Floor Pass

Jen Reel

Dead catfish at OC Fischer

It’s amazing what a good old-fashioned drought can do to the Legislature. This is now the third legislative session that state lawmakers have met during dry times and the growing crisis has sparked plenty of action. The main act, of course, is funding the state water plan, a costly endeavor that has sucked up much of the oxygen (and money) at the Capitol.

But money can’t solve all of Texas’ water problems. Today, both Senate and House committees took up contentious legislation to address two fundamental problems in Texas: 1) Water is inequitably distributed across the state, which to put it simply means there’s plenty where it’s not needed and not much where it is; 2) There isn’t enough water to go around in some areas during times of drought.

The latter issue got a good flogging this morning in Senate Natural Resources. In the Colorado River basin, downstream rice farmers are pitted against upstream communities, primarily the city of Austin and the communities around the Highland Lakes—with the powerful Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) acting as referee. For the second year in a row, LCRA has put in place an emergency plan that cuts off the rice farmers. The severity of the drought, combined with a population boom in Central Texas, is putting extraordinary stress on the river basin.

Now, Sens. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) and Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay) want to make the emergency cutoff a permanent feature of LCRA’s management plan. Their bill, Senate BIll 1631, favors “firm” customers of LCRA (read: the city of Austin and other upstream communities), who pay more to have water available 100 percent of the time, over “interruptible” customers, who get water only when there’s enough to go around. Of course “enough” is a judgment call. And in Fraser and Watson’s view, LCRA’s current management plan is too deferential to the interruptible crowd (read: the rice farmers). SB 1631 passed committee on a 8-3 vote this evening. (Three rural Republicans, including Hegar, voted against it.)

The bill, Fraser said, is “to remind [LCRA] that they have both an obligation and the authority to protect the rights of firm users that are paying a premium for water.”

Under the legislation, the “supply of interruptible water must be cut off entirely” by LCRA before firm users would have to curtail their usage or implement drought contingency plans.

If levels in Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan fell below 850,000 acre-feet, or about 40 percent full, LCRA would have to suspend all water releases to rice farmers and other “interruptible” customers. (The Highland Lakes currently hold about 821,000 acre-feet. If the drought persists, the lakes could drop to 600,000 acre-feet by late summer, approaching the drought of record.)

The idea of the Legislature directly meddling in the river basin didn’t sit too well with Sen. Glenn Hegar, a Republican who represents the lower stretches of the Colorado. “I don’t think it’s the Legislature’s role to come here and dictate how those contracts should be managed,” he said.

The downstream farming communities, though, say they’ve already taken an economic blow for upstream users. Matagorda County Judge Nate McDonald blasted SB 1631 as “bullying” by Central Texas interests. “The heart of this bill is dark,” he said. “This is not how we treat each other in Texas.”

Ronald Gertsen, a Matagorda County rice farmer, took a swipe at the largely wealthy communities ringing the Highland Lakes. “This bill aims to augment recreational lake levels at the expense of irrigated agriculture,” he said.

Sen. Dan Patrick at this morning's hearing on his school voucher bill, and the places where the rest of his Senate Education Committee should be.

A cardinal, a bishop and a rabbi walked into the Senate Education Committee this morning to talk lawmakers into passing a private-school voucher bill.

After last week’s decisive anti-voucher vote in the House, that might sound like the setup to a hilarious joke, but Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston), the bill’s sponsor, was dead serious today. Calling his plan to divert business tax payments into private school scholarships a “noble cause,” he remained committed to private school choice as way to rescue poor children. He recognized that momentum isn’t on his side.

“I may go down fighting on this issue,” Patrick said, “but I will not apologize for trying to reach out and help families who are desperate for a future for their children that they didn’t have.”

Patrick looked awfully alone this morning as he laid out what, at one time, figured to be one of this session’s signature bills. Of the committee’s eight other members, only vice-chair Eddie Lucio Jr., Donna Campbell and Larry Taylor were there for most of the hearing, suggesting little interest in debating the finer points. Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), who’s not on the committee, sat in to carry the anti-voucher banner.

She and Patrick went back and forth over whether the tax credit program in Senate Bill 23—capped at a total of $100 million under a new version of the bill—would hurt public schools.

“It’s not public money coming out of public education, no matter how many times you say it,” Patrick told her.

“It’s not not,” Davis replied, “no matter how many times you say it.”

Davis pressed Patrick on the bill’s consequences for open records laws, school accountability or what the public might say about paying for schools with controversial principles. “What if the Nation of Islam wanted to open a parochial school in a community in the state of Texas and they wanted to be able to have access to this scholarship fund?” she wondered.

“Under this bill that would be allowed,” Patrick replied, “and I’m not going to play the religious game with you, senator.”

Had this been the religious game and not the politics game, Patrick could have fielded one heck of a team. Testifying this morning at his invitation: Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, Bishop Placido Rodriguez of Lubbock, Bishop Patrick Zurek of Amarillo, Rabbi Eliezer Langer of Austin and Cornerstone Christian Schools Superintendent Jerry Echelin.

