is reviewing a petition that calls for a vote on giving 401(k)-style retirement plans to all city workers hired after the start of next year, which employees view as insufficient.
Conservative activist Windi Grimes, an organizer of the effort, however, said her group thinks sufficient fiscal safeguards were added to the pension bill passed in Austin, and will not mount a campaign behind the petition.
See here for the background. Is there a provision to allow for submitted petitions to be withdrawn? That would be the better option if the proponents of that idea are no longer interested in advocating for it.
Busy hurricane season predicted
Welcome to summer, y'all.
The nation's climate agency on Thursday predicted an above-normal 2017 hurricane season with 11 to 17 named storms, five to nine of them hurricanes.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted a 45 percent chance of the hurricane season that begins June 1 being above normal, a 35 percent chance of a normal season and a 20 percent chance of a below-normal season. An average season is 12 named storms, six hurricanes and three major hurricanes.
The agency said it expected two to four of the hurricanes to be Category 3 or higher.
"The outlook reflects our expectation of a weak or non-existent El Niño, near- or above-average sea-surface temperatures across the tropical Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea and average or weaker-than-average vertical wind shear in that same region," said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.
Bell said a strong El Niño causes more intense wind shear, which tends to break up tropical disturbances before they can grow into a hurricane. He cautioned that chances were 50-50 that a stronger El Niño could develop later in the hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30.
The United States has had a long run of good luck, said Ben Friedman, acting NOAA administrator. "It's been a record 12 years since a Category 3 or higher storm has hit the United States, Friedman said.
And it's been nine years since Hurricane Ike, which caused a lot of problems even if it wasn't nearly as bad a storm as it could have been. It's not unreasonable to think that people have relaxed a bit recently, given how mild the storm seasons have been since then. Be prepared, don't panic, and if you live in Katy go ahead and start evacuating now. Texas Monthly has more.
Saturday video break: Royals
Here's Lorde's global hit:
She's going to be in Houston for the 2017 Free Press Summerfest, which I will be unable to attend. One presume she isn't coming all this way just to play a couple of days in Houston, but her tour schedule doesn't actually include many American appearances, so check her out while you can. Meanwhile, here's Bruce Springsteen's now-famous cover of "Royals" from his down under tour in 2014:
I've watched that video multiple times and I still love it. It's Springsteen at his roots, singing a song you could imagine him having written. He's well known for doing covers at his live shows, but man would I love him to put together an album of the tributes he's done.
House will not negotiate on "bathroom bill" amendment
Well, this is it.
Refusing to go any further to regulate bathroom use for transgender Texans, House Speaker Joe Straus said on Friday that the House will not appoint members to negotiate with the Senate on its proposed compromise on a "bathroom bill."
"For many of us — and especially for me — this was a compromise," Straus said. "As far as I'm concerned, it was enough. We will go no further. This is the right thing to do in order to protect our economy from billions of dollars in losses and more importantly to protect the safety of some very vulnerable young Texans."
"If the Senate wants to pass a 'bathroom bill,' it can concur with the bill we passed earlier week," Straus told reporters during a Friday news conference. "The House has compromised enough on this issue."
Calling it "absurd" that "'bathroom bills' have taken on greater urgency than fixing our school finance system," Straus said the House is "availing itself" of the same actions the Senate took on school finance legislation by refusing to appoint members to conference committee on legislation originally intended to inject $1.5 billion into the state's funding for the majority of public schools and to simplify some of the state's complex, outdated school funding formulas.
See here for the background. Dan Patrick is of course screaming for a special session to force the issue, and he may get it. Or he may not. It's up to Greg Abbott. Abbott's a weak leader who could use a little guidance, so call his office at 512-463-2000 and tell the nice person who answers that you want no special session for a bathroom bill. Be polite, but do call. The DMN and the Observer have more.
This session's unconstitutional abortion bill passes
Right there with them
Texas senators voted Friday to send a bill banning the most common second-trimester abortion procedure and changing how health care facilities handle fetal remains to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk.
Under Senate Bill 8, which passed 22-9, health care facilities including hospitals and abortion clinics would be required to bury or cremate any fetal remains — whether from abortion, miscarriage or stillbirth. The bill would also ban facilities from donating aborted fetal tissue to medical researchers, and aims to outlaw "partial-birth abortions," which are already illegal under federal law.
Most controversially, the bill now bans dilation and evacuation abortions — a common second-trimester procedure where doctors use surgical instruments to grasp and remove pieces of fetal tissue — unless the fetus is deceased. Medical professionals deem the current method the safest way to perform the procedure on a pregnant woman, and reproductive rights groups have said this change would subject women to an unnecessary medical procedure.
Amanda Allen, senior state legislative counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a news release that Texas legislators are continuing "their crusade against a woman's right to safe and legal abortion."
"Texas women deserve access to the health care that is best for them and their personal circumstances — not abortion restrictions pushed by extreme anti-abortion organizations," Allen said. "The Center for Reproductive Rights vows to battle any unconstitutional measures in the courts until the rights of Texas women are respected and protected."
The group sued late last year over a Texas Department of State Health Services proposal requiring health providers to bury or cremate fetal remains. Center lawyers won a temporary restraining order and in January a federal judge ruled Texas could not proceed with the rule, citing its vagueness and potential to harm patients.
See here for the background. I don't know what to say that I haven't said already, but if I'm going to repeat myself anyway, I'll say this again: Nothing will change until the people we elect change. We have a chance to do something about this next year. It's up to us.
No Metro vote this year
One less to worry about.
Agency officials expect to begin public meetings to gather input on where expanded bus and rail lines might go in late June.
But the critical public response – the money to fund preferred projects via a voter referendum – likely is 18 months away, Metropolitan Transit Authority officials said.
"The community input process is going to take a lot of time," said Carrin Patman, chairwoman of the Metro board, calling the chances of asking voters to approve a bond issue this year "unrealistic."
"My guess is it would not be before November 2018," Patman said.
The timeline is less rosy than predicted when the regional transit plan was rolled out in February, when Patman and others said a vote this November remained a possibility.
