ISSUE 3: February 26, 2007

That Was Then...

Nudging the Budget Along

Last Monday, the House passed SJR 13 (Averitt/Berman), which extends the school property tax relief enacted last summer to senior and disabled homeowners. On Tuesday, after some procedural wrangling, the House passed SCR 20 (Ogden/Chisum), which declares an emergency and authorizes spending up to $14.2 billion for school property tax relief over and above the constitutional limit set for the 2008-09 budget, and HB 2 (Chisum), appropriating the same $14.2 billion to the Texas Education Agency to reimburse school districts for mandated lower property tax rates. The capped budget is approximately $147 billion in the base bill currently under consideration. House Appropriations Chair Warren Chisum (Pampa) said there is about $5 billion more in revenue than is being spent in the current (FY06-07) budget that is available for FY08-09. Responding to objections about addressing the spending limit so early in the session, Chisum argued the need for certainty now in the budgeting process given the Legislature’s commitment to lower school property taxes. Rep. Pete Gallego (Alpine) called it a blank check, essentially asking, “What’s the rush?” He and others (including former Appropriations Chair Jim Pitts) countered that lawmakers should wait until they know exactly for what they’re spending state money. Gallego said he might rather “bust the cap” for something other than, or along with, school property tax relief. Chisum said the Appropriations Committee needed to know now how much revenue is available, including school property tax relief. “It resets the cap,” he noted. “It doesn’t bust it.” Chisum predicted that the new budget, once approved by the House, would exceed the limit by $8.35 billion.

Rep. Craig Eiland (Galveston) moved to vote on SCR 20 an hour after HB 1, the General Appropriations Act, passes later in the session in order to see what the budget numbers are. Chisum argued that the magnitude of the school property tax cuts demanded cap room now to write the budget. Rep. Mark Strama (Austin) argued that delaying and busting the cap upon approval of the budget is no different than voting to go outside the conference committee bounds, which is done routinely in the appropriations process. Eiland noted that the budget numbers are known a week before debate. Rep. Sylvester Turner (Houston) obtained a parliamentary ruling that the budget bill could be passed on second reading without cap-busting authorization, but not on third reading. Eiland then clarified his motion to apply after second reading passage, but the House rejected it with 79 votes. The resolution also survived a procedural challenge stemming from its consideration out of order on the calendar.

Chisum said he hopes to have HB 1 on the House floor before Easter.

The Senate Finance Committee (SFC) and House Appropriations Committee (HAC) are meeting on a limited basis as the SFC workgroups and the HAC subcommittees confab in almost daily work sessions and formal meetings, respectively (which are not videotaped or broadcast). The full HAC heard a presentation Friday on UTMB’s correctional managed care program, with few questions posed. Higher ed budgets remain pending in the HAC Education Subcommittee, which met Friday and will resume deliberations Monday in order to begin making spending decisions for all institutions. Indications are that both the general academic and health-related institutions (GAIs, HRIs) are being looked upon favorably. Full committee mark-up for higher ed could begin as soon as Thursday.

Sen. Florence Shapiro’s SFC education workgroup considered the budgets of the GAIs and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) on Thursday. Senators discussed Gov. Rick Perry’s reform plan at length, especially the use of special/exceptional items, as well as a Colorado funding approach that focuses on individual students, as opposed to institutions. The workgroup also is mulling a THECB proposal requiring institutions to report on programs biennially. Sen. Robert Duncan’s SFC special topics workgroup is scheduled to take up the health-related institutions Monday, along with the Available University Fund, Higher Education Assistance Fund and the Permanent Higher Education Fund. No word yet on when either workgroup will start making spending decisions, either on the main bill patterns (expenditures by strategies) or riders (special instructions).

Appropriations Nuts and Bolts

The budget-writing committees’ regular meeting times and places, clerks and phone numbers are:

House Appropriations – 8 a.m. daily (usually, and upon House adjournment as needed)
E1.030 (HAC Hearing Room, Capitol Extension 1st floor)
Cristina Self, 463-1091

Senate Finance – 8 a.m. daily (usually, and upon Senate adjournment as needed)
E1.036 (SFC Hearing Room, Capitol Extension 1st floor)
Amy Jeter, 463-0370

From session to session, the two houses alternate writing the initial version of the appropriations bill. The starting point this session is HB 1, but both the SFC and HAC, or the SFC workgroups and HAC subcommittees, have met almost daily. These are not formal hearings but informal meetings in which the workgroup/subcommittee members review and consider exceptional items – formula funding, equity in employee group insurance costs, student financial aid, etc. The work sessions likely will occur for another two to three weeks; then the workgroup and subcommittee decisions will be taken to the full committees for mark-up. Once both the Senate and the House have approved spending plans, the legislative leadership will appoint a 10-member conference committee to reconcile the differences in the proposed budget and present a compromise bill to each house for approval.

