Floor Pass

Senate Bill 11

Sen. Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound)

Back in the 1980s, talk-show radio hosts and prominent Republicans complained of welfare queens riding around in Cadillacs. Now, their imaginations are sparked by a similar stereotype: The drug fiend using her Lone Star card to score a hit. No matter that there’s no evidence that welfare recipients in Texas, who are already subject to strict rules and extremely stingy income-eligibility requirements, have a drug problem. That doesn’t stop Sen. Jane Nelson, a Republican from Flower Mound. She’s filed Senate Bill 11 to require every adult who applies for welfare—now called the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program—to subject themselves to the humiliation of a drug test. Even parents who are applying solely for their children would have to pee in a cup. Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst have backed the idea.

You can see why conservatives would love this idea—and it would probably make for great campaign ads. But there are just a few hiccups. Similar drug-testing programs in other states haven’t saved any money. And it may well be unconstitutional.

Florida tried something very similar, and the results were clear. Only 2 percent of applicants tested positive for illegal substances, mostly marijuana. That’s a much less than the general population. But administering all those drug tests wasn’t cheap, and the program caught so few drug users that it ended up costing Florida more money—nearly $46,000 in the first year alone—than it saved from denying benefits to few who failed drug tests. But money isn’t what forced Florida to suspend the program.  That was done by a federal judge who declared the drug testing scheme unconstitutional. In late February, a federal appeals court agreed, effectively scuttling the law.

Sen. Nelson wouldn’t speak with us about her bill but in a November press release on the bill, she said: “It strengthens our efforts to prevent TANF funds from being spent on prohibited items … TANF is not payment for actual work. It differs from other government programs in that it provides direct cash assistance to qualifying individuals who commit to a path toward self-reliance. Ensuring these individuals are drug free and therefore able to re-enter the workforce is a goal we should all share.”

The Florida lawmaker who sponsored the original bill, state Rep. Jimmie Smith, said the law’s success is measured by the number of imitators. “We had about 37 states calling us and asking us, how did you do it?,” Smith said. “There are a huge amount of people who support this.”

Nelson’s proposal is even harsher than the laws passed in Florida and Georgia.

In those states, children aren’t punished for the sins of their parents. Welfare benefits may still reach kids through a “protective payee,” or an adult appointed by the state who will be financially responsible for directing welfare funds to the children. Not so under Nelson’s plan. Two-thirds of all welfare recipients in Texas are children, and if their parents fail a drug test— well, too damn bad.

Smith, the Florida legislator, says even though the drug-testing program cost money, the expense is “worth it” because it combats drug use. “I hear from people that go to get tested,” he said. “People are in line talking about how they can’t go out and party tonight [because of the testing].”

Nelson’s Senate Bill 11 stipulates that the state will pay for all drug tests out of federal TANF funds. So while the Texas taxpayer wouldn’t be on the hook, Nelson’s proposal would shrink the resources available for the state’s neediest.

Rachel Cooper, senior policy analyst for the Center for Public Policy Priorities, also points out the logistical difficulties in arranging for drug-testing. The state would likely have to develop a contract with drug testing agencies, as well as arrange for transportation to a drug-testing site, and find some way to ensure that the testing would be 100 percent accurate. “This is something that the state has no experience in,” she says. “It’s expensive and unnecessary.”

So let’s recap: We have a bill that will cost the state money and shrink the already-meager TANF funds, may not catch many drug users, and, when it does, will rob poor kids of benefits. And it may be unconstitutional to boot. How about that for a trifecta.

Texas’ successful wind industry could be hobbled by legislation filed today by freshman Rep. Scott Sanford, a Republican from McKinney.

Sanford’s bill would effectively eliminate Texas’ wind energy standards. Texas leads the nation in wind power, thanks in no small part to aggressive renewable energy targets—called a renewable portfolio standard—created in 1999. The wind industry is far ahead of most of the goals. Sanford’s House Bill 2026 would delete the renewable portfolio standard from state law as well as strip the Public Utility Commission of the authority to oversee the $82 million market in which credits for renewable energy are traded.

Supporters of wind power are blasting the bill as backwards-thinking.

“Rep. Sanford’s bill doesn’t make any sense,” said Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas. “Renewable energy has been a huge success story in Texas. We shouldn’t take the wind out of the sails of an industry that’s creating jobs, reducing pollution and saving water.”