The regional transit plan, meanwhile, could be approved by the Metro board next summer, after a series of meetings with riders and those who rarely interact with transit.
Metro officials held 13 meetings with agency employees to solicit ideas from bus and rail operators about what improvements are most needed. That feedback, CEO Tom Lambert said, confirmed what many officials already have said about the need to improve bus stops and shelters and make minor adjustments to routes to improve service.
Also key to the plan as officials prep for meetings in late June is soliciting comment from people in places where bus service is nonexistent, board members said.
"Historically, the meetings have been held in places where Metro is already operating service," said vice-chairman Jim Robinson.
Attracting suburban interest for transit, and properly prioritizing it with other needs, is an important part of the plan, officials said.
See here, here, and here for some background. In an ideal world, I'd have preferred to see this ready to go this November, as there are a lot of needs to plan for and the sooner we begin the better. But I'd also rather get this right than rush it, and there's certainly a case for not putting this on a ballot that will be dominated by the revenue cap referendum. Which is not to say that 2018 will be better – there will be far more races on the ballot, if nothing else – but it is a reasonable choice. Let's get the best plan we can, with a compelling vision for the future, and begin selling it with an eye for next year. KUHF has more.
Paxton's pastor sues Servergy case witnesses
Attorney General Ken Paxton's pastor has sued the lead witnesses against him in his upcoming criminal trials.
Last week, Prestonwood Baptist Church Executive Pastor Mike Buster filed a lawsuit against Rep. Byron Cook and Florida businessman Joel Hochberg, the two men named on Paxton's fraud indictments. Paxton attends Prestonwood's main campus in Plano.
Buster alleges that Cook and Hochberg bilked him out of about a half-million dollars, described as "a substantial percentage of his personal net worth." Cook was manager of an energy asset management company that Buster says recommended he purchase mineral rights from Cook and Hochberg "at exorbitant markups and after very short holding times."
The asset management company did not disclose that its own managers would benefit from the sale, Buster adds, omissions he said in part caused him "to lose virtually his entire investment." Paxton, who was also manager of the company, is not mentioned in the suit.
Buster's lawsuit is very similar to, and builds off, similar allegations lobbed against Cook and Hochberg earlier this year. That lawsuit was filed by Charles Loper III, who's in charge of Paxton's newly formed blind trust.
I haven't read the lawsuit and don't have any opinion on it. I don't appear to have noted the Loper lawsuit, so I'll pass on that as well. Does any of this have anything to do with the case against Paxton? I have no idea, but would anyone be surprised if this was an attempt to damage the main witnesses against him? I wouldn't. Whatever it is, it's a little weird and it's worth noting for future reference, just in case.
Friday random ten: NPR Music
One other big source of new music for me last year was NPR Music's The Austin 100 (2016), which was a free download of over 100 songs. Here's a selection of them
1. Ugly Cherries – PWR BTTM
2. Every Which-A-Way – The Quebe Sisters
3. Drinkee – Sofi Tukker
4. Somebody To Anybody – Margaret Glaspy
5. Oh Inhuman Spectacle – Methyle Ethel
6. Black Lipstick – Chicano Batman
7. Primitives – Bayonne
8. Before A Million Universes – Big Ups
9. Lost Time – Tacocat
10. There Will Be Nights When I'm Lonely – Possessed By Paul James
Out of the whole group, the only artists I've heard of before now are the first two on this list, one for bad reasons and one for good. I picked the other eight for this list because I liked their names. How many do you know?
No special session for redistricting
Buried in my Wednesday post about the SCOTUS ruling that declared North Carolina's Congressional map to be an illegal gerrymander was a note that the court in the Texas redistricting case asked the state to consider a special session to redraw Texas' map, taking that ruling into account. The DMN had a story about that:
In striking down North Carolina's congressional district map, the Supreme Court sent Texas a firm warning Monday about how the state's case may fare if it reaches that stage.
Hours after the ruling, the federal district court in San Antonio currently overseeing the Texas case issued an order to the relevant parties asking them to submit briefs detailing how the North Carolina ruling will affect their claims, with a deadline of June 6.
Judge Xavier Rodriguez, on behalf of the panel, also directed Texas to consider whether it would like to "voluntarily undertake redistricting in a special session" of the legislature in light of the North Carolina ruling, giving the state until Friday to decide.
Rep. Rafael Anchia, the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which is a plaintiff in the case, said he interpreted the district court's new order as a message to the state.
"The way I read it is that the court is warning the state of Texas to fix these intentionally discriminatory maps or it will in a way the state might not like," said Anchia, D-Dallas.
Michael Li, a redistricting expert and senior counsel at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said the North Carolina ruling will be an "important decision" for the other districting efforts winding through the legal system, including those in Texas.
"It makes clear that this isn't about any sort of talismanic test or anything like that, but that you actually have to delve into the facts and circumstances about how maps are drawn," Li said. "So even a district that looks pretty and has nice lines, and everything like that, can still be problematic. And it's really up to the trial court to delve into that."
Democrats in Texas celebrated the ruling as a promising indication of how their arguments will fare moving forward.
"I am happy that North Carolina voters secured another victory against the national Republican crusade to undermine the voting power of African Americans and Hispanics in local, state, and federal elections," said Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, who has been on the front lines of another legal case against Texas' voter ID law.
The request from the district court in San Antonio for new filings in the wake of the North Carolina decision confirmed the potential impact of the ruling. Matt Angle, the director of the Lone Star Project, a liberal advocacy group, said the court "is all but screaming in the ears of Texas Republican leaders to pull back from their culture of racial discrimination" by redrawing the map.
"Don't count on Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick or other Texas Republican leaders to listen or care," Angle said in a written statement. "Texas Republicans have adopted discrimination and vote suppression as essential tools to hold power."
Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas, sent two letters earlier this year to Rep. Cindy Burkett, R-Sunnyvale, asking her to hold a hearing on the matter as chairwoman of the House Redistricting Committee. But the committee has not met at all this session.
The court had given the state till today to decide whether or not to take its own shot at drawing a legal map first. Yesterday, they gave their answer.