Rodriguez reminded lawmakers that the Catholic Church runs the country’s biggest private school network, with more than two million students. All the invited speakers were enthusiastic about the possibility of a major new revenue source. The unspoken subtext is that the rise of charter schools—another side of school choice movement—has been especially rough on Catholic schools.

None said they were concerned about being accountable and transparent, if that’s what it took to get the scholarships, though they stopped short of volunteering to give STAAR tests or submit to open records laws. “In itself,” DiNardo said, “accountability is always good. I don’t know what all the ins and outs would be in terms of accountability.”

Zurek recalled the Catholic Church’s proud history of openness and transparency. ”We have never hidden any records,” he said, “in any diocese that I have been in.”

Fort Worth pastor Charles Johnson, with the Coalition for Public Schools and the Christian Life Commission, offered a dissenting view once testimony opened to the public. ”We don’t refer to failing churches,” he said. There’s no such thing as a failing church. and I’m not so sure there’s such thing as a failing school.”

“How’s this not a tax loophole?” he wondered.

“I give money to my Baptist church,” Patrick answered. “I don’t consider that a loophole, I consider that an opportunity to support God.”

“Well, I’m not trying to speak on behalf of God,” Johnson said, “just the Baptists.”

Former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff also turned up to oppose the bill. “I’ll take a back seat to no one on providing choice to the students of this state,” he said—as a senator, he authored the 1995 bill creating Texas’ charter school system. “However, that choice was in the public arena.”

Ratliff suggested vouchers were, at best, a distraction from the more pressing problems with the margins tax created in 2006 that continues to underfund Texas’ public schools. Given the limited money Texas raises to support its schools, he wondered, “Why in the world would we take that public money and send it to private schools?”

Patrick allowed that the “mountain is very high” for his bill to pass, but waxed poetic about the sort of victory it might be: “We are great enough in this state to do these things, if we just knock down some barriers of people who are against opportunities and competition and choice because they’ve always been.”

Patrick was framed by empty seats on his committee as he spoke, his barriers as absent as his support.

Patrick Michels

Texas State Capitol.

The Lead:

The House passed its version of the 2014-2015 state budget late Thursday night. As the Observer‘s Patrick Michels reported, the amendment that caused perhaps the biggest stir was Rep. Abel Herrero’s effort to block public money from being spent on private K-12 schools, otherwise known as vouchers. The amendment passed, with House members voting overwhelmingly against school vouchers. Even with  Senate Education Committee Chair Dan Patrick touting vouchers in the Upper Chamber, Thursday’s House vote seemed a strong indication that vouchers are dead this session.

Quorum Report noted over the weekend that the anti-voucher amendment may not have been technically correct, because money for vouchers wouldn’t flow through the Texas Eduction Agency—which is what Herrero’s amendment prevented. But if nothing else, the vote served more as a strong political statement.

The other story of the budget debate was the blowout losses suffered by the tea party. Liz Farmer reported that tea party freshmen Reps Jeff Leach, Jonathan Stickland and Matt Schaefer struggled to garner support for a few amendments that would move money from various sections of the budget into the Teacher Retirement System—an effort not appreciated by some other conservative House members. As the budget debate showed,  the tea party’s influence in the Texas House has been greatly diminished since 2011.

Weekend Headlines:

1. The Texas Tribune reports that the UT System Regents v. the world (i.e. UT-Austin President Bill Powers, the Texas Legislature and the Texas Public Information Act) debacle isn’t breaking for the weekend—unlike many of our lawmakers. University of Texas System Regents Chair Gene Powell is wondering just how open Texas open records laws are concerning the UT System, and four UT System Regents are calling for a board meeting sometime this week on whether to withhold documents that lawmakers are requesting. Meanwhile, the House passed a few budget amendments carving away at the regents’ funding and authority.

2. Saturday morning hundreds of gun-control advocates rallied on the Capitol steps, as the Austin American-Statesman reported. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, Rep. Elliott Naishtat, Texas Gun Sense founder John Woods and others pushed for more background checks and tighter gun restrictions.

Line of the day:

“The specifics of the actual skirmishes are more complex — the latest fight is over who should conduct what many consider an unnecessary external review of an internal review that was externally reviewed — which means that they fall under the jurisdiction of several legislative committees.” —The Texas Tribune‘s explanation of what’s going on between UT-Austin Bill Powers, the UT System Board of Regents and the legislature.

What We’re Watching Today:

1. Both the Senate and House chambers are not scheduled to meet until 2 p.m. today, extending their long weekend as much as possible.

2. The Senate Finance subcommittee on Fiscal Matters is hearing Sen. Kevin Eltife’s SJR 47, a constitutional amendment that would increase the state sales tax rate and dedicate funds to the Texas Department of Transportation.That’s needed because TxDOT has maxed out its credit card.

3. Sen. Rodney Ellis has a bill scheduled to be heard in the Senate Open Government Committee that would expand the open records act and make clear that information related to government contracts with private companies are subject to the open records law.