Vince 181, Lege 0

“Do I have to hit it?” the quarterback asked, referring not to a pass or a hole in the line of scrimmage but to the gavel just handed him on the House dais. “Yeah, go ahead and hit it,” urged Speaker Tom Craddick (Midland).

Towering over Craddick, among others, former UT Longhorn star Vince Young rather lightly rapped the gavel and laughed. Not bad for a native Texan who, according to Rep. Harold Dutton (Houston), launched his sports career by falling off a trampoline.

The nattily attired Tennessee Titan was honored Tuesday in the House and Senate for being, well, Vince, not to mention the Associated Press 2006 Offensive Rookie of the Year in the NFL.

“Thank God for having this opportunity. It’s been a blessing,” Young told the House. “It’s been a long road. It’s been hard, it’s been rough, it’s been good as well but, every time I fall down I also, I always get back up.” Young expressed his pleasure at the mentoring he does with school children, adding that he is completing his degree at UT, “So you’ll be seeing me.”

Young saw more eye to eye, as it were, with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the Senate. When senators weren’t praising Young’s character and athletic prowess, they were using the occasion to extol higher education opportunities. Before introducing Young as “the almighty,” Sen. Rodney Ellis (Houston) noted that 47 graduating seniors last year at Young’s alma mater, Madison High School in Houston, could have attended UT Austin under the top 10 percent law. Sen. Royce West (Dallas) said he wants to see some Vince Youngs star as engineers, teachers, doctors and scientists with scholarships and other resources the state provides.

Another celebrated rookie, Sen. Dan Patrick (Houston), asked facetiously, and to loud applause, if he could amend the resolution to trade Young to the Houston Texans “where he should be today.” Patrick termed the Texans’ not taking Young in the draft as the biggest blunder since the Boston Red Sox traded Babe Ruth. He added that he wouldn’t be surprised to see Young on the members’ side of the floor someday.

Unlike most politicians, Young made no promises but did offer some advice, especially for the younger members of the audience in the gallery: “Finish, stay focused and keep a good image. Your image is going to take you a long way, especially you men.”

Watch the video: Senate (beg. 14:12) House (beg. 34:20)
Read the resolutions: SCR 15 (Ellis) and HR 182 (Dutton)

Guests Today, Members Tomorrow?

On Wednesday the House recognized UT Dallas students, faculty and administrators for the Government Honors Program by adopting HR 444 (Hill et al.). Rep. Helen Giddings (Dallas) praised the school and President David Daniel, who appeared on the Speaker’s dais and is honored in the resolution, along with Professor Greg Thielemann, director of the Center for the Study of Texas Politics. The resolution notes that “the university has won recognition for its commitment to fostering interest in state government, policy making, and civic responsibility among students in the school's Collegium V Honors Program and the McDermott Scholars Program through the Center.” Not bad for a field trip.

This Is Now...

Big Monday

Top 10
As in the so-called “top 10 percent law,” not David Letterman. The House Higher Education Committee today is scheduled to hear all House bills filed dealing with automatic college admission, including one filed by the chair, Rep. Geanie Morrison (Victoria).

Currently, state law requires public universities to admit all first-time Texas applicants who ranked in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating classes, based on grade point average (GPA). Use of class rank alone, adopted after the Hopwood decision banned consideration of race/ethnicity in admissions (since reinstated as one factor among many) has restricted schools’ ability to evaluate applicants and shape their entering classes. At UT Austin, 71 percent of the fall 2006 first-time enrollees from Texas were top 10 percent “admits” (66 percent of the class overall, including non-residents). The situation is similar, though less pronounced, at Texas A&M in College Station.

Legislative proposals range from lowering the class rank percentage, to limiting top 10 percent admissions to 40 percent or 50 percent of an entering freshman class, to allowing systems to assign qualified applicants to a school, to outright repeal.