In response to a question from the court, the State of Texas said in a filing today that it has no plans to hold a special session to redraw state house and congressional maps.
The state said that its position remained that the state house and congressional adopted in 2013 to replace earlier maps were free of discriminatory purpose, did not use race as a predominant factor, or violate the Voting Rights Act – saying that it acted in good faith when it adopted court-drawn interim plans on a permanent basis.
The state also said that "any further attempt to reconfigure the State's electoral districts will only result in new legal challenges."
All righty then. That filing may disappoint the Texas Republican Congressional delegation, however.
Several congressional Republicans told the Tribune they want Abbott to call a special session to redraw the Congressional lines. They believe such a maneuver would put their allies in the state legislature in the driver's seat, circumventing Republicans' worst fear: that a panel of federal judges will draw a less favorable map of its own.
"I can't speak for my whole delegation but I've already reached out to some of my friends back in the legislature…I said, 'Give me a holler,'" said U.S. Rep. Randy Weber R-Friendswood, on his hopes for a special session.
"My thought is, if the legislature doesn't [redraw the map], then the court is going to drop the map, which I think is way outside their constitutional purview," he added.
To be sure, the Congressional delegation would like to keep the current lines. But its calls for a special session are rooted in fears that the map will not hold up in court.
And even those fears are not uniform within the delegation itself.
"One attorney will tell you one thing, another attorney will tell you something different," said U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan. "There's more confusion than consensus."
I'm pretty sure there will be a new map, though it may be that the changes are fairly minimal, and it's also possible that the state can force a delay until 2020. I don't know that I'd bet my own money on those outcomes, however. Note that Greg Abbott may well call a special session for other reasons, just not for this because the state thinks it's totally going to win. I have a feeling this subject will come up again during the scheduled hearing on July 10. Stay tuned.
No changes to HISD magnet programs
Not this year, anyway.
Houston ISD Superintendent Richard Carranza this week withdrew a plan to deeply cut funding for the district's magnet programs over the next three years, shelving a proposal that had angered parents and some school board members who consider the specialized academic programs to be jewels in an oft-troubled school system.
The proposed cuts, outlined in a presentation to the HISD board last week, would have eliminated all extra funding per student to many of the district's 121 magnet programs by the 2019-2020 school year while cutting funding to many of the other programs by hundreds of dollars per student. Only funding for secondary-language and early-college programs were spared.
But after the plan triggered a backlash from magnet school supporters, Carranza and district officials pulled back the proposal and said they instead planned to conduct a review of the district's magnet funding and programs.
HISD spokeswoman Lila Hollin said in a written statement on Wednesday that the district had no plans to cut funding or make changes to magnet schools for the coming 2017-2018 school year.
"HISD magnet programs are reviewed annually. Discussions about the equitable funding of schools – both magnet and neighborhood campuses – are part of that review process," Hollin wrote.
She added that a comprehensive review of the magnet program would likely be completed by January.
Magnet schools and programs have been a touchy subject in Houston ISD as their prevalence and prominence has grown. While some are more diverse both in terms of race and economic status than many other district schools, critics have argued that they accept a much larger percentage of white and Asian students than those groups account for district-wide.
Only 8 percent of HISD's students are white, according to TEA data, yet they make up about 36 percent of students at Carnegie Vanguard High. At DeBakey High, about 50 percent of the students are Asian, even though only about 4.7 percent of students district-wide belong to that ethnic group.
But the district's demographics don't match those of the city overall, largely because more-affluent white families have generally opted to send their children to private schools or to other districts. About 15 percent of those 18 and under in the city of Houston are white, according to Census data.
Houston ISD Trustee Anna Eastman said she's glad the proposed cuts to magnet schools and programs appear to be off the table for next year, but she worries that any future cuts along the lines of the recent proposal would be "incredibly drastic." She said cutting extra funding to the magnet programs is not the way to bring more diversity to those campuses.
"I think our goal should always be to create schools that draw the diversity of Houston into them and spread it across and throughout the district," Eastman said. "I don't think the problems in our other schools is the fault of kids in our magnet programs."
I haven't been paying close attention to this, but nothing that happened here surprises me. As the story notes, there have been reviews of the magnet program going on for some time, and they usually don't get very far because the stakeholders really don't like the proposals. The last section I quoted above captures the conflict succinctly – this program and its schools are very successful and desirable, but there's limited space and the schools' demographics don't come close to mirroring the district as a whole, and they draw students away from their neighborhood schools, which can suffer as a result. It would be best to have more magnet-style programs in more schools all around the district, but that's a hard thing to do when resources are scarce. I don't see anything about this dynamic changing much in the near future.
Time for the 5th Court to decide on Paxton prosecutor pay
Do your job, y'all.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's months-long effort to remove the judge in his securities fraud case is coming to a head in a Dallas appeals court.
Prosecutors say the 5th Court of Appeals has no jurisdiction to get rid of the judge, George Gallagher, because he has moved the case out of its reach — to Harris County. But Paxton's lawyers say there is no evidence the case has been sent there yet, making the 5th Court of Appeals the appropriate place to push for Gallagher's removal.
The 5th Court of Appeals paused the case earlier this month to give all sides an opportunity to hash out the dispute. A number of responses stemming from that decision were due Tuesday.
The prosecutors, in their latest response, called it "deja vu all over again" to see Paxton ask the 5th Court of Appeals to intervene in the case. His lawyers were unsuccessful last year in trying to get the court to dismiss the charges.
The prosecutors held firm Tuesday in their central argument against Paxton's attempt to get the 5th Court of Appeals involved, saying his "claims are ultimately undone by the same facts that purport to fortify them; the transfer of venue to Harris County makes the Harris County appellate courts the proper place" to ask for Gallagher's removal. Harris County is served by the 1st Court of Appeals.
Paxton's lawyers countered that the prosecutors "entire argument is premised on the flawed assumption" that Gallagher remains the presiding judge in the case. They reiterated that they have not consented to letting Gallagher follow the case to Harris County, arguing it thus remains in Collin County — and under the jurisdiction of the 5th Court of Appeals.
