Update from Austin

From the Texas Federation of Teachers: http://www.tft.org

House "School Finance" Package, With No New Funding For Schools, Faces Uncertain Future in Texas Senate
 
Last night the Texas House voted 80 to 69 to pass a bill based on Gov. Rick Perry's proposal of a business tax to replace a portion of school property taxes.  HB 3 next goes to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain fate.  Many lawmakers are leery because HB 3 appears to favor some business interests (oil and gas, real estate, insurance) at the expense of others (small business, tobacco, and others).  Some share our concern that this legislation doesn't address the needs of our schools.   
 
In fact, HB 3 is just one part of a batch of "school finance" bills passed by the Texas House yesterday that offer no new money at all to support public education.  Even though more than $8 billion in surplus revenue is available, plus another $4 billion in new taxes passed on Monday, not one penny of all that money is being allocated to meet education needs.  Gov. Perry insists that his tax swap must pass before he will even consider proposals to offer new funding for schools.
 
HB 2 is a companion piece that takes all the money from proposed increases in business and tobacco and used-car sales taxes and devotes it to property-tax cuts.  This bill is the embodiment of the skewed priorities that the governor and House Speaker Tom Craddick, Republican of Midland, have imposed on this special session.  It rules out entirely any current or future use of revenue resulting from these tax increases to increase education funding (or to bolster other state services such as children's health care).
 
Meanwhile, teachers have gone without a state-funded pay raise since 1999.  Billions of dollars have been cut from education funding since 2003, including more than a billion dollars taken out of the paychecks of school employees by the cut in their health-care stipend.  Even with local districts taxing to the max to make up for the state's failure to act, local budgets have not kept pace with inflation or with enrollment growth of 80,000 students per year.
 
Another crucial bill passed yesterday is HB 1, which uses $2.4 billion in surplus revenue solely to reduce school property taxes by 17 cents (about 11 percent) and gets rid of a state budget clause reserving $1.8 billion for new education funding. 
 
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the Republican from Houston who presides over the Texas Senate, offered faint praise for the House-passed plan today, contending that all the new revenue raised by the House-passed plan is not enough to boost the total cut in school taxes beyond 33 to 35 cents.  Dewhurst also disparaged the Perry plan's use of the temporary surplus to finance a long-term buy-down of school taxes, arguing that the surplus cannot be counted on to recur.
 
By this evening it appeared that the lieutenant governor would refer all the House bills to the Senate Finance Committee for action on Friday through Sunday, with Senate floor votes coming by Tuesday, just a week from today.  Dewhurst apparently wants the Senate to amend its educational and school-funding priorities onto HB 1.  Passing a Senate plan in this fashion by next Tuesday would leave the House and Senate 15 days of the 30-day special session to work out their differences.    
 
Whatever the procedural permutations turn out to be, our message to lawmakers will remain clear and consistent.  Don't give final approval to any of these bills until a package deal is completed by providing in this special session for at least three basic needs:
 
–A meaningful teacher pay raise. "Meaningful" means at least $3,000 a year, which is roughly what it will take just to make up for the erosion of teacher pay since the last state pay raise in 1999.
 
–Full restoration of the promised health-care stipend of $1,000 for all school employees.  This stipend was cut in 2003, but it is essential to allow school employees to afford a decent level of health coverage.
 
–New funding for school districts, to restore "meaningful discretion" to meet the needs of schoolchildren, as mandated by the state constitution.  So far the bills passed by the House have offered only what you'd have to call "meaningless discretion."  The House would grudgingly give school boards just enough flexibility to raise their local tax rates only once, by three cents, before forcing a district-wide vote on any subsequent local tax increase. Yet it would take three cents a year just to keep up with annual inflation, unless the state starts picking up the tab.  School boards are not holding their breath waiting for that to happen.
 
Visit the TFT Web site tomorrow at www.tft.org  for an up-to-date letter you can send to your area lawmakers calling for a re-balancing of priorities in this special session.  You also can use the information in that letter as the basis for a phone call to your state representative and state senator on our toll-free line to the state capitol switchboard, 1-888-836-8368.