HB 78 (Branch) – Requires general academic teaching institutions, by Jan. 1, 2008, to reserve at least 40 percent of enrollment capacity designated for first-time resident undergraduates for automatic admission of high school applicants based on GPA. If the number of automatic admission applicants exceeds the percentage reserved for automatic admissions, then the institution must offer admission to those applicants by percentile rank according to graduating class standing based on GPA, beginning with the top percentile rank.

HB 212 (Woolley) – Eliminates automatic admission to public institutions of higher education based on high school GPA, including all references to such admissions throughout the Education Code. Restores institutional discretion in determining the composition of the student body.

HB 383 (Bonnen) – Requires general academic teaching institutions to admit undergraduate students applying for transfers, if the applicants graduated from high school not earlier than the fourth school year before the academic year for which they seek admission and qualified for automatic admission to a general academic teaching institution by ranking in the top 10 percent at the time of graduation from high school.

HB 400 (Goolsby) – Restricts automatic admission to those students whose GPAs are in the top 7.5 percent of their graduating classes, if they graduated from high school in the 2007-08 school year or subsequently. (The 10 percent threshold would be used for students graduating prior to the 2007-08 school year.)

HB 415 (Eissler) – Allows governing boards of university systems that include more than one general academic teaching institution to adopt policies under which an application for automatic admission to one or more of the system’s institutions is treated as an application for admission to any of the system’s general academic teaching institutions. A university system adopting such a policy must offer an eligible applicant admission to at least one of its general academic teaching institutions.

HB 695 (Villareal) – Defines, for the purpose of determining whether a high school student graduates with a GPA in the applicable percentage of the graduating class, the total enrollment of a graduating class as the greater of the total number of students enrolled in the high school's junior class on October 1 of the student's junior year, or the total number of students enrolled in the student's high school class on the last school day of the most recent semester in which the student was enrolled in the high school, and that preceded the application deadline of the general academic institution to which the student is applying.

HB 794 (Dutton) – Waives the requirement that a general academic teaching institution must grant automatic admission for an academic year if the total percentage of students from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups enrolled as first-time freshmen at the institution during the preceding academic year equaled or exceeded the total percentage of students from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups listed for the fall semester of the preceding academic year on the roster of the school’s National Collegiate Athletic Association football team.

HB 1186 (Morrison) – Allows a general academic teaching institution to limit automatic admissions to no more than 50 percent of its first-time resident undergraduate students in an academic year. If the number of automatic admission applicants exceeds the percentage reserved for automatic admissions, then the bill requires certain criteria to be used to select applicants for automatic admission.

The hearing begins at 8 a.m. today. Watch it live.

Other Biggies

These committees also will hear noteworthy bills today:

House Corrections (10 a.m./Final Adjournment [FA])
HB 763 (Dutton) – geriatric prison communities

House Government Reform (10:30 a.m./FA)

HB 42 (Paxton) – electronic database of major state contracts
HB 598 (Guillen) – notice of licensing agreements in the Texas Register
HB 447 (Callegari) – construction/professional services contracts and performance/payment bonds
HB 640 (Hughes) – state agency expenditure posting online
HB 921 (Delisi) – information-sharing among state agencies
HB 1007 (Van Arsdale) – electronic database of state agency grants

House State Affairs (2:00 p.m./FA)

HB 459 (Miller) – state monuments/memorials relocation
HB 860 (Paxton) – Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act

On Tuesday morning, the House Defense Affairs and State-Federal Relations Committee will hear HB 125 by Delisi. This bill expands the federal Hazlewood Act exemptions by providing new tuition and fee exemptions for children of members of the armed forces, the Texas National Guard, or the Texas Air National Guard who became totally disabled for purposes of employability as a result of a service-related injury. Disability is determined according to the disability ratings of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
A member of the Texas National Guard or the Texas Air National Guard must have suffered the injury since January 1, 1946, while on active duty, either in the service of Texas or the United States. The exemption is available regardless of whether the disabled member is eligible to receive disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. This bill would create new categories of students entitled to tuition and fee exemptions, which would reduce the amount of tuition and fees that institutions of higher education may collect.