See here, here, and here for the background. One thing we can all agree on is that there are no new arguments being made. The court just needs to decide whose argument it buys. Time to get this done and move on.
Weird taproom bill gets final passage
A bill that would force Texas breweries, once they've grown beyond a state-limited size, to sell and buy back their own beer before offering it in their own taprooms has now passed both houses of the state Legislature.
"To say that today's outcome was incredibly disheartening would be to put it mildly," the Texas Craft Brewers Guild said in a statement following a 19-to-10 vote in the Senate.
The House approved the measure May 6.
House Bill 3287 has been blasted as "anti-competitive," "anti-beer" and a potential job killer by an unlikely coalition that includes Anheuser-Busch InBev and the state's 200-plus craft brewers, which often find themselves at odds with the global giant. The Texas Association of Manufacturers and the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation also opposed the measure.
The bill was supported by the state's two distributor groups.
See here for the background. This all basically happened under the radar, when there was no organized grassroots efforts on behalf of the microbreweries. I suppose that says something about the power of the distributors' lobbyists, but it's also a reminder that what was won can be lost, and defense is at least as important a offense.
Houston pension reform bill passes
It's done.
The Texas House on Wednesday approved the controversial Senate version of a bill that aims to overhaul Houston's failing pension funds — over the passionate objections of current and former firefighters.
Senate Bill 2190, which passed in a 103-43 vote, now heads to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk. But the months of rancor between firefighters and Houston officials promise to linger long after the legislative session ends Monday.
The Houston bill passed Wednesday without two amendments the House had previously added in an apparent attempt to appease firefighters. One amendment would have prevented the bill from impacting current firefighter retirees. The other could have allowed the firefighter pension system to bear a smaller burden in paying down unfunded liabilities shoring up billions in shortfalls in three city employee retirement funds.
That drew the anger of firefighter pension members, dozens of whom sat in the House gallery Wednesday. Some shouted down to representatives as they walked out after the vote. One woman could be heard yelling, "Shameful!"
After the vote, Houston firefighter pension board chairman David Keller said he was disappointed in the vote. During the session, pension officials had suggested such legislation could be unconstitutional because it determines the financial boundaries the fund should stay within. Keller said the Constitution says that power is left solely to the pension board.
Keller said it was too soon to determine if the pension board will file a lawsuit.
"We will explore every option available to us," he said.
But state Rep. Dan Flynn, who carried the bill in the House, said that killing the bill because firefighters remained unhappy would have exasperated the dire financial situation the city and the retirement funds are experiencing. The bill addresses pensions for firefighters, police and municipal employees.
"If we don't pass it, there won't be any pensions," the Canton Republican told The Texas Tribune earlier this year.
Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, authored the amendment that could have helped the firefighter pension fund bear less of the burden shoring up the city's shortfalls. The amendment would have given pension officials more time to provide data showing that financial forecasts estimate the fund will be in better shape than Houston officials estimated.
But on Wednesday, he urged his colleagues to vote for the bill without the amendment.
"We've done everything we can to work hard in good faith," Huberty said.
Keller, the pension chairman, said the pension board offered to provide the data under licensing agreements that included confidentiality provisions. He said the city never responded.
When asked if firefighters would campaign against any Houston-area state officials who backed the bill, Keller said "it's hard to say."
"But I know the firefighters are having a lot of emotions right now: loss, anger," he said. "And they've been shown to be politically active."
See here for the background. The firefighters are gonna do what the firefighters are gonna do. I get they're unhappy and to an extent I don't blame them, but this is where we are, and it took a lot of effort to get here. At this point, the main thing I'll be looking for is who will be campaigning against the pension obligation bonds. It's one thing to say we need to vote on those things (even if we hadn't voted on them before), it's another to say we should vote against them. Until then, kudos to all for getting this done, and congratulations to Mayor Turner for doing what once seemed to be impossible. The Mayor's press release is here, and the Chron has more.
UPDATE: Here's the longer Chron story.
School finance bill is dead
It started with this.
State Rep. Dan Huberty said Wednesday that he would not accept the Senate's changes to his school finance bill, launching a last-ditch effort to hammer out a compromise with less than a week left in the session.
After a passionate speech railing on the Senate for gutting his bill, Huberty, a Houston Republican who is chairman of the House Public Education Committee, announced he has decided to request a conference committee with the Senate on House Bill 21.
The bill was originally intended to inject $1.5 billion into the state's funding for the majority of public schools and to simplify some of the complex, outdated formulas for allocating money to school districts across the state. The Senate took that bill, reduced the funding to $530 million, and added what many public education advocates have called a "poison pill": a "private school choice" program that would subsidize private school tuition and homeschooling for kids with disabilities.
"Members, some of your schools will be forced to close in the next year based on the committee substitute of House Bill 21," as passed by the Senate, Huberty said, before moving to go to conference. "I refuse to give up. I'll continue trying. Let's at least attempt to rescue this bill."
The House voted 134-15 to request a conference committee with the Senate on the bill.
See here and here for the background. The House's request for a conference committee was denied by the Senate.
An effort to overhaul the state's beleaguered school finance system has been declared dead after the Texas Senate Education Committee's chairman said Wednesday that he would not appoint conferees to negotiate with the House.
"That deal is dead," Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, said.
Taylor's remarks come after his counterpart in the House, Dan Huberty, R-Houston, gave a passionate speech in which he said he would not accept the Senate's changes to House Bill 21 and would seek a conference committee with the Senate.
HB 21 was originally intended to inject $1.5 billion into the state's funding for the majority of public schools and to simplify some of the complex, outdated formulas for allocating money to school districts across the state. The Senate took that bill, reduced the funding to $530 million, and added what many public education advocates have called a "poison pill": a "private school choice" program that would subsidize private school tuition and homeschooling for kids with disabilities.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick pronounced the bill dead in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
"Although Texas House leaders have been obstinate and closed-minded on this issue throughout this session, I was hopeful when we put this package together last week that we had found an opening that would break the logjam. I simply did not believe they would vote against both disabled children and a substantial funding increase for public schools," he said in the statement. "I was wrong. House Bill 21 is now dead."
