The property tax cut -- and presumably, the tax bill to pay for it -- are shrinking in the upper chamber.The newest version of the Senate's education reform bill, unveiled publicly by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, today, calls for a 20-cent cut in local school property taxes in 2005-06, followed by another 20-cent cut in 2006-07. That's in place of the 50-cent cut they were shooting for earlier in the legislative session. The Senate plan still calls for a state property tax for schools, set (ultimately) at 85 cents per $100 in property valuation. School districts would be allowed to add on as much as 25 cents, using up to 15-cents of that for local enrichment. Teachers would get a $1,000 pay hike and the $1,000 health insurance stipend -- granted and then halved by previous Legislatures -- would be restored. If the statewide property tax passes (a constitutional amendment, it would require voter approval), teachers would get another $1,500 per year raise in 2006-07. Think they'd campaign for that amendment? And the bill also includes incentive pay of up to $500 for teachers. The House bill got rid of the "weights" used to increase per-student funding for kids with special problems ranging from language issues to physical handicaps; the Senate kept them. The Senate wants charter schools rebooted, bringing them under the same accountability measures used for regular public schools so they can be compared, and giving them up to $1,000 per student if they reach "exemplary" status and hold that level for several years. The "runs" showing the effect of the bill on each of the state's 1,000+ school districts for each of the first two years can be found at these links: • www.texasweekly.com/documents/FY06 LBB District Runs under CSHB 2_April 25.pdf ? www.texasweekly.com/documents/FY07 LBB District Runs under CSHB 2_April 25.pdf That legislation could reach the full Senate for a vote within a week.

The tax bill, supposed to be available by now, isn't. It won't be, probably, until the end of the week. And the reason is pretty good: The Senate is trying to avoid a hurdle that tripped the House, asking the comptroller's number-crunchers to vet the numbers and the language in the bill before the Senate actually votes on it.The House, you'll remember, voted out a $12 billion spending bill and then a tax bill they thought was cut to match. But Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn rolled in a grenade, saying flaws in the drafting of the tax bill left it some $4 billion short. There was a bottomless flap -- no telling who's lying and not -- over whether the comptroller's folks had pre-approved the numbers. In the end, the tax collector said the tax bill would fall short, and that's that. The Senate isn't taking chances. They've got the comptroller's folks looking at actual language and cranking numbers based on the actual words that'll be up for a vote. That spadework is taking some time. The Senate's Finance Committee wants to unveil the tax bill on Friday and take testimony on it that day, Saturday, and maybe Monday. The dates could slip again, but that's the plan. Meanwhile, the Senate Education Committee plans to vote out the school finance bill on Thursday. Both bills could come to the full Senate next week. In practical terms, that would leave three weeks to try to square up the differences between the House's tax bill and the Senate's. The Senate tax bill's details aren't out, but the big pieces include a business activity tax, or BAT (dubbed the Big Ass Tax by business lobsters, since it would raise a huge amount of money). Senators prefer to call it a reformed franchise tax, but they don't write finance and economics textbooks. Partnerships of various flavors -- not taxed under current law -- would be taxed under the Senate's scheme. The sales tax would be raised a half-cent; whether new goods and services are included for the first time depends on which version of the tax bill you see, but no expansions of the sales tax were in the last version described to us. Taxes would increase on cigarettes -- though not as much as the $1 per pack added by the House -- and also on alcoholic beverages, which weren't addressed in the tax bill.

