The Texas Observer

We’ve always known that Texas is a low-spending state, but now that lawmakers are trying to steal money from local public hospitals, well, it’s getting a little ridiculous.

We’ve learned that the Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) is arm-twisting county hospital districts into paying HHSC more than $150 million over three years to bankroll state operations. If this arrangement sounds a little backward — robing municipalities of their local tax dollars to finance state programs — it’s not exactly what we learned in civics class, either.

The back story is a little complicated, but here’s how we hear the deal went down. In 2005, the Legislature passed a bill that would have instituted managed care in the Medicaid program statewide. This was supposed to save a lot of money (some critics dispute the savings and say that the HMOs sold the Lege a bill of goods, but it all depends whom you talk to.) The county hospitals went apoplectic since managed care would cost them millions in federal matching funds — the reasons for that are complex, and we won’t bore you with them.

HHSC chief Albert Hawkins told the counties that he sympathized but there was nothing he could do — the savings were written into his budget and he had to cut the money from somewhere. So the county hospitals came up with a solution: They agreed to pay $58.5 million to HHSC in June 2007 so Hawkins could make his budget, and the counties wouldn’t lose matching funds from the feds.

It was supposed to be a one-time payment. Somehow, though, that one-time payment showed up as recurring state income in the Lege’s budget for 2008-2009 (see SB 1). Now, unless the budget is changed, the public hospitals are on the hook for three years of payments to the state to the tune of $150 million.

The public hospitals — such as Parkland in Dallas and Brackenridge in Austin — aren’t exactly rolling in dough: they have suffered greatly the past few years due to state budget cuts and the rising uninsured rate. The increasing number of Texans who lack health insurance flock to public emergency rooms for care — that comes out of municipal budgets.

Moreover, we have to wonder about all those legislators under the Pink Dome who profess so loudly to care about property taxes. It seems the Lege has found another way to shift the cost of state government on to local property taxpayers.

Last week, we heard from the Senate Finance Committee how inevitable… er, vital it will be to get started building prisons right away to house all the inmates who’ll be overflowing the system in the next few years, especially if criminals don’t take kindly to treatment. The felons will run rampant in our streets, apparently, the rivers will run red, and there will be much wringing of hands.

It’s funny, but in the House last night, things sure didn’t seem so urgent.

After speculation all week about who would be the one in the House to bring up a prison-funding amendment to match what was happening with the Senate budget, the answer turned out to be… nobody.

Absent the pressure to pad “tuff on crime” stats, and less concern for impressing constituents by building prisons in their home districts, members were conspicuously mum on new funding to expand Department of Criminal Justice operations.

Instead, the Whitmire-Madden push to fund treatment programs and overhaul probation was the clear favorite, with a release from the Texas Republican Caucus trumpeting a victory for common sense in the budget. “Recognizing that certain criminals need treatment, not incarceration, the budget includes $61.5 million to divert some inmates to treatment programs,” the release says. By contrast, the Senate budget proposal manages to fund new treatment options AND new prisons, and, subsequently, a vast tract of money trees in West Texas.

Ana Yáñez-Correa, executive director of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, says the night of no new prisons is a sign of cooler heads in the House. “I think it was very clear by the leadership — from the speaker, from Rep. Chisum and the appropriations committeee — that they really thought about it, and they did not think prisons were the way to go.”

Rep. Sylvester Turner, chair of the appropriations subcommittee on criminal justice, kept a tight focus on treatment options while the budget was in committee, and his office said the House has really been following his lead when it comes to where to spend criminal justice money.

Within two weeks, the Senate is expected to pass their own version of the budget and they’ll go head to head with the House over differences like the prison funding. “The battle’s still not over,” says Yáñez-Correa. “It’s a battle between what some people think is the way to go, which is ‘lock them all up,’ and what will really increase public safety, like better probation, good parole guidelines and diversion programs.”

We’ll see how much pressure the prison-pushers in the Senate bring to the table, and just what kind of understanding they want to reach with the House.

It’s curtains for the prospect of school vouchers in the House budget bill, after the overwhelming passage of an amendment that bans the use of tax money to help pay private school tuition.