House Speaker Joe Straus said in a statement Wednesday that the Senate has not prioritized school finance reform this session.
"We appointed members of a conference committee today because the House was willing to continue to work on public school finance immediately. Unfortunately, the Senate walked away and left the problems facing our schools to keep getting worse," he said.
HB 21 was the first time in years that the Legislature has taken up major school finance reform without a court mandate.
HB21 was also the vehicle for addressing the recapture issue that is costing HISD (among other districts) millions and which is being litigated on the grounds that the TEA didn't make its changes to the formula properly. You can kiss that good-bye as well. It's somehow fitting that the Lege could not come to an agreement on school finance, as this proves the lie of the Supreme Court ruling that insisted they could do this on their own without the Supremes forcing them to. Not as long as we have Dan Patrick presiding over this Senate they won't. The Chron has more.
House passes Voter ID 2.0
Some minor changes, but the same basic idea.
The Texas House on Tuesday tentatively approved legislation to overhaul the state's embattled voter identification law, moving it one step closer to Gov. Greg Abbott's desk.
Senate Bill 5 would in several ways relax what some had called the nation's most stringent ID requirements for voters — a response to court findings that the current law discriminated against black and Latino voters.
The 95-54 vote followed a six-hour debate that saw fierce pushback from Democrats, who argued the legislation wouldn't go far enough to expand ballot access and contains provisions that might discourage some Texans from going to the polls. Democrats proposed a host of changes through amendments, a few of which surprisingly wriggled through.
Tuesday's vote was part of flurry of last-minute efforts to salvage a bill that languished in the House for nearly two months, worrying Republican leaders who believed inaction would torpedo the state's position — and bring down federal election oversight — in ongoing litigation over the current ID law.
Before it reaches Abbott, the bill must return to the Senate, which must weigh seven House amendments or request a conference committee to squabble over each chamber's legislation. One amendment would allow voters to present IDs that had been expired for four years, rather than two years, as the Senate bill would. Another would require the secretary of state to study ways to boost the state's perennially low voter turnout, and a third amendment would require the secretary of state's office to reveal details — currently withheld — about its spending on voter education efforts.
Democrats said the amended SB 5 would not pass legal muster, arguing lawmakers should instead scrap all vestiges of the 2011 law.
"We're in for a long, hot summer of having to defend this in court," said Rep. Alfonso Nevárez, D-Eagle Pass. "And guess what? We're going to lose again."
See here for the background. I agree with Rep. Nevarez. Changing how voter ID is enforced now has no bearing on the intent of the law when it was passed. That can't be fixed by amending the law. I grant, the state will have a better defense with SB5 on the books, but I'm skeptical and Judge Ramos ought to be as well. The Chron has more.
The Texas Progressive Alliance is old enough to remember when even Republicans considered giving classified information to the Russians a bad thing as it brings you this week's roudup.
The SCOTUS ruling on North Carolina's gerrymandering could affect Texas
This is potentially a very big deal.
The 5-3 North Carolina ruling affirmed a previous district court decision, which found that Republican state legislators there had "packed" black voters into two Democratic-held districts to dilute the impact of minority votes in other congressional seats.
Written by Justice Elena Kagan, the ruling is the latest in a series of rejections from the Supreme Court in recent years toward redistricting efforts that include racial considerations. The court demanded the review of Virginia state legislature districts in March and also ruled against Alabama's state legislature districts in 2015.
Though the North Carolina decision may be a setback for Texas' chances, it will not necessarily be determinative of the outcome. As Kagan reiterated, the specific details of the districts matter greatly. And newly confirmed Justice Neil Gorsuch will be able to hear the Texas case, whereas the North Carolina arguments occurred before he took his seat on the court.
While Li said he was reticent to predict Paxton's decision-making, he expects the North Carolina case will factor into how he handles Texas' efforts moving forward.
"It should be a warning to states about how the court is going to look at these cases, but that doesn't mean that Texas won't appeal," Li said. "It is fact-specific, and there's a lot politically riding on these decisions, and sometimes taking your chance at the Supreme Court can be important."
See these two Rick Hasen posts for all the technical details. This Trib story boils it down a bit and explains the relevance to Texas:
For years, courts have wrangled with a tough question: How to untangle the roles of race and partisanship in redistricting, the once-per-decade exercise of redrawing political maps to accommodate changing populations. It's a crucial exercise because partisan gerrymandering is broadly viewed as constitutional, while race-based map-drawing is not.
But the legal calculus is complicated by the fact that black and Latino voters tend to favor Democrats, for instance.
Monday's Supreme Court ruling said plaintiffs could successfully challenge the use of race in redistricting, even if lawmakers claim they were motivated by politics.
"The sorting of voters on the grounds of their race remains suspect even if race is meant to function as a proxy for other [including political] characteristics," said a footnote in Justice Elena Kagan's majority decision.
Though Texas' court dispute isn't precisely the same as North Carolina's, they both feature a similar line of defense — that partisanship, not race, motivated map drawers.
In one 2013 brief, for instance, then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott wrote "plaintiffs must prove that the Texas Legislature's redistricting decisions were motivated by unconstitutional racial animus rather than a desire to maximize the Republican Party's electoral prospects."
But race and partisanship are intertwined in Texas, and opponents of the maps successfully argued — in some districts, at least — that the Republican-dominated Legislature advanced the party's interests by looking to race.
Monday's Supreme Court decision only adds heft to that idea, lawyers challenging the state say, making it more difficult for Texas and other states to argue politics can shield racial considerations.
"It undermines entirely their protestation that this is about politics: Yes, we're picking apart Latino voting boxes and African-American voting boxes – we're not doing it to them, we're doing it to the Democratic Party," said Jose Garza, an attorney for the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, a lead plaintiff in the case. "That's just not going to hold up."
Gerry Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center and an attorney for other plaintiffs in the case, said the Supreme Court "expressly rejected" part of Texas' redistricting defense.
