Hot List

The Lead:

You know the session has gotten serious when the first major bill dies in the House on a point of order.

That’s what happened yesterday, when a major water bill that would have directed $2 billion from the rainy day fund to pay for water infrastructure projects was stopped on point of order, or procedural error, after hours of debate. As the Observer’s Forrest Wilder reports, House Democrats banded together to kill House Bill 11 with a point of order, “only because their demands to put more into Texas’ schools, and fully undo the cuts from 2011, were going unheeded.”

Last session saw $5.4 billion in cuts to public education, and Democrats saw this as their last point of leverage as a way to push for more funds for public education.

On the other side of the water debate, according to the Quorum Report (subscribers only), Gov. Rick Perry went against the Texas Public Policy Foundation—a conservative think-tank and Perry’s traditional ally—in a press conference earlier in the day to advocate using the rainy day fund to pay for the water plan.

How the House will get the water plan funded is somewhat hazy now, but the bill has a small chance to pass on to the Senate if it reaches a vote before the upcoming deadline for the House to pass House bills.

Yesterday’s Headlines:

1. The House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee heard a bill, dubbed the “Michael Morton Act,” that would require Texas prosecutors to provide evidence to defense lawyers in criminal cases and could prevent wrongful convictions, The Texas Tribune reports. Morton spent almost 25 years behind bars after being falsely convicted of his wife’s murder in the 1980s.

2. The Austin American-Statesman reports that the House approved a bill Monday that would eliminate standardized writing tests for  fourth and seventh grades and would trim down testing in all grades. It was a voice vote, and there was no opposition.

Line of the Day:

“Here was their argument. They said: ‘Listen, before you did this, the politics of it were great. The Democrats were the bad guys. The Republicans were the good guys. Now we all look like a bunch of squishes.’ Well, there is an alternative. You could just not be a bunch of squishes.” —U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in a video calling out Republican colleagues for joining Democrats to filibuster gun-control legislation in the U.S. Senate.

What We’re Watching Today:

1. The House will hear a sunset bill that will reinstate, for 12 more years, the Texas Commission on the Arts. The commission manages grants to Texas nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, designates cultural areas and promotes tourism.

2. The Senate Education Committee will hear a bill that would create a pilot program in the Dallas Independent School District that graduates students in three years straight into a career-preparatory program, part of a larger K-12 movement to eliminate the “four by four”—four mandated years of math and science courses—and allow for more students to filter directly into the workforce instead of taking the college path.

3. Senate Education Committee will also hear a bill that would—in light of the school finance lawsuits against the state’s unfair public ed funding system—create a report to evaluate the current funding system and how the Texas Education Agency weights each student’s needs.

The Lead:

The continuing battle against discrimination in the workplace spread to the House floor on Thursday. House members grew emotional  discussing Rep. Senfronia Thompson’s bill that would align Texas lawsuit practices with the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The talk shifted from a calm discussion on the bill to an impassioned debate on equal rights for women. Women reps from both parties banded together in support of the proposal, which eventually passed on a vote of 79 to 50.

The Senate is gone for the weekend. But the House will meet today and will vote on a $875 million supplemental spending bill that will augment state programs through August of this year. The bill, HB 1025, includes $500 million in public school funds.

Yesterday’s Headlines:

1. The House will soon hear a rapidly moving bill aimed at limiting political influence over state funding for technology projects. Good for transparency, not so good for Gov. Perry, whose Emerging Technology Fund has had an affinity for distributing grants to campaign contributors and friends of the governor.

2. The Austin American-Statesman reports that a bill to finance water infrastructure projects, one of the session’s major proposals, may not pass the House on Monday. The bill would steer $2 billion to finance the state water plan.

3. The Senate voted in favor of a bill that would require University of Texas regents to promptly respond to open records requests.

Line of the Day:

“We’ve had enough Bushes … It’s not just four families, or whatever.” —Former First Lady Barbara Bush, speaking from Dallas on the “Today” show on Thursday, responding to a question on whether her son and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would run for president in 2016.

What We’re Watching Today:

1. The House vote on a $875 million state spending bill today. The bill includes $500 million to be allotted for public schools.

The Lead:

Two years after leaving the state’s rainy day fund untouched, despite a $27 billion deficit, the Senate voted yesterday to finally use the fund to restore money to public education, after cutting more than $5 billion last session. Better late than never. Senators passed a constitutional amendment that would allow money from the Economic Stabilization Fund—as it’s officially called—to also fund road and water infrastructure projects.

After spending a majority of the day negotiating behind closed doors, senators reached a deal and voted to take out $5.7 billion from the rainy day fund. The compromise would put $800 million toward schools, $2 billion toward water projects and $2.9 billion toward roads.

Education advocates have been asking legislators to tap the rainy day fund to augment Texas school budgets since the 2011 budget cut discussion began, to no avail.

The Texas Tribune reports that the Senate plans to allocate an extra $1.4 billion for public schools. Put together with the money from the rainy day fund, and the money in the Senate budget plan, and a total of $3.7 billion would get restored to public education. That’s the Senate version anyway.

The Observer’s Forrest Wilder reports that even with this added spending, the rainy day fund would have a balance of around $6 billion in 2015.

Yesterday’s Headlines:

1. The Senate passed Sen. Kel Seliger’s bill that would allow Waste Control Specialists to accept “hotter” radioactive waste at its dump site in West Texas, as the Observer’s Forrest Wilder writes.

2. House members pulled a surprise by first voting down, and then subsequently reviving the sunset bill for the Texas Lottery Commission, as the Houston Chronicle reports. Sunset bills allow agencies to continue operating. The Lottery supplies about $2 billion for public education.

3. The Dallas Morning News reports that 12 legislators fired off letters to three different gun manufacturers in Connecticut, inviting them to move to Texas and bring more jobs with them.

Line of the Day:

“Cutting people off, not allowing them to complete their three minutes of testimony, asserting that they hadn’t read the legislation and weren’t prepared to testify appropriately does discourage opposition, whether Sen. Patrick means it to or not. It kind of undermines the whole idea of a participatory government process.” —Kathy Miller, of the Texas Freedom Network, as quoted by the Observer’s Olivia Messer in a feature on Sen. Patrick’s polarizing tenure as chair of the Senate Education Committee.

What We’re Watching Today:

1. The budget conference committee gets started today. Five state reps and five senators will hold their first meeting to begin final negotiations on state spending for 2014-2015.

2. Rep. Tom Craddick’s texting ban, HB 63, is the only bill up in Senate Transportation today. The bill passed last week after a show on the House floor, so we’re expecting some interesting feedback from the community.

3. House State Affairs will hear yet another bill aimed at limiting how and when abortions may be performed in Texas. This one is Rep. Matt Krause’s HB 3302.

4. Sen. Kel Seliger’s SB 15 has passed through the Senate and will be heard by the House Higher Education Committee today. The bill would limit the authority of any higher education governing boards, including Gov. Rick Perry’s allies on the University of Texas Board of Regents.