Back to the Future Spending
June 12th, 2007 at 11:26 am
There’s always a little give-and-take when the Senate and House get to together to divvy up the state’s budget for the next two years. Usually that give and take has all the gentleness of two rabid pit bulls locked in a closet. And often it’s poor Texans who get chewed up.
With that in mind, we took a look at how the budget writers on the conference committee settled several of the session’s high-profile issues. Back in April, folks we talked to in the Lege pinpointed the big items on everyone’s radar:
CHIP
The House got its way on CHIP, which means increased spending on the popular health insurance program.
Original proposals:
House: $2.1 billion All Funds, $630 million in General Revenue.
Senate: $1.8 billion All Funds, $575 million in General Revenue.
Final results, according to the LBB’s Conference Committee Report (huge pdf):
$2.1 billion All Funds, $637.8 million in General Revenue Funds for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Budget writers increased state spending on CHIP by $213.2 million over last biennium. That includes $89.5 million in more state money to change the enrollment period from six months to 12. Score one for Sylvester Turner.
One of the other questions circling around CHIP was how the state would fund the $700 million Frew settlement. The answer was to shift it out of HB 1 — the main budget — and into the supplemental spending bill.
Teacher Raises
Difficult to say which side won this one — the teachers sure didn’t.
Original proposals:
House: Passed an $800 across-the-board raise for all teachers and staff and eliminated the merit-pay program.
Senate: Preserved the state’s $100 million merit-pay program, with no across-the-board raises.
Final results:
From a Statesman roundup, state employees received a “2 percent increase starting this fall and another 2 percent the following year, with a minimum raise of $50 per month. For teachers, salaries would increase $425 a year this fall. Their salaries could go even higher if local school boards opt to give additional raises or if they qualify for the $340 million set aside for incentive pay programs.”
Prisons
Original proposals:
House: Emphasized treatment and diversion programs to eliminate need for new prisons.
Senate: Called for more money for treatment/diversion programs than the House ($201 million to $154 million), but also planned three new prisons, funded by $283 million in bonds.
Final results:
$200 million for diversion programs, but the state was also given $273 million in bonding authority for new prisons, which it will almost certainly use.
There is some leeway, explained in more detail in a recent post, for those new prisons, namely, that they may replace outdated facilities instead of being new additions to a potentially bloated fleet of units.
Vouchers
Perhaps this one may go to James Leininger. The conference committee took an end run around an overwhelming anti-voucher vote in the House. A rider the House attached that would have prohibited any money from being spent on vouchers (as opposed to simply not allocating money for them) was stripped in conference. That led to speculation that a state agency, most obviously TEA, could establish voucher programs by rule.