Texas' defense now is that the 2013 map wipes away the problems with the 2011 map. The main problem with that is that some of the illegal districts are identical in the two maps, so one presumes something would need to be done about that. Thus, the court has asked the state if it might like to take a crack at drawing a new, legal map, maybe in a shudder special session. I rather doubt the state will take them up on this offer, on the grounds that the state surely figures it will win, but they have until the 26th to decide. Daily Kos and Slate have more.
How bad is the "Patrick Lite" bathroom bill?
For one view, there's this, from Texas Competes:
A review of press coverage shows that the Texas "bathroom bill" debate generated $216 million in publicity for the state of Texas in the period from January 10, 2016 through May 22, 2017.
During the 85th Texas legislative session, 25,774 local, state, and national articles were written about the efforts to pass bathroom and changing room restrictions on transgender adults and children. More than 20,000 of these articles were published outside of Texas.
The media tracking service Meltwater was used to generate the data; its language-detecting algorithm deemed 73% of the coverage, or $155.5 million, "neutral;" 25%, or $56.4 million, "negative;" and 2%, or $4 million, "positive." A review of coverage categorized as "positive" by the software revealed that these stories largely described efforts by performing artists, businesses, sports organizations and others to protest "bathroom bills." Overall, the sentiment calculated across all news coverage was deeply negative, as seen in the chart below. (The February 2017 spike in sentiment was largely related to a "positive" story covering the NBA's decision to move its All-Star Game from Charlotte to the LGBT-inclusive city of New Orleans.)
The topic of bathroom restrictions for transgender Texans has been shepherded into the spotlight by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and vocal anti-LGBT backers like Empower Texans, Conservative Republicans of Texas, and Texas Values.
Texas business leaders and small business owners have consistently cited the war for talent as a major concern related to the state's anti-LGBT reputation. "HR executives and business leaders voice concern to us when stories about discrimination dominate the news about Texas," said Jessica Shortall, Managing Director of Texas Competes, a coalition of nearly 1,300 Texas employers and chambers of commerce making the economic case for an LGBT-friendly Texas. "We cannot maintain the pipeline of talent needed to fuel this state's economy in the face of national coverage that tells young workers that Texas is in the business of discrimination."
In a February UT/TT 2017 poll, a majority of Texans said that it's "not important" for the legislature to pass a bathroom law. In March, the Public Religion Research Institute released a poll showing that 53% of Americans oppose laws requiring transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex at birth. In a recent USA TODAY poll, Americans aged 18 to 35 – a group representing the current and future talent pool for many Texas employers – oppose bathroom laws by nearly a two-to-one ratio.
You know how they say there's no such thing as bad publicity? This will be a test of that. And I'm sure North Carolina's glad we're getting all the attention for being transphobic and unwelcoming now. It's taking some of the heat off of them.
As bad as the perception is, the reality may be somewhat less harsh, though that remains to be seen.
"I think it's going to depend on how people interpret the amendment," said Dax Gonzalez, assistant director of governmental relations for the Texas Association of School Boards, which represents the state's school districts and provides guidance to them on policies related to transgender students.
Under Paddie's interpretation, the amendment would nix existing trans-inclusive policies at some school districts that allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice at school. (Some Texas school districts allow transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity through formal policies or on a case-by-case basis.)
But the school board association, which endorsed the measure on Sunday night, argues school districts could probably maintain such policies, possibly with a few tweaks, because of the measure's "flexibility."
"I think what it boils down to is that this amendment is pretty flexible and open to interpretation," Gonzalez added.
After the Sunday vote, Straus suggested the Paddie amendment would not require schools to make significant modifications to how they "handle sensitive issues."
School groups agree because providing single-stall facilities for students seeking bathroom-related accommodations is something school districts "would do anyway," so the amendment doesn't make a "significant change" on that front, said Jennifer Canaday, governmental relations director for the Association of Texas Professional Educators.
When it comes to the amendment's possible effects on efforts to accommodate transgender students beyond single-occupancy bathrooms, Canaday echoed the school board association in saying there was "enough ambiguity" in the amendment to allow for different interpretations by school districts.
But she indicated that the school group — which deemed bathroom-related legislation "a solution in search of a problem" — was still sifting through any possible repercussions for trans-inclusive policies in place across the state.
"Obviously there's some confusion," she said. "It may take some time [to figure out] how school districts interpret this."
I strongly suspect that more forward-thinking districts like HISD will continue to accommodate trans students as best they can, while districts with jerks for Superintendents like Pearland ISD will take a hard line. It will inevitably be up to the courts to sort it out.
One major danger zone in all this is privacy concerns.
The measure poses an excruciating dilemma for Texas schools that have quietly agreed at parents' requests to keep secret the birth genders of some students.
To comply with state law, teachers might have to send transgender students to the bathroom of their birth gender or to a single-occupancy bathroom, shocking their peers.
The legislation "really boxes in school systems," said Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, a spokeswoman for the national transgender rights organization Trans Equality.
Currently, each school and school district determines how to handle students whose birth genders are secret — a small portion of Texas' thousands of transgender minors. A survey conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA indicated that 13,800 Texas teens identify as transgender, but the number of children under age 13 is not known.
Even if this law isn't quite as bad as it could be, given its limited reach, it's still potentially catastrophic for thousands of children. Not everyone is out, and not everyone wants to be, but what is a school to do with a trans kid who doesn't want his or her classmates to know about that? Trans kids are already at an elevated risk for suicide. When something bad happens, don't say we weren't warned. The DMN, Burkablog, and Deadspin, both of which note the lack of any response so far from the NCAA, have more.
UPDATE: The Senate will reject the "Patrick Lite" amendment in SB2078. Nothing good can come of this.
MALDEF gets injunction in recapture lawsuit
From their website:
Please attribute the following statement on a Texas court ruling ordering state education officials to cease bypassing existing school funding rules to Marisa Bono, Southwest regional counsel of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund):
"MALDEF is pleased that the District Court saw through efforts by the Texas Education Agency to circumvent school funding rules. The court was abundantly clear in its finding that efforts to relieve wealthier school districts of their responsibilities to poorer districts under 'recapture' amounted to 'an inadequate, improper, and invalid attempt at a rule amendment.' As MALDEF argued, and the court found, state education officials failed to comply with the mandatory requirement that any changes in funding rules must include a fiscal impact statement – TEA's own witness confirmed that this rule change will cost public schools $88 million a year. We call on the Texas legislature to take immediate and binding steps to bar the TEA from doing this again."
