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All Coverage

  • Robin Hood: Hobbled, but Not Dead

    By Ross Ramsey

    A week into the special session on school finance, the House countered Gov. Rick Perry's revenue proposals with a combination of state property taxes, new and higher sales taxes, a new tax on payrolls and a $1 dollar surcharge on tickets for movies, sporting events, concerts and other amusements. In return, school property taxes that now average about $1.47 would be capped at $1, and the increasingly unworkable business franchise tax would be eliminated altogether. They raised the estimate of what they think they could raise from new gambling, even as support for slot machines — video lottery terminals, if you prefer — came under fire. Full Story 

  • In with a Bang

    By Ross Ramsey

    Texas lawmakers returned to Austin for school finance, met as two large groups and then promptly adjourned for a week. That stifles legislative mischief while committees meet to talk about taxes and education and nothing else is going on. And it serves to get them out of the way of the nastiest comptroller-governor squabble since Mark White and Bob Bullock formed their mutual admiration society in the mid-1980s. Full Story 

  • Back So Soon?

    By Ross Ramsey

    Gov. Rick Perry wants the Legislature to interrupt its off year for a special session on public school finance, and he says he'll call them back for a second session, and maybe a third, until they solve it. He doesn't have the consensus he wanted, but the threat of a long summer grind might force a fix. Full Story 

  • The Wages of Sin

    By Ross Ramsey

    Now that Gov. Rick Perry has finally and publicly made his proposals for school finance, we've got everything but the date of the dance. Perry told reporters he's not ready to announce that, but said with some conviction that the special session will start this month. April 19 is still a contender, and we're starting to hear talk of April 26. If he were to wait any longer, he'd risk a legislative session in the middle of a sea of educators on summer break, and the management wants to avoid that scene if they can. The implication is that Perry wants to get this thing through the Pink Building in one session, starting this month and ending before the rug rats and their seasonal handlers are free for summer. Full Story 

  • Pencil in April 19

    By Ross Ramsey

    Gov. Rick Perry isn't going to get a consensus in favor of a school finance plan without calling the Legislature back to town, and his aides are telling other state officials to saddle up for a mid-month special session, with a consensus hopefully to follow. He plans to unwrap a revenue plan – don't go calling it a tax plan or they'll bite you – within the next week. That, along with his incentive plans and his local property tax caps, will form the structure for his call on lawmakers. Full Story 

  • Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock

    By Ross Ramsey

    Take a look at the clock: The next available date for a regular constitutional amendment in Texas is in November. Tax appraisal notices go out in late spring — May or so — and people pay their property taxes — or their mortgage companies pay and then send out escrow notices — in December and January. Most cities and counties and school districts set their property tax rates in mid- to late-summer. And then the cycle starts all over again. Full Story 

  • The 3% Solution: Give at the Office

    By Ross Ramsey

    Limiting the growth of homeowners' taxable property value can shift the property tax burden to businesses and other commercial property owners even when cities and counties and hospital districts aren't increasing the revenue they receive from those taxes. We erred — semantically — when we called it a split roll in last week's issue. But the 3 percent limit on homeowner appraisal increases touted by Gov. Rick Perry and others ends up shifting the cost of public schools from Texans who own homes to businesses and, indirectly, to renters. Full Story 

  • Location, Location, Location

    By Ross Ramsey

    Geography played as big a role in the primaries as politics. The Panhandle outvoted the Permian Basin again, keeping new Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, in office for five years instead of just one. Travis County overpowered Hidalgo County in a congressional race, giving U.S Rep. Lloyd Doggett room to run against a Republican in a heavily Democratic district in November. In another, Bexar County was enough to barely overcome Webb County, and with 126 votes to spare after the unofficial count, U.S Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, staved off a challenge from his former buddy in the Texas House, Democrat Henry Cuellar of Laredo. (Keep watching: Cuellar's campaign manager told us "Ciro received a stay of execution, but not a pardon.") Cities outvoted towns in East Texas, sending state Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, home in a congressional race that will now pit two Republicans from Tyler and Longview in a runoff. Full Story 

  • No Talking Until Tuesday

    By Ross Ramsey

    House Speaker Tom Craddick isn't showing any preference for school finance plans, but he's been quietly meeting with members to talk about some of the possibilities. Nobody wants to talk out loud until Election Day, which should tell you that there's no way to fix or even patch the state's school finance system without a tax bill. Full Story 

