Grading Texas

There is a big difference between practicing ideology and governing effectively, a difference being played out daily in the drama over unionbusting initiated by the goofus governor of Wisconsin.

Closer to home, the Tea Party advisors to the Texas Legislature also are persisting in putting ideology over political sanity, and even the most conservative lawmakers had better think twice before heeding their advice.

According to an item in Jason Embry’s column in today’s Austin AmericanStatesman, the Legislature’s Tea Party Caucus Advisory Committee is urging legislators to not only oppose raising taxes or fees (no surprise there) but also to refuse to spend any of the state’s $9.4 billion Rainy Day Fund to help plug a revenue hole as deep as $27 billion.

The Tea Party Caucus, according to Embry, includes about a third of the House and two senators.

The citizen advisors – 13 Tea Party organizers from around the state acknowledge that the alternatives include “largerthandesired cuts in public education,” but they claim that spending the Rainy Day Fund now would amount to “burying our heads in the sand” about the state’s budgetary future. They say that the Rainy Day Fund should be set aside, instead, for coverage of hurricanes, floods or terrorist attacks and for a financial buffer to allow the state to maintain a high bond rating.

These people already have their heads buried in the sand, so deeply they may never emerge.

For starters, a credit analyst for no less a fiscally conservative organization than Standard & Poor’s, the major bond rating agency, has recommended both “revenue enhancements” and spending cuts as the preferred, balanced approach to digging out of Texas’ financial crisis.

Secondly, a big chunk – about $10 billion – of the $27 billion shortfall is a structural deficit in the school finance system, brought about by the 2006 school finance law, which won’t go away if it is ignored this session.

And, a growing number of parents and other voters around the state are demanding that the Legislature spend at least part of the Rainy Day Fund to avoid stuffing kids into overcrowded classrooms and closing neighborhood schools, which is what will happen if the shortfall is met with budget cuts alone.

In case you don’t know by now, TSTA believes the Legislature should spend all $9.4 billion in the Rainy Day account, close outdated tax exemptions and raise new revenue to minimize cuts to education and other critical public services.

Rep. John Zerwas, a conservative Republican who is the point man for health and human services on the House Appropriations Committee, also knows how important health care and education are to millions of Texans and says he is ready to spend as much as $8 billion of the Rainy Day Fund.

As he noted in an interview with The Texas Tribune the other day, he dare not go home after passing a budget with drastic cuts, if the Legislature also leaves most of the Rainy Day money in the bank.

Were that to happen, he said, “I’m going to get a spanking.”

Zerwas has a sense of political self preservation, which means he is trying to govern, not simply pontificate.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/sharedgen/blogs/austin/firstreading/entries/2011/02/25/_cnn_moneyhttpmoneycnncomgalle.htm

I can remember when the legendary Robin Hood was considered a hero for trying to give poor folks a break. How quaint that idea sounds in today’s climate of corporate greed and conservative Texas politics. The latest bad idea to emerge from the latter (if the current state of Texas politics can be separated from corporate greed, and I am not sure that it can) is state Rep. Gary Elkins’ constitutional amendment to remove Robin Hood from Texas’ school finance system.

The amendment (HJR 104) actually is the regurgitation of an old idea that already was bad when thenstate Rep. (nowCongressman) John Culberson trotted it out years ago. Essentially, the amendment – if approved by the Legislature and Texas voters – would remove the courts from any oversight over the school finance system, leaving decisions over how to pay for the public schools in the hands of the Legislature and the governor alone. If that thought doesn’t terrify the average Texas voter – particularly given the slashandburn mentality of the current state leadership – nothing will.

Elkins, of course, is trying to tap into unhappiness over the socalled “Robin Hood” school finance law, which was enacted in 1993 to comply with a Texas Supreme Court order for more equity in funding among Texas’ school districts. The law requires wealthier districts to share property tax revenue with poorer districts. It was enacted when Democrat Ann Richards was governor and Democrats were still in control of the Legislature, and was tagged with the “Robin Hood” nickname by Republicans seeking to make it a political issue.