It’s not clear if eliminating the wind standard would have an immediate impact on the Texas wind industry. The goal is to have 5,880 megawatts of renewable energy installed by 2015 and 10,000 megawatts of installed by 2025. Right now, there are over 12,000 MWs of wind in Texas. However, environmentalists and the industry would like to see the RPS updated at some point, especially to include solar, geothermal and biomass. Non-wind renewable energy is already contemplated in the law, but the Texas Public Utility Commission has been resistant to implementing it.

Metzger says Sanford’s bill is part of a nationwide effort led by the corporate-funded Heartland Institute and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to repeal renewable energy standards state by state. Heartland and ALEC call their model law the “Electricity Freedom Act.”

Sanford, who pastors a Baptist church in Allen,  is part of a cohort of ideological tea partiers elected in the past two election cycles who preach free-market purism alongside social conservatism. No surprise, then, that Sanford’s chief of staff released a statement on Townhall.com.

“I believe in free market principles, and with Texas’ booming population we must prepare our state to handle its growing electric demand. Allowing natural gas, coal, wind and all forms of energy to compete on a level playing field will allow the cheapest, most efficient, and cleanest form of energy to prevail. Governments cannot pick winners and losers in our global economy.”

A cynic might wonder when Sanford will file legislation to repeal the high-cost natural gas tax exemption, which allows frackers to take advantage of a tax break passed in 1989 before anyone dreamed of tapping the Eagle Ford or Barnett Shale. It costs the state taxpayer over $1 billion every year.

Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston) has been telling us to expect a school voucher bill since last summer. Since December, he’s been floating the idea as a “business tax credit scholarship“—letting companies divert money they’d pay in business taxes to a private school scholarship fund instead.

School groups lined up to fight the proposal. Some Republican leaders noted their distate for vouchers, too, and Paul Burka declared the scheme as good as dead. And still no voucher bill.

But Wednesday, from the Rio Grande Guardian, came word that a voucher “pilot program” could be introduced by—wait for it—Democratic state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. He just doesn’t want to call it “vouchers.” He told reporter Steve Taylor, at least twice, not to call it that:

The other bill would allow academically under-achieving students to leave their public school and received an education in a private school. A combination of taxpayer and private funding would help pay for their education but Lucio is keen to stress that the state funds would not come from the public education budget.

“The question is whether we are going to make a difference for those in need and those who are falling through the cracks. That is what my bills are really all about. It is not about taking away from public education funding. It is not about vouchers. It is more about helping a category of students who have fallen on hard times, who are disadvantaged economically and who need our help to make it through the system,” Lucio said.

[...]

“This will not be considered a voucher system. It will be set up in such a way that we do not use public education money. I do not want to see us being divided on this issue. It is just like feeding needy children, we do not really care where the money comes from. We just need to feed our children. It is the same thing with education.”

Lucio hasn’t filed a bill yet, but the plan as he describes it would be a lot like the business tax credits Patrick proposed last December. The Guardian explains that Lucio wants “a combination of taxpayer and private funding” for the program, which he figures would cost from $50 million to $100 million per biennium and pay for 10,000 to 20,000 students to attend private school.

“It’s still a voucher, because you’re still talking about diverting a funding stream out of [general revenue] that could have gone to funding public education,” says Monte Exter with the Association of Texas Professional Educators.

Exter notes that Lucio would go one step further than Patrick suggested last year, because his plan seems to include state spending up-front. It would take time, he says, to raise the tax credit money, so the state might have to start off paying for private tuition.

“What they’re doing is they’re creating a middle man, so instead of the state providing the money, they launder it through these tax credits,” says Texas Freedom Network spokesman Dan Quinn. “If you want to donate to send kids to a private school, you’re welcome to do that today. Getting a tax credit from the state makes it a publicly funded voucher program.”

If Lucio does introduce a tax credit program, Quinn figures he’d be the only Democrat backing it. “It’s a talking point more than it is a political advantage,” he says.

As in voucher fights past, Democrats and rural Republicans are still likely to oppose it. The vast majority of Texas’ public school districts don’t have any private schools in their boundaries that students could transfer to.

For what it’s worth, Lucio’s district has 27 private schools, according to the Texas Private School Accreditation Commission. All but three are Christian schools, and half are branches of St. Mary’s School in Brownsville.

The Senate Finance Committee approved an extra $1.5 billion for public schools this morning, adding $1.375 million to formula funding and millions more for other education programs.

Finance chair Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands) said the new amount would mean “no net revenue losses for any school district for 2014.” The Senate’s budget now also includes $14 million for the Student Success Initiative—a starved state program for helping at-risk students pass state tests—$40 million more for pre-kindergarten, plus millions more for Teach for America and the Texas Virtual School Network. The Austin American-Statesman‘s Kate Alexander has more.

