The House kicked out its budget early Friday morning after 18 hours of debate; the Senate Finance Committee planned to send its version to the printers a few hours later. Put the Senate plan in play the week after the Easter break, and the conference committee that really writes the budget will get started. Full Story
A $150.1 billion state budget is on its way to the full House, which already approved another $14.2 billion spending plan for school finance. Those bills, along with a "supplement" appropriations bill to patch thin spots in the current budget, would bring state spending for the next two years to about $164.3 billion, up from $144.6 billion in the current budget. Full Story
Pity Tom Pauken. The Dallas lawyer tapped to head a task force on property tax reform turned in his report in January, with plenty of time for lawmakers to work on it. The governor listed property tax reform as a priority in all of his pre-session interviews with reporters. The Guv mentioned it again in his state of the state speech. Full Story
Legislation that would expand legal gambling on two fronts while also funding a quarter of a million college scholarships could go to voters if two-thirds of the Texas Legislature approves. Full Story
Rick Perry and George W. Bush are the only recent governors to stay in office long enough to name every member of every board and commission — every appointed official. It takes six straight years in office to go all the way through the batting order, and when a governor is done, it all belongs, for better or for worse, to that governor. Full Story
The call for a mandated vaccine against HPV in pre-teen girls might get the opposite result. A House committee voted this week to make it against the law to mandate the shots. The only company with a government-approved vaccination said it'd stop its 50-state lobbying effort on the drug. The issue leapt from Texas to national news and talk shows and all that in a matter of days and — more importantly — stayed there. And Gov. Rick Perry's power to issue executive orders found a tall speed bump in an Austin courtroom, when a state district judge said —in an unrelated case — that a state agency isn't required to follow Perry's orders. Full Story
It's usually true that the Lege is a slow-moving machine, but not always. Look at the moves to jump around constitutional constraints on increased state spending: Mired two weeks ago, coupled with a tax break for elderly homeowners one week ago, and now out of the Senate, out of the House Appropriations Committee and on its way to a floor vote next week. Full Story
Ask Gov. Rick Perry for advice. He managed to bury headline-grabbing proposals for the sale of the state lottery, a $3 billion war on cancer, $100 million for border security, a $2.5 billion tax rebate, and health care for up to two million of the state's working poor behind a vaccine for pre-teen girls against a sexually transmitted disease. Full Story
The last act, usually, of the "fixin' to fixin' to" phase of every legislative session is the governor's State of the State speech. They're hard to remember, for the most part, because the Legislature has a tradition of listening politely, clapping a lot, and then ignoring some or all of the items on a given governor's wish list. But some of it gets into the wiring, and into the ears of lawmakers and even, sometimes, the public. Full Story
Gov. Rick Perry's appraisal reforms don't have nearly the momentum of last year's school finance package, though both came out of task forces headed by political figures and comprised of business folks. School finance was hard to crack, but the Legislature wasn't split on the need to do something. This time, you'll find disagreement on the nature of the problem and the proposed solutions. This package will be harder to pass. Full Story
It probably tickles the Yankees when a little ice shuts down the Texas government this way, but until the cabin fever set in, it offered a nice break from the head-banging that went on during the first week of the legislative session. Full Story
Gov. Rick Perry starts the session with higher education, health care, border security, appraisals and the state budget on his list of things to do. The governor, who'll be sworn in for his second full four-year term next week, lived through a day of serial interviews with reporters, taking small bunches for a half-hour at a time. You'll see varied reports depending on what he said to which group and what they thought was important. Some high points from our interview: Full Story
One of the rules of political reporting: Don't predict the future. Full Story
Democrat Ciro Rodriguez soundly beat U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio in an election triggered by redrawn congressional districts. Full Story
While business groups were trying to temper efforts to seal the border between the U.S. and Mexico this week, and Gov. Rick Perry was puncturing anti-immigrant proposals from the Legislature, the state's chief financial officer was saying undocumented immigrants are a pretty good deal for Texas. Full Story
We'll have to wait a month or more to see how state legislative leaders handle a budget that's bound to grow 30 percent or more. Full Story
It often happens in races for the Texas House and the Texas Senate: Losers spend more than winners in tight races. Not always, but often enough to make this exercise interesting. Full Story
State spending on school tax relief could force legislators to trample constitutional limits on budget growth next year, vexing conservatives who want both tax relief and limits on government growth. Full Story
The blue wave that swept the country on Election Day wasn't as obvious in Texas, where Republicans won all of the statewide offices on the ballot and held all but a couple of seats in the congressional delegation and the state Senate. Full Story
Face it: This is a political off year. There's one race at the top of the ballot, and the polls, if they're right, have been remarkably stagnant for a long time. There's movement back there in the race for second, but the overall outlook is a lot like it was months ago. There's one race in the Legislature that could change how things operate — it's in the Senate — and a handful of races in the House that look to change the partisan makeup only slightly. Most of the statewide races are yawners, though it's a nervous time for Republicans at the low end of the statewide ballot. Full Story