Read the injunction order here.
Read the jurisdiction order here.
See here for the background. I started writing this before there was any reporting on it, just a bit of chatter on Facebook that led me to Google and the MALDEF statement. Now here is the Chron story.
Just weeks after voters approved a $77.5 million payment to the state in so-called "recapture" fees, the Houston school district could be stuck with another $60 million in fees after a judge's ruling that the state improperly slashed wealthy districts' bills.
The ruling, by state District Judge Darlene Byrne in Travis County, temporarily halts an agreement by the Texas Education Agency that allowed the Houston Independent School District and other property-rich districts to reduce the amount of "equalization" payments required to fund public education.
The ruling throws HISD's recapture bill back into question and could affect more than a dozen other property wealthy districts across the state, though no official list has been released.
"We understand the financial situation even wealthy school districts are in, which is why we're pushing for school finance reform in the Legislature," said Marisa Bono, southwest regional council for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a civil rights organization that filed the suit.
"But the solution is not to give wealthy districts a tax break on the backs of property poor districts."
The deal was cut in February, when TEA said it would give districts such as HISD credit for half of their local homestead exemptions, along with adjustments for student enrollment and property values, to cut the districts' recapture bills.
The changes were outlined in a Feb. 1 memo penned by TEA Chief School Finance Officer Leo Lopez that were later incorporated into TEA's recapture manual.
TEA officials at the time concluded the would result in "no fiscal implications to state or local government, including local school districts."
But attorneys for the property-poor districts argued the state would lose $88 million in funding, causing significant financial loss to local governments.
In a ruling released late Friday, Byrne concluded that the reprieve granted by TEA was "inadequate, improper and invalid," and that the TEA manual did not contain an accurate financial note describing the fiscal impact of the changes.
She granted a temporary injunction to halt the recapture calculations until the case can go to trial Aug. 11.
Unless the state works out another way to grant HISD and the other districts a reprieve, the district could be forced to pay $137 million. The adjustments for enrollment and property values were allowed to stand, said Bono, the MALDEF lawyer.
So there you have it. It's very frustrating, especially with the Senate undermining efforts to address the problem. I don't know what happens next, but I hope HISD and the TEA can work something out that will be accepted by the judge and the plaintiffs.
El Paso files "sanctuary cities" lawsuit
Two and counting, as El Paso gets in on the anti-SB4 action.
The lawsuit, filed by El Paso County, its Sheriff Richard Wiles and the Texas Organizing Project Education Fund, a client of the Texas Civil Rights Project, charges that the law, if enacted, would violate several provisions of the U.S. Constitution, including the 14th Amendment's guarantee of the equal protection of laws; the 14th Amendment's due process clause; and the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The plaintiffs also allege the bill would violate the U.S. Supremacy Clause, which states that federal law — including statutes dealing with immigration enforcement — is "wholly dedicated to the federal government and may not be usurped by the states."
"All law enforcement agencies and jurisdictions that opt to stay out of immigration enforcement face stringent civil liability," the lawsuit charges. "And, persons in Texas, particularly Mexican-Americans, those of Hispanic descent, and immigrants and their families, will be caught in the crossfire."
The lawsuit, filed in San Antonio, which is part of the Western District of Texas' federal judicial district, comes after the City of El Cenizo and Maverick County filed suit against the state earlier this month. The city of Austin also voted last week to file a suit to stop the controversial measure, which Abbott and other Republicans have argued is needed to ensure Texans are safe from non-deported criminal immigrants who aren't turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
El Paso County is in a unique situation, however, because it agreed in 2006 to a court settlement after a local resident sued, accusing sheriff's deputies of conducting unlawful immigration checks at roadside checkpoints. The parties reached an agreement: The sheriff's office had to "memorialize in writing its policies that prohibits Sheriff's Department Deputies from enforcing civil immigration law."
"El Paso also has adopted policies, which may violate SB 4's unconstitutional mandates," the complaint reads. "Specifically, the El Paso County Attorney's office has adopted a policy that prohibits its investigators from making inquiries into the citizenship or residency status for the purpose of determining whether an individual has violated civil immigration law or for the purpose of enforcing those laws."
See here for more on the El Cenizo/Maverick County lawsuit. More cities are expected to follow suit, though on different grounds than El Paso and its unique situation. It would be nice to know when Houston will join in; one hopes there are plans to address this after the session is over and pension reform is in the can. Meanwhile, Greg Abbott is out there telling lies about SB4 and its effects. Gotta do what you gotta do when the facts are against you, after all. The Press and the Current have more.
Amendment focused on school bathrooms passes the House
I had some hope that we could make it through this session without something like this happening, but clearly we could not.
Amid threats of a special legislative session over the "bathroom bill," the Texas House on Sunday took a last-minute vote to approve a proposal that would keep transgender students from using school bathrooms that match their gender identity.
The House voted 91-50 to amend Senate Bill 2078 — which focuses on school districts' "multihazard emergency operations plans" — to add bathroom restrictions that some Republicans had pushed for since the beginning of the legislative session.
Throughout the tense floor debate, Republicans insisted the legislation was not meant to target transgender students, while Democrats likened the proposal to Jim Crow-era policies that segregated bathroom use based on race. Under the proposal, a transgender student who "does not wish" to use a facility based on "biological sex" would instead use single-stall restrooms, locker rooms and changing facilities at their school.
"White. Colored. I was living through that era … bathrooms divided us then, and it divides us now," Democratic state Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston, a black woman, told her colleagues. "America has long recognized that separate but equal is not equal at all."
Saying the amendment would provide "definitive guidance" to school districts, Republican state Rep. Chris Paddie of Marshall argued that his amendment language did not discriminate "against anyone."
"This is does not provide an accommodation for a protected class of students. This provides an accommodation for all students," Paddie said.
