The latest Texas Legislature news from The Texas Tribune.
The Texas House has unveiled a $156.4 billion budget that's $31.1 billion smaller than the current two-year spending plan — a drop of 16.6 percent. The proposed budget came with $1.2 billion in recommendations for savings and new revenue from the Legislative Budget Board. Full Story
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Watch this tutorial to learn how to use our bill tracker app to explore legislation filed in the Texas House and Senate. Full Story
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Full, unedited video of Gov. Rick Perry's Tuesday inauguration speech. Full Story
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The Legislative Budget Board has begun distributing (to legislators — not to the public) its recommendations for how to save money and raise money to help balance the 2012-13 state budget. They plan to distribute copies of the budget itself (again, to lawmakers only) later tonight, and all of the documents will be available online to the public tomorrow morning. The details are still coming in, but here are some of the headlines from the LBB's Government Effectiveness and Efficiency Recommendations. Full Story
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The Legislature's starting budget will apparently include proposals to cancel popular back-to-school sales tax holidays, cut discounts for retailers who remit sales taxes early, allow sales of liquor on Sundays to increase revenue from taxes on alcohol, cut the state's subsidy of dependent insurance premiums for state employees and lower the tax breaks for energy companies that take on certain high-cost gas drilling projects, sources say. Full Story
Texans heard from two familiar pols today: Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. We turned their prepared remarks into word clouds to help visualize the tone and rhetoric of their inaugural speeches at the Capitol. Full Story
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Here's the full text of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's inauguration speech, as written. Full Story
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Gov. Rick Perry says the state has to live within its means and that "there's nothing new" about that. Full Story
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With some top state leaders warning that Texas' dire fiscal situation will lead to the loss of several thousand state jobs, House budget writers will release their first draft budget today. As Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports, big job cuts may be just the beginning. Full Story
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With some top state leaders warning that Texas’ dire fiscal situation will lead to the loss of several thousand state jobs, House budget writers will release their first draft budget today. As Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports, big job cuts may be just the beginning. Full Story
As be begins his second decade as governor, Rick Perry's plan is to deal with the basics: to make sure the state is on a smooth economic path, to pass a balanced state budget, to coax the federal government into loosening its purse strings and tightening its security on the Mexican border. Full Story
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Gov. Rick Perry says he and California Gov. Jerry Brown have been comparing notes on the budget, Medicaid, and the federal government. Full Story
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Gov. Rick Perry’s focus on sanctuary cities — cities that don't allow their police officers to enforce federal immigration laws — could offer him safe passage through the contentious immigration debate. But it will be tricky. Full Story
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The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee on what lawmakers should do with the Rainy Day Fund. Full Story
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The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee on why he'd back legalized gambling as a source of revenue for the state's coffers. Full Story
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The Waxahachie Republican talks about the size of the budget shortfall, the possibility of new revenue sources and why he'd support legalized gambling. Full Story
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For our latest TribLive conversation, I interviewed the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee about the budget shortfall, the possibility of new revenue sources, whether Joe Straus will retaliate against members who opposed him and whether Tea Party threats should be taken seriously. Full Story
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Despite the budget crisis, thousands of Texas teachers know their jobs are safe. They possess a "continuing contract" — the public education equivalent of tenure. Many of the most senior educators are employed under these contracts, which may complicate the efforts of some districts to cut personnel costs. Full Story
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The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee on the Tea Partiers and other hyperconservative types who oppose him in his district. Full Story
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If the lieutenant governor's job comes open in 2014, Comptroller Susan Combs is interested. But that's a long way off, she says, and everything has to line up just right. Full Story
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