Grading Texas

While school districts and most state agencies are struggling with billions of dollars in Rick Perry budget cuts, one group of state employees is spending more taxpayer dollars, lots more. This would be the governor’s statepaid security detail. Perry has long exercised his fondness for travel at someone else’s expense, but the tab is rapidly increasing now that he is crisscrossing the country, running for president.

Perry for years has used political funds to pay for his own travel expenses, and that practice continues. But Texas taxpayers always have paid for his Department of Public Safety bodyguards, and they still are. According to a recent article in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio ExpressNews, the taxpayerpaid cost for security for Perry and/or his wife for outofstate trips since his reelection 11 months ago exceeds $364,000.

That covers 38 trips in all, including a family vacation to the Bahamas, economic development and book promotion tours and, more recently, presidential campaigning. The last eight trips covered by the article, which included Perry’s first several campaign trips to South Carolina, Iowa and New Hampshire, accounted for $70,869 of the total. The amount already is outdated by thousands of dollars and will continue to escalate.

The governor obviously needs security. But should the taxpayers have to continue paying for his security on presidential campaign trips? Or, should Perry reimburse the state from his political contributions? In a blog posting, an editorial writer for The Dallas Morning News wrote that since the governor is seeking another office, “a strong argument could be made that his campaign should foot the bill.”

While the highflying Perry has been running up his security costs, he, of course, has been demanding that mere mortals make do with less. He demanded deep budget cuts from the Legislature in education, health care and other important programs and signed the worst public education budget in Texas of his lifetime. It slashed $5.4 billion from public schools and, with it, many educator jobs.

Compared to cuts that deep, $364,000 may not seem like much. But it could help a school district, such as Dallas ISD, which lost more than 1,000 teachers and other employees since the last school year, start rehiring. You could pay about seven teachers for a year for $364,000 (based on Texas’ average teacher pay), and you could pay many more with the huge security tab the governor will have rung up by the time the presidential nominating season is over next spring.

President Obama will visit Dallas tomorrow to promote his new jobs plan, which could mean at least $191.6 million for Dallas ISD. Perry opposes it.

The Department of Public Safety has fought the public release of information about Perry’s security expenses. And, three months ago, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that DPS need only report the bottom line. The details of how the money actually is spent can now remain secret.

DPS argued security concerns, although I believe the agency was more concerned about being embarrassed by publicity over how extravagant some of the expenses can be.

Two years ago, for example, Perry traveled to Israel to accept a “Defender of Jerusalem” award from a political supporter. Security for that fiveday trip cost more than $70,000. Many school districts can hire two teachers for a year for that amount. The tab included $17,000 for the bodyguards’ rooms at the King David Hotel and nearly $13,000 for their food. That would buy a lot of school lunches.

“>http://www.chron.com/news/houstontexas/article/Perryssecuritycostsreach364K2197589.php”>

The recent furor over the San Antonio teacher who called a tea party leader a “Nazi” makes me realize I haven’t been fully depicting the tea party movement. I usually call the tea party an antigovernment group, and that’s true, but only up to a certain extent.

The movement is decidedly antigovernment when it comes to critical public services that are vital to millions of Texans, such as education and health care. Tea partiers want to starve the public schools and dismantle what’s left of the fragile public safety net for the poor and infirm. If you can’t pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, or don’t even own a pair of boots, you better get out of the way or get trampled.

At the same time, however, some tea party leaders are promoting a bigger role for government as, well, Big Brother. They want government, even school teachers, to weed out what they consider undesirables and do the impossible – halt the march of history.

What prompted the Nazi comment during a public forum in San Antonio last week were demands by tea partiers that school teachers report undocumented immigrant students to authorities for deportation. That idea struck the school teacher as a “Nazi” tactic.

His choice of word, for which he has publicly expressed regret, was unfortunate. But it is absurd for the tea party to demand that teachers act as immigration agents. Teachers are paid (most of them are underpaid) to teach, not to march up and down school hallways, clicking their heels together, demanding that children produce citizenship papers.

Compounding the tea party’s affront was the fact that this particular educator teaches in Edgewood ISD, one of the poorest districts in the state. And, it was made even poorer when Gov. Perry and the legislative majority, yielding to tea party demands, slashed $5.4 billion from the public education budget.

And, whether tea partiers like it or not, no less an authority than the U.S. Supreme Court has decreed that school districts must teach undocumented children – not assist in their deportation.

According to the newspaper article linked below, the right wing has gone viral over the Internet against the Edgewood teacher, who essentially was exercising his constitutional right of free speech in a public forum on his own time.

Since some students attended the forum, the tea party leader to whom the “Nazi” label was applied accused the teacher of “indoctrinating students in a very liberal manner.”

Nonsense. He was simply expressing his opinion in an overheated political exchange.

Despite the furor, Edgewood ISD doesn’t intend to fire the teacher. And, there is absolutely no reason that it should. Fortunately, the First Amendment doesn’t make exceptions for antagonizing rightwingers. At least, not yet.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/article/TeaPartyupsetwithteachersNazicomment2194200.php

As most of us know, Gov. Rick Perry doesn’t really care what school districts, their employees and most taxpayers think. If he did, he wouldn’t so eagerly have taken an ax to school district budgets.

