Lawmakers convene in a regular session every two years and usually manage to take final action on the biggest bills during the home stretch. The state budget bill is the only measure lawmakers are legally required to pass, and initial versions of the spending plan have been approved in the House and Senate.
Any state laws to emerge from this session must win passage before adjournment June 1. Some important pending issues are:
State schools
Responding to reports of abuse and neglect linked to dozens of deaths in the state’s large institutions for the mentally disabled, Gov. Rick Perry declared fixing problems at the state schools a legislative emergency. That didn’t prompt quick action, and a bill has yet to reach Perry’s desk.
The Senate is leading the way so far. Senators in March approved safeguards designed to improve care and oversight by boosting investigative powers, improving staff training and placing video cameras in common areas. The House has yet to act on that.
On Thursday, senators approved legislation limiting the use of restraints in state schools and banning the use of straight jackets; that bill now moves to the House.
More controversial attempts to slash the population of state schools and close some of them have been all but shelved.
Texas budget
Negotiators from the House and Senate are trying to iron out the differences in each chamber’s version of the next two-year state budget. Among the issues they’ll have to agree on is how much the state should spend. The Senate proposed to spend about $182 billion, $4 billion more than the House version.
Much of the difference between the two budget drafts is from bond debt, including about $2 billion in bonds in the Senate budget for building new roads.
The House budget authorizes $300 million in bonds for cancer research and prevention, compared to $600 million in the Senate version. There’s also a cost difference because the House used lower caseload projections for Medicaid.
While the Senate would ban state money from being spent on stem-cell research, the House would put more than $200 million into the cash-strapped TEXAS Grants, the state’s biggest college financial aid program.
Unemployment insurance
A measure winding its way through the Legislature would enable Texas to accept $555 million in federal economic stimulus money for the unemployment insurance fund, something Republican Gov. Rick Perry has rejected as excessive Washington spending.
Perry tried to turn down the money, about 3 percent of the $17 billion in federal stimulus money earmarked for Texas, even though he’s accepted the rest of the federal allotment.
Now lawmakers are on the verge of doing an end-run around the governor with legislation that would expand state unemployment benefits to people seeking part-time work and those who quit their jobs for compelling reasons, such as a child’s illness or family violence.
Perry says there are too many strings attached to the federal unemployment money. He says employers eventually will be stuck with the bill for expanded unemployment benefits.
The full Senate and a House committee have approved the unemployment measure, and it’s expected to get a vote soon by the full House.
College tuition
Texas lawmakers are headed into a series of tough negotiations over proposals to rein in the rising cost of college tuition. They seem to have jettisoned the idea of freezing tuition rates, but major differences remain between House and Senate proposals.
In the House, lawmakers will consider a bill that would directly tie tuition to state funding levels. Under the proposal, a university’s academic spending could go up 6 percent a year. That spending could be financed either with state appropriations or tuition increases.
The latest Senate proposal would limit tuition increases to no more than 5 percent a year for schools that already meet the description of above-average tuition rates.