But it was later upheld by both Republicans and Democrats on the Texas Supreme Court in an opinion written by thenJustice John Cornyn, now the Republican junior U.S. senator from Texas.

More importantly, the law, although farfromperfect, has improved educational opportunities for tens of thousands of school kids in propertypoor districts. Before the courts intervened in the 1980s, the state’s poorest school districts were grossly illequipped, paid their teachers minimum salaries and struggled to offer the educational basics. And, these districts weren’t limited to the poverty belt along the Mexican border. They were all over the state. Many were in rural areas with little or no commercial or industrial wealth to tax.

It is the Legislature’s and the governor’s fault not the courts’ – that the public has grown increasingly unhappy over the Robin Hood law. Lawmakers need to quit shirking their existing constitutional duty to provide for the public schools and enact an adequate, as well as equitable, system of state education funding – instead of trying to shove Texas backwards by a quarter of a century. They need to quit passing the school finance buck to local taxpayers via Robin Hood and misplacing the blame.

For all its faults, Robin Hood has been a hero to many Texas schoolchildren. The villains are sitting in the state Capitol.

There is still a very long way to go in the Legislature’s budgetwriting process, but eversosteadily, a sense of sanity (or political preservation) is growing under the Capitol dome. (At least under the legislative portion of the dome, anyway.)

The latest example occurred this morning with Rep. John Zerwas, the point man for health and human services on the House Appropriations Committee, said he would spend most of the Rainy Day Fund to lessen cuts in health care, education and other critical public services.

During a Liveblog appearance with The Texas Tribune, Zerwas said he would come close, perhaps within $1 billion, of spending all the Rainy Day Fund because “it’s raining.” With the fund projected to have a record balance of $9.4 billion by the end of the next budget cycle, Zerwas presumably is talking about spending about $8 billion.

TSTA believes the Legislature should spend all $9.4 billion as well as find additional revenue to minimize the potential spending reductions that threaten the jobs of thousands of educators, the quality of classroom instruction and the health of tens of thousands of school kids.

But Zerwas is making a big step in the right direction.

The governor, when last we heard, was still preaching cuts, cuts and more cuts, while talking about “protecting” the Rainy Day Fund, rather than spending it. Protect it from what?

If he goes home after passing a budget with devastating service cuts, while leaving most of the Rainy Day Fund in the bank, Zerwas said, “I’m going to get a spanking.”

And so should they all.

http://www.texastribune.org/texashealthresources/healthreformandtexas/liveblogreformorbust/

You may have noticed there was another voice chiming in about the need for Texas to adopt a balanced approach to bridging its revenue shortfall, a balanced approach that includes finding new revenue as well as imposing some budget cuts.

And, this was not TSTA or another proeducation or public advocacy group that Gov. Rick Perry has politically and erroneously labeled as special interest whiners or doomsday predictors.

The latest call for a sensible, balanced approach to setting the Texas budget comes from Standard & Poor’s, the major bond rating agency.

“We believe that a balanced approach that includes both revenue enhancements and expenditures cuts has a higher potential of success in preserving the state’s longterm structural budget balance than a strategy that relies solely on expenditure cutbacks,” said S&P credit analyst Horacio AldreteSanchez in a new report.

His comments were reported yesterday in the Austin AmericanStatesman.

AldreteSanchez also noted that Texas’ budget hole is not a onetime problem that will disappear as the economy improves. Remember that $10 billion “structural deficit” in the public education budget, thanks to the Legislature’s failure to fully fund Perry’s 2006 reelection year property tax cuts?

Perry, so far, is insisting that the Legislature fill its $27 billion budget hole with spending cuts alone, without even spending part of the state’s $9.4 billion Rainy Day Fund. Such deep cuts would be felt particularly hard in a state that already has a low level of percapita spending, the analyst also noted.

Is the governor listening? Or, can he hear over his own political rhetoric?

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/sharedgen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2011/02/21/more_balance_needed_in_texas_b.html