But the adopted amendment could override existing trans-inclusive policies at some school districts that allow transgender children to use the bathroom of their choice.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who was largely silent on the issue throughout the legislative session, recently endorsed the bathroom legislation as a priority. His office had insisted that he believed the legislation could be passed during the regular legislative session.
But Straus on Sunday said the governor made clear "he would demand action on this in a special session, and the House decided to dispose of the issue in this way."
After Sunday's vote, Straus suggested in a statement that the amendment would not drastically alter the way in which schools have handled "sensitive issues," and would help the state "avoid the severely negative impact of Senate Bill 6."
"Members of the House wanted to act on this issue and my philosophy as Speaker has never been to force my will on the body," Straus said of the vote despite his opposition to bathroom-related legislation.
Despite the whittled-down version that was ultimately voted on, Democrats refused to characterize the legislation in any other way but a "bathroom bill."
"Let's be honest and clear here: This amendment is the bathroom bill, and the bathroom bill is an attack on transgender people," said state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso. "Some people don't want to admit that. Maybe that's because they're ashamed, but make no mistake about it — this is shameful."
Let this be a lesson, kids – hostage-taking is often a successful strategy. I get why Straus and company thought passing what RG Ratcliffe called "Patrick Lite" might be an effective way to mollify the angry wraith Dan Patrick, but discrimination is still discrimination, and Patrick wasn't mollified by the House's inadequate sacrifice anyway, because nothing less than everything he wants is ever enough for him. Let this be a lesson to you, Texas Association of Business and others – Dan Patrick and his cronies are your opponents, and he will never go away on this. If there isn't a special session or a further attempt at appeasement, he will continue his jihad in 2019. Unless, of course, he's not there presiding over the Senate. You can maybe help make that happen if you want to. What do you have to lose? The Chron, the Observer, the Press, and Equality Texas have more.
House and Senate concur on pension bill
One more vote in each chamber, then it's on to get a signature.
The Legislature is expected to take its final votes on Houston's pension reform legislation within days after a group of House and Senate lawmakers Sunday night hashed out the differences between their chambers' versions and produced a final bill.
Stripped from the proposal that emerged Sunday evening were three amendments backed by firefighters and opposed by City Hall, said state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who carried the measure in the upper chamber and who was among the 10 lawmakers tasked with reconciling the bills. The excised amendments had been added earlier this month when the House followed the Senate in approving its version the reform package.
"It's a great bill that's good for the taxpayers, for retirees and for the employees," Huffman said late Sunday. "I think it is a good solution."
The development puts Mayor Sylvester Turner on the doorstep of a landmark achievement that he has made the central focus of his first year and a half in office and that aims to end a 16-year crisis that has increasingly imperiled the city's finances.
"There is only one step left for the Legislature to take," the mayor said late Sunday. "Houston needs their support for our police officers, municipal employees, firefighters and Houston taxpayers. We cannot afford to fail. I believe the Legislature won't let us down."
See here and here for the background. Basically, it sounds like the original Senate version of the bill was restored. The firefighters aren't happy with the loss of the House amendments, all of which benefited them, but that's the way it goes. There are no guarantees in this world, but this looks pretty set for passage.
Senate wrecks school finance bill
It's what they do.
The Texas Senate has scrapped much of a proposal to revise how the state funds education in place of a plan to create a school voucher program for children with disabilities.
The bill passed the Senate 21-10 at 12:50 a.m. Monday, marking the second time in two months the chamber has approved legislation that would allow parents to use public school dollars to subsidize their child's tuition at a private school.
"It's heartbreaking," said Sen. Larry Taylor, a Friendswood Republican and Education Committee chairman sponsoring the bill. "This would empower some of those parents to have some leverage."
The new language, added on the Senate floor late Sunday night, now includes money for charter school facilities, autism grant funding and programming for special education students transitioning out of school. The changes also reduce the amount of new money into education from about $1.9 billion to about $500 million during a tight budget cycle amid lower-than-expected state revenue.
The changes come to House bill 21, the lower chamber's flagship proposal to begin a multi-year process of rehabbing the state's school funding formula after the Texas Supreme Court called the system constitutional but in need of improvement. The House measure deleted outdated pieces of the formula, reduced recapture and added weights to allocate more money per student with dyslexia or learning English as a second language.
The Senate hijacked the bill shortly after it arrived in the upper chamber, adding to the bill a school voucher program, which the House has opposed, throwing the fate of the school finance fix into jeopardy.
Basically, HB21 as we once knew it is dead. The AFL-CIO changed its position on it from Support to Oppose a few days ago as these changes were first being made. At this point, the House should stick to its guns on vouchers and reject the amended bill. The Trib has more.
Collin County punts prosecutor pay question back to appeals court
Incoming!
The Collin County Commissioners Court has voted to not pay the prosecutors pursuing criminal charges against Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The 5th Court of Appeals last week directed the commissioners to vote on the prosecutors' latest bill before it can rule on a lawsuit challenging the fees' legality. On Monday, the commissioners voted against paying the latest invoice, which tops $205,000 for a year's work.
"We're faced with a black-and-white choice: You either pay it, or you challenge it," said County Judge Keith Self, who sits on the five-member commissioners court. "But don't expect what we do today to stop the criminal trial."
Self was addressing the dozen people who attended the Monday meeting and asked the commissioners to reject the latest bill. Most called the criminal case against Paxton a "witch hunt" and pleaded with the commissioners to do something about it. One woman said she was praying for them; another man called the case "frivolous;" still another attendee likened the whole thing to something out of the Soviet Union before adding, "They had genocide."
The commissioners voted 4-0 (one member was absent) to not pay the prosecutors, who submitted their last invoice in January. They also asked the county's attorney to prepare for their own court challenge over the fees issue, something the commissioners last year said was an option.
See here and here for the background. Who knew Collin County was so full of drama enthusiasts? My bleeding heart is getting a real workout over here, y'all. Seriously, though, it's time for the court to put an end to this nonsense and tell Collin County to suck it up and pay the prosecutors. To do otherwise is to ensure that no one will ever want to serve as a special prosecutor in a high-profile case like this ever again. If you think that's justice, then you really need to re-read your old Soviet history books.