Gov. Rick Perry likes to chide reporters who ask about process instead of focusing on policy issues and results. But now he's talking process himself, pushing education and tax bills forward "as vehicles" without endorsing their contents.His standard answer to specific questions about the education and tax bills is along the lines of "this isn't the final product and a lot can happen between now and the end of the session."
The education package's support floated amendment to amendment from two-vote margins to 30-vote margins, with most of the record votes on amendments showing splits in the mid-20s. House Speaker Tom Craddick and Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, designed a game plan and stuck with it and didn't lose on any vote that was on their high priorities list. That was all the difference between this round and what happened last spring, when efforts to lower local school taxes came to pieces.
• The school bill didn't win over any education groups, but conservative groups, for the most part, rallied behind it. They didn't rally around the tax bill, though. The Texas Association of Business couldn't get all of its executive board to run in the same direction and ended up not taking a position on the bill. The National Federation for Independent Business didn't like the payroll tax. A conservative group calling itself "Texans for Texas" that includes a gang of regular allies to Gov. Perry put out an email on the pros and cons of the tax bill; it included one column in favor and three against, including one from anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and another from an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal.
Perry himself responded to passage of the education bill with a vote for process on the tax bill, saying, "To ensure that the effort to reform our education system and to reduce property taxes stays on course, it is vital that the members of the House follow the leadership of Speaker Craddick and Chairman [Jim] Keffer and pass HB 3. I urge the House of Representatives to pass HB 3 and send the entire education reform proposal to the Senate so that work can continue and the process can proceed."
• The final vote on the school bill (on second reading) was 76-71. Every Aye was a Republican. The Nays included 62 Democrats and 9 Republicans, and the strays -- those who didn't vote and/or were absent, included a Democrat and two Republicans. Craddick voted from the chair, giving the bill the last vote it needed to have more than half the membership of the House behind it.
• Grusendorf would let school districts add two cents to their tax rate each year -- up to ten cents -- to raise "local enrichment" funds that wouldn't have to be shared with other Texas school districts. It would be equalized -- a fancy way of saying the state promises that penny of tax raises a minimum state-set amount per student. And districts that wanted to raise more would be allowed to do so, but with two strings attached.
String 1: Only the first two cents allowed each year would be equalized with state money.
String 2: And a district wanting to go beyond the two cents would have to have approval from two-thirds of its voters. That's not unheard of in other states, but it's a new thing here. According to the election wizards with the Texas Secretary of State, no other type of election requires more than 50 percent of the voters for a win. Under Grusendorf's bill, a super-majority is required before a district could raise extra local money from property taxes.
• If the Lege ends the regular session with a school finance package and a tax bill in place, they won't be able to show all of their work to voters in time for the elections in 2006. New state taxes would be in place by then, but it takes a while for property tax changes to trickle down to the level of family budgets. Any changes that result from caps on property tax appraisals will take another year to sink in, if those caps make it into the final package.
Lawmakers have time to cut school property taxes, and that would show up on bills sent to property owners in October. But most Texans don't itemize their deductions on their federal income taxes, and most don't directly pay their property taxes. The rest would likely see a school property tax cut in the form of an adjustment to their mortgage escrow payments. But those escrow accounts cover a mess of other stuff: Other property taxes make up about half of the average property tax bill, and escrow accounts cover homeowners insurance and homeowners association dues and such. Even a significant school property tax cut could be dulled by the surrounding costs. What looks like a 33 percent cut when you're just talking about school taxes quickly becomes a discount of ten to 15 percent off of the escrow part of a mortgage payment. It's still real money, but the political question is whether it's enough to overcome whatever pains result from new state taxes.
• House Democrats distributed a list of 44 Republican lawmakers whose home-owning constituents would have fared better under the Democratic alternative than under Grusendorf's bill. Attached to that were more detailed sheets on each of those districts, with the name of the member, the additional savings for the owner of the average-priced home in that district, and the amount of extra money that would have gone to each of the school districts represented by the lawmaker. The list included every Republican member whose average homeowners would have saved at least $100 more each year and whose school districts would have seen more money coming in. In the end, the House voted 81-67 against that plan (the sponsor was Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston). No Democrats voted against it, and only four Republicans voted for it. Each of those reps was among the 44: Fred Brown of College Station, Toby Goodman of Arlington, Bob Hunter of Abilene, and Tommy Merritt of Longview.
Hunter voted with the Republicans when the full bill came up for a vote, but six other Republicans joined the Democrats: Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, Bob Griggs of North Richland Hills, Pat Haggerty of El Paso, Delwin Jones of Lubbock, Edmund Kuempel of Seguin, and Todd Smith of Euless.