Donna Howard on Dan Neil's Election Contest
Donna Howard discusses Dan Neil's election contest. Full Story
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Lawmakers Propose Raiding Auto Theft Fund
House and Senate budget writers have proposed closing a little-known state agency that helps prevent and solve automobile theft and burglary. The catch? While they’re planning to kill the agency, they're not planning to stop collecting the fee you pay to keep it going. Full Story
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Fair Game?
Are families out of bounds in politics? A newspaper columnist's recent unflattering piece on Anita Perry has what passes for a Royal Court at the Capitol debating that question. Full Story
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The Kids Aren't All Right
The budget draft filed last week provided the first glimpse at the kind of deep cuts that state agencies could see in the next biennium. As Matt Largey of KUT News reports, advocates are particularly worried about what the final budget could hold for the agency that protects children from abuse and neglect. Full Story
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The Revenue Guesstimate
Lawmakers are waiting for Comptroller Susan Combs to forecast exactly how much money the state will collect between now and August 2013 so they can write a two-year budget that spends no more than that. It's not exactly like opening the envelopes at the Oscars, but the Capitol community will be hanging on her every word. If history is a guide, her estimate of revenues will be closer to the bull's eye than the Legislature's estimate of spending. But this is a dark art; accuracy can be elusive. Full Story
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A Taxing Problem
It's not hard to find strange bedfellows in the Texas Legislature when the bills start flying. Republicans and Democrats frequently cross the aisle to support legislation that they feel will help their constituents. As Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports, the same could be true as lawmakers try to figure out how to balance the state budget. Full Story
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A Taxing Problem
It's not hard to find strange bedfellows in the Texas Legislature when the bills start flying. Republicans and Democrats frequently cross the aisle to support legislation that they feel will help their constituents. As Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports, the same could be true as lawmakers try to figure out how to balance the state budget during the upcoming legislative session. Full Story
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Congressional Clout
For the seventh consecutive decade, Texas will gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives after the decennial apportionment process, which means extra clout after the 2012 elections. With Republicans in control of redrawing the state's congressional districts — and adding the four new seats — they stand to benefit the most. Full Story
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Equal, But Not the Same
Lawmakers will spend the next six months drawing political maps for Texas, doing their decennial readjustment to make sure each district has the same number of people. But when they’re done, some parts of the state will still get more political attention than others, and the voters have only themselves to blame. Full Story
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Now the Fun Begins
Texas won big Tuesday with the release of 2010 census data. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune takes a look at the numbers, which will have legislators redrawing state maps to add four new congressional seats. Full Story
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TribBlog: Texas Getting Four in Congress
Texas will get four extra seats in the U.S. Congress in the decennial apportionment process, bringing the total to 36, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. Full Story
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Dick Trabulsi: The TT Interview
The president of Texans for Lawsuit Reform on why the group spends spend so much money on state elections, what it still wants from the Legislature, what he thinks the trial lawyers on the other side are after and what's wrong with the Democrats these days. Full Story
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The Defectors
After announcing they were defecting from the Democratic Party, state Rep. Allan Ritter, R-Nederland, and state Rep. Aaron Peña, R-Edinburg, were welcomed by Texas Republican leaders at a Tuesday afternoon press conference. Full Story
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The Way Forward
Six weeks after the drubbing their party took at the hands of voters, surviving Texas House Democrats find themselves at a crossroads — on style and substance, politics and policy. With massive budget cuts looming, will they effectively sit out the session and force Republicans in the majority to have all the blood on their hands? Will they participate just enough to soften the blow in the areas they care about the most: education and health care? Can they hold together a solid 51-vote bloc on key legislation? Where exactly should they go from here? And who will lead them? Full Story
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Sell It Like It Is
Republican leaders in the Texas Legislature are insisting that it will be a no-new-taxes session. In response, one Democratic lawmaker is pushing to expand the definition of the word "taxes" to include fees. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports. Full Story
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TribBlog: Texans OK With Some Higher Ed Cuts
A new survey commissioned by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, finds that 80 percent of Texas voters believe that colleges and universities could be run more efficiently than they are now. Full Story
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Single White Female
The force of the GOP wave in November was so strong that black Republicans and Latino Republicans outnumber the Texas House's new endangered species: the white Democratic woman. And if the 16-vote victory of state Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, doesn't survive a recount, the species will be extinct. Full Story
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Marc Levin: The TT Interview
Marc Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, talks with the Texas Tribune about how the upcoming state budget crunch will affect criminal justice. Full Story
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Marc Levin: The TT Interview
The director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation on the criminal justice challenges lawmakers will face next session (and how they can get the greatest return for each dollar spent), why eliminating prisons could be the most cost-effective way to improve safety and why creating new criminal offenses is the wrong thing to do. Full Story
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Tom DeLay Wins!
Yes, a jury convicted the former U.S. House majority leader of money laundering. But his maps — the ones that upended the careers of Democrats and helped the GOP take over Congress — are still in place. No amount of jail time can change that. Full Story
Credit: Bob Daemmrich
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