On Thursday morning, the spectre of a voucher-funding amendment loomed large over the budget debate, while downstairs in the Capitol extension a Senate bill was heard in committee that would create a $300 million voucher plan in the innocuous guise of a “pilot program.” Instead, that evening the House voted 129-8 in favor of Crosbyton Democratic Rep. Joe Heflin’s voucher ban.

Today’s press (including the Dallas Morning News, with a story devoted to vouchers, and the Austin American-Statesman, which gave it one sentence) paired the voucher ban with an amendment cutting a new teacher incentive pay program. Both are seen as signs of a bipartisan coalition of the Legislature’s rank-and-file rising up against the wishes of Craddick, Dewhurst, Perry and the rest of the Capitol’s once-dominant ruling class.

Whatever pressure legislators felt from a few in the Republican leadership, they were much more concerned with the interests of the educators and parents, who keep them in office.

Rep. Rene Oliveira (D—Brownsville) made the stakes clear by reminding members that cutting incentive money and adding an across-the-board pay raise would be “your only chance this session to vote for a pay raise for your teachers back home.”

There isn’t much finality to either decision, but both make a strong statement about where the House’s loyalties lie. In the Senate, meanwhile, a few voucher bills are still in the committee process, including SB 1000, the autism voucher bill by Sen. Florence Shapiro, chair of the Education Committee, that Senators might find especially tough to resist.

For an issue so rich in euphemisms — you’re never really for vouchers, but you might rally for “school choice” — the House amendment was remarkable for its crystal clear language. The amendment is a prohibition on vouchers in no uncertain terms, without exceptions for at-risk groups like autistic children or drop-outs — groups singled out in some pro-voucher bills filed this session.

Tellingly, when it was clear what was going down last night, House Budget Chairman Rep. Warren Chisum accepted Heflin’s anti-voucher amendment in the hopes it would be added to the budget on a voice vote, thus muting the statement. Rep. Pete Gallego said that he opposed the amendment, even though he didn’t, to force an on-the-record roll call vote.

This has been a battle that keeps coming back up, fueled by a string of celebrity voucher advocates and rallies, but the chances of a voucher program ever making into the final budget sure looks doubtful now that House members have spoken so clearly.

By now we know the issues that stir up the House like stepping on a pile of fire ants: abortion, immigration, law enforcement, school buses.

About that last one. Things must be getting a bit loopy as the midnight hour approaches when a fight breaks out over something as seemingly harmless as Ms. Frizzle’s get-around.

It started off goofy enough. Rep. Lon Burnam, the Fort Worth Democrat, began proposing an amendment that would install particulate-reducing filters in the front and back of every bus. He introduced this amendment by saying, “We have a very — serious — problem with school buses.” And every time he punctuated a word, he pulled out a small yellow school bus and placed it on the podium as a prop. As he described the plan, which would have put $33 million toward filters to reduce carcinogenic particulate emissions by 90 percent, his fellow legislators ambled to the podium to drive the tiny buses around the podium and up the microphone stand.

Then Rep. Ana Hernandez (D-Houston) appeared at the back mic to offer some friendly support for the plan. But wait. Uh oh, who’s lurking in the background? It was Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton), the Grinch who stole the HPV vaccine.

“I don’t want to talk about preventing death, I want to talk about preventing cancer,” Burnam said, firing the first shot, referring to the Repbulican’s preference for pap smears over the vaccine.

Bonnen took the mic and accused Burnam of not using the money in the most cost-effective way to fight nitrous oxide in non-attainment zones, a point Burnam concedes. There followed an oblique, yet fiery, debate about TERP funds, which Burnam’s amendment would utilize, and meeting future SIP standards, which is where Bonnen wanted to put the money. The whole exchange was difficult to transcribe, since the two kept talking over each other, but suddenly Rep. Warren Chisum, the budget man himself, stepped up in opposition to the bill.

Taking the front mic, where Burnam had been. Of Burnam’s plan, he said,”If we use this money this way, we will not get there. You need to use that money where it will do the most good.”

Almost immediately Burnam moved to the back mic to start asking questions. “Mr. Chisum, you know and I know that we’re not going to get there (to SIP),” he said.

Chisum disagreed.

Burnam told him to go check the public record and asked, “How long were you chairman of Environmental De-reg — I mean Environmental Regulatory Committee of the Texas House of Representatives?” That’s about as good a burn as you’ll see on the floor, so you can imagine what kind of day it’s been.