The committee left just one piece of the education budget in limbo: funding for a new charter school authorizer that would be created under Sen. Dan Patrick’s Senate Bill 2—a seven-member appointed board to oversee the state’s charter schools.

It was a telling diversion in an otherwise agreeable budget meeting to watch a pair of Democratic senators try to make Patrick, the usually tight-fisted tea party favorite, defend the extra cost of his school reform plans.

Dallas Democrat Royce West began by saying he wasn’t convinced Texas should create a separate board for authorizing charter schools. That’s already the State Board of Education’s job, West said. He worried about putting charter school approvals in the hands of an unelected board and questioned how they’d be held accountable.

The move clearly irritated Patrick, who said he wished West had told him about his reservations sooner. (West said he already voted against it once in their workgroup, which should have been sufficient notice.) Members of the charter school authorizing board, Patrick said, would probably need Senate confirmation, and might answer to the State Board of Education—though those details aren’t final yet.

SB 2 is still pending in Patrick’s education committee after a hearing last week. The Legislative Budget Board has estimated Patrick’s bill would carry other huge costs to the state, growing every year—from $24 million in 2014, up to $55 million in 2018. Those costs include students coming from private or home-schooling into a charter school, new funding for charter school buildings, and state employees to oversee all the new schools.

Today’s argument focused on what the new Charter School Authorizing Authority would cost.

“Why would we turn to more government as a solution?” Houston Democrat John Whitmire asked Patrick. “Because I know that’s not your philosophy; I do listen to you closely.”

“Instead of fixing the agency that is in charge of this responsibility, you want to turn and create a new bureaucracy, more state employees, and I promise you this [charter school authorizer] budget will not remain where it is,” Whitmire said.

“I will bet you, whoever evaluates us,” Whitmire said, “this will be a measurement by the folks that advocate less government, that we’re creating another governmental entity. It is what it is.”

“Sir, this isn’t expanding government,” Patrick said, before explaining why this particular expansion is so important. As it is, the SBOE approves four or five charters a year, he said, but if Texas removes its cap on charters, the SBOE and the Texas Education Agency can’t handle scaling up to “15 or 25 or 35 a year.”

“The truth is, you know, sometimes we have to do the right thing. And if people on the outside don’t agree, they don’t agree,” Patrick said. “We’re gonna give poor children in this state who have no hope for a quality education an opportunity to learn.”

There was a time the name “Bush” rang through the Capitol hallways and echoed around the rotunda. Much has changed since then, but Wednesday morning a Bush was back in the Capitol, before an education committee in the Senate chamber.

Senate Education chair Dan Patrick (R-Houston) has been trying since at least last summer to get former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush before his committee. This morning, Patrick finally got the Foundation for Excellence in Education’s founder and chairman to share “national best practices in education reform.”

But between the guest of honor’s last name and his tremendous faith in high-stakes testing, visiting the Senate chamber this morning felt a lot less like reform than a trip back to 1999.

Bush explained the education reforms he backed in Florida, including charter school expansion, and an A-through-F system of school ratings, both of which Patrick has championed lately here.

Bush said Texas shouldn’t necessarily spend more on education, but should make sure the money is being spent according to our priorities. Texas might make sure it’s spending more on third grade reading, he suggested, to which Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) scoffed loudly.

“Hope I’m not saying something controversial,” Bush replied.

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) pointed out Florida’s low graduation rate, and wondering why they’d persisted even after Bush’s reforms.

Bush said Florida’s tough graduation requirements contribute to the state’s low rates, but insisted the state has improved from 50th in the country to 47th.

Patricia Levesque, CEO of Bush’s foundation, detailed more ways Texas could follow Florida’s lead in school reform, including performance pay for teachers who work in a low-income neighborhoods, and eliminating a state cap on charters.

Bush emphasized the need for tough accountability, prompting groans from some senators. Levesque said Florida’s system prizes student progress, and gives extra weight to improvement among low-scoring students.

“If you raise the bar, people rise to meet the challenge,” Levesque said.

West recalled that George W. Bush had a similar approach as Texas governor—one that’s out of step with most Texas lawmakers’ ideas about testing today.

Bush dismissed that, though, saying it takes high stakes testing to order to get measurable results. “Human nature is what it is,” Bush said. “To have no consequence for kids, you’re going to have the same tragic results that we’ve had.”

There’s anti-testing sentiment in every state, Bush said, brushing off criticism of the stress students face under the testing regime.

“I would say life is stressful,” he said.