The latest Texas Legislature news from The Texas Tribune.
The newly christened executive director of the Texas Legislative Council on how the upcoming session is going to be "really, really difficult," how technology has changed her job, whether redistricting maps can get drawn and agreed upon by June and how she keeps politics from impacting her work. Full Story
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The newly christened executive director of the Texas Legislative Council on how the upcoming legislative session is going to be difficult, how technology has changed her job, whether redistricting maps can get drawn and agreed upon by June and how she keep politics from impacting her job. Full Story
Ask House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, and he'll tell you: The budget he and his fellow finance types will put forward in a few weeks confirms fears that carnage is looming. "We're making huge cuts," he told a Tea Party group last week. Full Story
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Grissom (with Tedesco of the San Antonio Express-News) on high-speed police chases on the Texas-Mexico border, Hu and Hamilton draw a roadmap through the tangle of the Speaker's Race, M. Smith on the trouble with electronic supplements to science textbooks, Ramshaw interviews patient privacy advocate Deborah Peel, Aguilar on Cuba and Texas and trade, Hamilton on the latest in biotech from Texas A&M University, Stiles on who's in the money in Congress, Hu on the controversial renewal of the state lottery contract, yours truly on Tom DeLay's victory in the face of his conviction on money-laundering charges, and E. Smith with a Thanksgiving cornucopia of TribLive videos: The best of our best from November 22 to 26, 2010. Full Story
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Yes, a jury convicted the former U.S. House majority leader of money laundering. But his maps — the ones that upended the careers of Democrats and helped the GOP take over Congress — are still in place. No amount of jail time can change that. Full Story
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Tom DeLay, the former U.S. House majority leader from Sugar Land, was convicted on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering this afternoon. Full Story
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Remember the ABCs? Anybody But Craddick? Not you've got ABS folks, who don't like Republican House Speaker Joe Straus. Full Story
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The latest salvo in the speaker race is a slick internet video that argues the House should have a more conservative speaker than Joe Straus. And it suggests the fight to come, knocking over dominoes with the pictures of "Republicans In Name Only" who could be targets in the GOP primaries two years from now: Keffer, Truitt, Geren, Solomons, Eissler, Cook... Full Story
Penny-pinchers at the State Board of Education opted to incorporate changes to the high school science curriculum via lower-cost electronic supplements to existing textbooks instead of spending up to $500 million to have new ones printed. Trouble is, many schools lack the technological capability to use them. Full Story
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A House committee heard testimony yesterday on whether or a lawmaker used the threat redistricting as a tactic to coerce a colleague into supporting Speaker Joe Straus. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports on the testimony — and what's next in the investigation. Full Story
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Disability advocates want Texas lawmakers to put the term "retarded" in the "word graveyard" with other derogatory terms. Full Story
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In a House Ethics Committee meeting Tuesday, state Rep. Chuck Hopson, R-Jacksonville, revealed that state Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, is the man behind an alleged threat that lawmakers who fail to support Speaker Joe Straus for re-election could face retribution through redistricting. Hopson named Phillips before the panel went into a closed executive session to discuss the allegation. Full Story
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State budget writers will propose eliminating agencies, cutting others to a quarter of their current size and mandating furloughs for state employees to balance the budget without raising taxes or using the state's Rainy Day Fund, Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts told a hometown crowd. Full Story
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For this week's installment of our non-scientific survey of political and policy insiders on issues of the moment, we focused on the budget. Specifically, we asked how big the shortfall is going to be, how the Legislature will close the gap and which areas of the budget are most likely to be cut. Full Story
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Citing performance issues and alleging a conflict of interest, critics blasted Friday's decision by the Texas Lottery Commission to renew a 10-year operations contract worth up to $1 billion with Rhode Island-based GTECH Corporation, the state’s primary lottery vendor since its 1992 inception. Full Story
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House Speaker Joe Straus is sooo conservative ... that he advertises on the Drudge Report. Full Story
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The bomb-throwing president of Empower Texas and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility on why Joe Straus hasn't proved himself as a conservative, why the entry of outside groups like his own into the insiders' race for speaker is proper and what he'd like to see out of a Texas House with 99 GOP members in it. Full Story
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An interview with Michael Quinn Sullivan, president of Texans for Fiscal Responsibility and Empower Texans. Full Story
It was a bad Election Night for residents of the largest city in McLennan County. After years of regional dominance, their congressional seat belongs to Bryan, halfway to Houston; their state senate seat is 86 miles away in Granbury; and one of their House seats has moved three counties east, to Centerville. Full Story
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To the list of things that Rick Perry shows contempt for — Barack Obama’s leadership abilities, excessive federal regulation, coyotes that interrupt his morning jog — add this surprising one: George W. Bush’s ideological disposition. The governor seems to go out of his way to criticize his predecessor as insufficiently conservative. Bush, for his part, makes no mention of Perry in his memoir. "There's certainly no love lost between these two men," says UT presidential scholar Bruce Buchanan. Full Story
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