Gallego tries to frontloan public ed budget

House debate on HB1 continues to plod along, with most amendments either being defeated by substantial margins or withdrawn. For variety, sometimes an amendment will be temporarily withdrawn, brought back up a little later and then defeated by a substantial margin.

One of the more interesting amendments was offered by Rep. Pete Gallego, DAlpine, who would have transferred $4 billion in public schools’ money from fiscal 2013, the second year of the biennium, into fiscal 2012.

That would have had the effect of getting public education funding to about where we need it to be for fiscal 2012. But it would have left an $8 billion shortfall in the public education budget for 2013. Gallego argued that the next session of the Legislature could address that problem with a supplemental appropriations bill, but his Republican colleagues didn’t like that idea and tabled, or killed, the amendment.