In the end, after more of the same back-and-forth, Burnam finally said he would take his opponents more seriously if they hadn’t frequently opposed legislation to reduce NOX emissions for years. Then his amendment was easily shot down.

I’m guessing House Dems won’t mind. The big headlines tomorrow should read in their favor: an across-the-board pay raise for teachers (at the expense of an incentive-based plan) and a resounding vote to prohibit vouchers. Within hours, the Dems issued a press release calling the vote the death of vouchers. They still have to send the coffin to the Senate for approval, though.

The House just passed without debate an amendment that “prohibits Texas Youth Commission from directing any appropriation funds to employees that have been convicted of a felony,” as described by its author, Rep. Trey Martinez Fisher.

But just yesterday, the Statesman reported, “Top agency officials may have approved many of the hirings, knowing about the felony records, so the workers cannot simply be fired. In addition, Youth Commission employment policies state that workers cannot be fired without a specific cause, such as a violation of agency policy.”

Jay Kimbrough, the freshly minted conservator of TYC, announced last week that 111 felons were working at TYC. He also said earlier this week at the press conference announcing conservatorship, “If i have my way, and I’ll bet I do, those people will not be employeed in the Texas Youth Commission.”

Something’s got to give.

Evidently, what young pregnant women really need is a big hug, and the state should foot the $5 million bill to give it to them. “You ever think these girls might need a momma just to give them a little love? That’s what this program does,” said Dallas Republican Rep. Jim Jackson, referring to crisis pregnancy centers.

Last session, the state budget took $5 million previously used to fund family planning and earmarked it for crisis pregnancy centers, which provide “pregnancy support services that promote childbirth.” The centers are designed to steer women away from abortion, and do not provide the healthcare services that family planning clinics do, like pap smears, STI testing and contraception.

The $5 million was allocated to “alternatives to abortion” again this session. Reps. Elliott Naishtat (D-Austin) and Michael Villarreal (D-San Antonio) each proposed a budget amendment to redirect those funds elsewhere. Naishtat’s would have put the $5 million toward child abuse prevention grants, while Villarreal’s would have put the money toward family planning programs. Both amendments were voted down.

Villarreal said crisis pregnancy centers do not help prevent unintended pregnancies, which is the best way to reduce the number of abortions. Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) said the problem with crisis pregnancy centers is that they appear on the surface to be medically related, as opposed to “mommas and grandmommas sitting in a rocking chair.”

Rep. Jodie Laubenberg proposed an amendment that would make eligibility requirements for prenatal care the same as eligibility requirements for children under CHIP. Currently, if a woman does not qualify for Medicaid, her unborn child can qualify for CHIP, and she can receive prenatal care.

Laubenberg’s amendment would have meant that undocumented mothers would not be eligible to receive prenatal care, even though their children, once born, would be U.S. citizens, and thus eligible to receive healthcare. Prenatal care decreases the incidence of low birth weight babies and allows birth defects to be detected, said Rep. Rafael Anchia, who debated Laubenberg on the floor.

Anchia said that more than 100,000 children would be kicked off the CHIP prenatal care program with the change in eligibility requirements. Laubenberg insisted that the amendment would not change enrollment. “I am looking at the same information as you are, but that is simply not true,” she said.

After a belligerent debate, Laubenberg withdrew her amendment “out of consideration” for the House, given the long night ahead. However, she added, “I will be back.”

Anchia said in an interview that he takes her at her word. He said that it’s “possible” he will attach amendments to her amendment as a strategy to keep the amendment from passing.

When asked, the chair said that it was understood that Laubenberg had permanently withdrawn her amendment, rather than temporarily.

Rep. Linda Harper-Brown proposed an amendment that would have changed CHIP eligibility requirements, limiting the state to allowing eligibility for which the federal government provides a funding match. The federal government matches funds for healthcare provided to children who are legal permanent residents and have been here for five years. States are allowed to provide healthcare to legal permanent resident children before they have been here for five years, but do not receive a federal match in doing so. Anchia said the amendment would have kicked 15,000 permanent resident kids off of CHIP. The amendment was overwhelmingly voted down.

While it’s great that a majority of the House saw the sense in not penalizing kids because their parents might be undocumented, it’s a sorry commentary on Texas and the legislators who carried these amendments that this debate even happened.