Now, another financial issue posing additional millions in potential losses to many districts and local taxpayers has bubbled to the surface, and once again the schools may find themselves at the mercy of a governor who is largely deaf to their budgetary concerns.

This issue has to do with whether Texas refineries qualify for a tax break that would hurt a number of local governments, mainly school districts, scattered about the state. The question has been pending for about four years before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and it has attracted renewed media attention in the AP story linked below.

Since 2007, Valero Energy has been seeking tax refunds for six of its refineries for the installation of pollutioncontrol equipment it believes should be tax exempt under state law. The TCEQ initially denied the request, on the recommendation of its staff, but after Valero appealed has been reconsidering its initial ruling.

Meanwhile, according to the AP, other refineries have applied for a similar break with potential refunds totaling $135 million, most of which would have to be paid by school districts, if the TCEQ ultimately agrees with the refineries. And, who knows how many additional refineries would join the line then.

The lost money would be bad enough for schools and local taxpayers under normal conditions, and it would be particularly disastrous in the wake of the governor’s and legislative majority’s slashing of $5.4 billion in state aid from public school budgets.

According to the story, Pasadena ISD alone would have to refund as much as $11.3 million to two refineries. That is about as much money as 200 teachers (at the average Texas salary) are paid each year. Losing that much most likely would force more teacher layoffs and other needless costcutting steps at a time when teachers, students and parents already are being squeezed.

The three TCEQ commissioners who will make the final decision are all Perry appointees, and they can be expected to do what the governor wants.

Perry, of course, loves to dole out tax breaks and other forms of corporate welfare, especially to big political contributors. Since he has been governor, Perry has received more than $140,000 from the Valero political action committee, according to the campaign finance watchdog group, Texans for Public Justice. And he has received almost $14 million from the energy and natural resources industries, many of whose members operate refineries. In return, he is a big booster of the energy and petrochemical industry. Just yesterday, he asked President Obama to delay implementing stricter antipollution standards that the industry opposes.

But the tax break issue is taking a long time to be resolved, and Perry may prefer to let it drag out a bit longer now that he is running for president. Taking millions of dollars from the public schools to pay for a big tax break for contributors would be sure to generate more unfavorable national media attention at a time when Perry, as he puts it, already is beginning to feel like a piñata.

But, then again, who knows?

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/APNewsBreakTexasrefineriesmaygetback135M2188746.php

This will be a discussion of how Texans weigh their priorities, and at the outset I want to acknowledge the obvious. Parents can value football, band and other extracurricular activities for their children while also valuing the classroom and teachers. I know. My son is in a high school marching band, and I also enjoy the activity that takes place on the field before and after the halftime show.

Two years ago, the parents and other taxpayers of Allen ISD, a rapidly growing school district in suburban Collin County (near Dallas) voted 63 percent in favor of a $119 million bond issue to build a $60 million football stadium plus a fine arts auditorium and a new service center for the district.

The 18,000seat stadium, which is still under construction, will include a highdefinition video scoreboard, an indoor golf practice area, a practice room for wrestling and, according to The New York Times, “enough parking for every car in Dallas, or close.” In its headline earlier this year, The Times dubbed the stadium a “$60 million palace.” Allen school officials, however, noted the old stadium was woefully overcrowded and could no longer accommodate the district’s growth and its strong Friday night fever.

Allen’s residents obviously agreed with their school officials and overwhelmingly agreed to raise their property taxes to pay for the new complex.

Now, Allen’s taxpayers have another choice to make. Thanks to the state cuts in education funding, Allen ISD estimates it will lose $21 million over the next two school years. The district already has taken a number of costcutting steps, including a salary freeze, staff reductions (including 44 teachers) and larger classes.

In case you are wondering, no, the district can’t transfer any money from the stadium project to the classroom. The voters specifically approved the bonds for the stadium and construction of the other two facilities.

Also, in case you are wondering, Collin County, in which Allen is located, voted overwhelmingly (64 percent) last November to reelect Gov. Rick Perry, the architect of the education budget cuts. And, Collin voters elected legislators who voted for the reductions.

To avoid even more cuts in educational services, Allen ISD wants to raise the district’s tax rate for operations by 13 cents per $100 valuation. That would put the district’s total tax rate at $1.67, including the separate debt service taxes (to pay for things like the stadium) that voters already have approved.

The new, 13cent tax increase also must be approved by voters in a tax ratification election set for Oct. 8. Early voting started this week. According to the school district, the increase would raise $10 million a year, which would help the district hire additional teachers to meet student growth and slow the increase in class sizes.

If voters reject the tax increase, the district warns that another 80 to 100 teachers could lose their jobs by the end of this school year, classes will get even larger, bus routes and crossing guard services will be reduced, tutoring will be cut back and officials will delay the scheduled opening of one new elementary school.

The district estimated the higher tax would cost the owner of the average valued home ($220,000) an extra $266 a year. Allen, as you can see, is more affluent than most Texas communities.

“Look, football has always been a big deal here,” Allen ISD’s athletic director Steve Williams told The New York Times, in discussing voter support of the bond issue. “This is Texas. But this bond project is about much more than football. It’s about our school, our community.”

In many ways, the Oct. 8 tax ratification election also is a referendum on Allen’s schools and the future of the community and its kids. Will Allen voters step up this time?