Also on Tuesday morning, the Senate Education Committee will hear a charter school bill, SB 4 (Shapiro). It would dissolve each open enrollment charter school effective August 1, 2008 and set higher academic and operational standards for the grant of a charter. New charters would be granted immediately before the dissolution date for certain charter schools, however, including those with a charter held by a public university, such as UT Austin.

Let the CHIP Bills Fall Where They May
A veritable plethora of bills restoring original eligibility requirements to the Children’s Health Insurance Program are to be heard Thursday by the House Human Services Committee. Among them, however, is HB 1132 (Zedler), which prohibits state governmental entities from providing public benefits to individuals until they produce specific documents proving U.S. citizenship, nationality or other lawful presence in the United States.

A state public benefit is defined as any grant, contract, loan, professional license, or commercial license provided by an agency of a state or local government or by appropriated funds of a state or local government; and any retirement, welfare, health, disability, public or assisted housing, post-secondary education, food assistance, unemployment benefit, or any other similar benefit for which payments or assistance are provided to an individual, household, or family eligibility unit by an agency of a state or local government, or by appropriated funds of a state or local government.

The bill states that the prohibition does not apply to certain benefits, such as assistance for health care items and services that are necessary for the treatment of an emergency medical condition, public health assistance for immunizations, and testing and treatment of symptoms of communicable diseases.

Session Snapshot

Week	8
Days Remaining	92
Bills/Joint Resolutions Filed	2,882
Bills/Joint Resolutions Passed*
>House	3
>Senate	2
Bills Tracked	906
High Priority Bills	162

*by one house; none enacted to date

Legislative deadlines and other important dates may be found at Key Legislative Dates.
The bill filing deadline is Friday, March 9, the 60th day of the session.

Gov. Rick Perry has designated eight matters as emergencies (see press releases on emergency issues and additional issues). This means that lawmakers may consider bills on these subjects during the session’s first 60 days, when they otherwise are precluded by the Texas Constitution from passing legislation.

House Committees’ permanent meeting schedules
Senate Committees’ permanent meeting schedules will be listed as soon as they are available.

Duly Noted

During House floor debate Tuesday on busting the spending cap, Rep. Craig Eiland (Galveston) tried to delay authorization (SCR 20 by Chisum) till the appropriations bill (HB 1) is passed. Among the opponents was Rep. Will Hartnett (Dallas), who asked, “Isn’t your motion kind of putting the horse before the cart?” “No, I think that’s what’s happening today,” Eiland replied. “…We’re putting the horse before the cart by going outside the bounds, passing the resolution, and then voting on a bill out of committee.”

A dialog ensued about whether to permit exceeding the cap now or after the House approves a 2008-09 budget.

Hartnett: “Well, if it’s going to pass at a later date, why don’t we pass it now and avoid the uncertainty?”

Eiland: “Why don’t you bring me the budget now so I can look at it and see? But there is no budget; the budget has not been written.”

Hartnett: “You’re putting the horse before the cart.”

Eiland: “I’m not – you are; Mr. Chisum is.”

At that point, Rep. Scott Hochberg (Dallas) walked up to Hartnett and pointed out, “The horse goes before the cart.” The dialog continued apace nonetheless. The House eventually voted down Eiland’s motion, 79-68.

80th Legislature

Information Resources

Legislative Update Home (archive of past issues)

RECENT TESTIMONY

Mark G. Yudof Testimony House Committee on Higher Education - February 12, 2007

James R. Huffines Testimony
to Senate Finance Committee - February 12, 2007

Mark G. Yudof Testimony to the Senate Finance Committee -February 12, 2007

This Week

Monday
1:30 Senate reconvenes
2:00 House reconvenes

Up and Coming

March 9 Bill filing deadline

On the Horizon

May 28 Sine die

Beyond the Dome

Feb. 26-27 System Seminar, Renaissance Hotel, Austin

Tues. Feb. 27 Research and Technology Transfer Showcase, Hilton Austin Hotel

Wed. Feb. 28 - Ann Richards documentary, Special Session, KLRU-TV (PBS Austin), 9:30 p.m.

Thu. Feb. 29 – State of Tomorrow series: "Disaster Response,” KLRU-TV (PBS Austin), 7:30 p.m.

March 8 – State of Tomorrow series: "Tornado Alley/Marine Scientists," KLRU-TV (PBS Austin), 7:30 p.m.

Helpful Resources

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