  • The Best Laid Plans

    By Ross Ramsey

    One way to torture public officials is to say or imply negative things about them while taking away their chance to respond. Travis County prosecutors are spreading the net on their investigation of campaign finance practice in the 2002 elections, adding five-dozen subpoenas to the half dozen revealed last week. They're working with a grand jury that will remain in business through the end of March. And lawyers frown when their clients spit at prosecutors while grand juries are in session. Full Story 

  • Prosecutors Call on the House

    By Ross Ramsey

    The grand jury investigating campaign contributions and expenditures in the 2002 legislative elections sent subpoenas to House Speaker Tom Craddick and a number of other House members, asking for their testimony and/or records relating to Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee set up that year to win more GOP seats in the Texas House. Full Story 

  • Bang! Bang! Bank! Bank!

    By Ross Ramsey

    Texans for Lawsuit Reform, which spent huge amounts of money to knock off trial lawyers in two recent East Texas Senate races, is on its way to a new record. With a week to go before the special election in SD-1, the group had spent $843,397 kicking Democrat Paul Sadler around. TLR gave nominal amounts — $5,000 — to two of the Republicans in the first round. Other than that, all of the group's money has gone into a third-party campaign tearing into Sadler, a trial lawyer and former House member who hopes to succeed Republican Bill Ratliff in the Texas Senate. Former Tyler Mayor Kevin Eltife was one of the recipients of the $5,000 contribution, but TLR hasn't done any advertising touting him. Their goal is to whack Sadler, and they're doing it to such an extent that the Democrat's campaign is fighting a two-front war, against Eltife on one hand and TLR on the other. Full Story 

  • False Start

    By Ross Ramsey

    Ever dent the fender driving a new car off the lot? The coalition of school boards and school administrators formed to lobby state government to spend more money on public schools is looking, unexpectedly, for professional help. Public Strategies Inc., the Austin-based public affairs firm that had been doing the group's polling, public relations and marketing – an effort that put them on the wrong side of the governor – dropped out less than a week after the coalition was publicly announced, citing conflicts between the school clients who want more money and clients who hired the firm to work on the tax bill that would fund that and other state spending. Full Story 

  • School Finance Grows a Beard

    By Ross Ramsey

    Gov. Rick Perry wants to call a special session on school finance this spring to try to cut property taxes and end the Robin Hood formulas that have rich-district voters in uproar. But he's leading with "education excellence" instead of finance, adding $500 million to the price and diverting attention from the funding emergency that's driving the issue. And the lack of consensus over that plan, and over schemes to re-jigger the school finance system, threatens plans to call lawmakers to Austin. Full Story 

  • The Storm in the East

    By Ross Ramsey

    If he didn't have his hands full already, state Rep. Tommy Merritt, R-Longview, got hit with an ad campaign from a conservative third-party group called Americans for Job Security, blasting a proposal he made that would have broadened sales taxes in Texas (while cutting local school property taxes around the state). The ads don't mention the property tax cut, but say the higher sales taxes would "mean fewer jobs around here." Full Story 

  • All Over But the Shoutin'

    By Ross Ramsey

    The judges who approved the Legislature's new congressional map acted like health inspectors who don't like the food in a particular restaurant but still find the kitchen clear of cockroaches and other violations of the health code. The results are a matter of taste; the restaurant's legal. Full Story 

  • Part Bragging Rights, Part Strategery

    By Ross Ramsey

    In the last presidential election, George W. Bush easily beat the field, at least in Texas. He got 3,799,639 votes while Al Gore was pulling in 2,433,746 votes here. That's a difference of 1,365,893 – quite a safety buffer when it came to tallying the state's 32 electoral votes (the state will have two more electoral votes in 2004, because of the two congressional seats added after the last census; state's get a vote for each person they elect to Congress). Full Story 

  • All the Marbles

    By Ross Ramsey

    Picture a room with no windows, with three judges and courtroom staff assembled in one corner, 30 attorneys (yes, really) seated and passing notes around a couple of large tables, a couple of dozen reporters squirming on hard wooden pews on one side in the back, and an assembly of officeholders, political hacks and all manner of aides seated on the other side in the back. At the door, a bailiff has been stationed to make sure nobody comes in unless one of the seats is emptied. Full Story