Nate Crain, the chairman of Dallas County's Republican Party, emailed fellow Republicans urging them to tell the potential Dallas candidate, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, to stay out of next year's gubernatorial primary."In recent weeks, the tone of the Hutchison campaign has changed dramatically," Crain wrote. "Republican County Chairman and Republican Elected officials have been treated in a shameful and disappointing manner." His email doesn't mention Gov. Rick Perry. Crain says he supports Perry's reelection, but he's taking pains not to choose between the Guv and the senior U.S. senator from Texas. He wants both to seek reelection and avoid an intra-party war, he says. Both Crain and his wife are financial supporters of both Hutchison and Perry. Christina Melton Crain is the chairwoman of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Perry named her to the board four years ago and put her in the middle chair almost two years later. According to the Texas Ethics Commission, the Crains have given $169,715.87 to Texans for Rick Perry over the last five years. They've contributed $8,000 Hutchison, maxing out their contributions in the last two cycles (federals have limits). And they donated $20,000 to Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn since 2000, though they haven't given to her since 2002. She's another possible candidate against Perry. His email suggests estrangement between him and Hutchison's gang. He told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram that his open support for Perry's reelection got him disinvited from Hutchison events. He won't say who disinvited him, and the Hutchison campaign told the paper he's welcome to come to their fundraiser. In his email, he wrote that their denial of the conversation is part of a pattern. Hutchison denied having a personal conversation with Midland County GOP Chairwoman Sue Brannon a few weeks ago; Brannon told the Midland Reporter-News that Hutchison said she wanted to come back to Texas so she could raise her kids here. And an aide to Hutchison last month disputed state Sen. Bob Deuell's account, in the Austin American-Statesman, of a conversation between Deuell and the aide in Washington, D.C., during the presidential inauguration. That aide, David Beckwith, didn't deny the conversation, but his version and Deuell's were quite different (Deuell said Beckwith made a "veiled threat" about his political future after Deuell said he supported Perry for reelection; Beckwith said he didn't). The Hutchison folks have said Perry supporters are concocting the tales. And she has stopped short of saying she'll run for governor; for about a year, she's been telling people she'll announce her future plans sometime after the end of the legislative session. She didn't say she'd announce anything in June, but that's how the political fortune-tellers generally interpret her timing. Crain said he sent the email to about 180 GOP county chairs in Texas -- everybody with a known email address. He says the Perry camp didn't prompt him to write. But he says the state GOP shouldn't have to pick between the two: "It would be very difficult for the Party if she were to run. It would create animosity at the grass roots and at the finance level that we've never seen before."

Wanna play the Texas lottery on the Internet? Fuggetaboutit.House budgeteers working on HB 3540 included provisions that would allow Texans to play existing lottery games via the Internet. But when we asked about it, House Speaker Tom Craddick issued a statement saying the provision is unworkable and that Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, will take it out of the bill. "Upon further researching this recommendation, Chairman Pitts learned that technology is not currently available to support the purchase of lottery tickets over the Internet. As a result, this recommendation will be reconsidered and lottery sales over the Internet will be taken out of CSHB 3540." It was supposed to raise $100 million or more, and it's not clear what will be used to patch that hole. That legislation is a mixed bag of budget tricks, transfers, and such designed to help balance the budget that's being hammered out by House and Senate negotiators. Whether the Internet lotto money is needed isn't clear: The final numbers won't fall into place until budgeteers know the fates of the budget bill, the school finance bill, the tax bill, the "supplemental" budget bill, and, of course, HB 3540.

The House wants cities and counties to be more responsive to voters when increasing government spending, but left school districts out of the deal and never even talked about extending the "truth-in-taxation" idea to state government spending.Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, first put the bill in front of the House last week, but put it on hold after long arguments and the success of several hostile amendments. He returned with House Speaker Tom Craddick weighing in on every important vote, and that was all the difference. The House undid some of the earlier damage and voted out a bill that lowers the number of signatures needed for a spending rollback election and that lowers the amount of growth governments are allowed before such rollbacks are allowed. Current law lets voters petition for rollbacks if tax revenues rise eight percent or more. Isett's legislation would lower that to either five percent or the federal Consumer Price Index, at the local government's option. Taxpayers could demand a rollback election by getting signatures from registered voters equal to 10 percent of the voters who cast ballots in the most recent gubernatorial election. The legislation applies to all local governments, with the large exception of public school districts -- generally the biggest number on local property tax bills. And it doesn't apply to state government; at the moment, House and Senate negotiators are working on a budget plan that calls for spending increases of 18.4 percent. If the school finance package passes, with its replacement of local taxes with state taxes, state spending would increase about 27.8 percent this year over what was approved two years ago. That's off to the Senate, where similar legislation has remained in committee so far this session.

An example of the ads that ran against Rep. Tommy Merritt, R-Tyler, in last year's special election for Texas Senate. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, won the Senate spot.

Minton says he didn't say what they said he said.Travis County prosecutors are poking through the remains of the 2002 elections to see whether groups trying to help Republicans take over state government did so by illegally using corporate money or by mixing third-party and campaign money illegally. The efforts succeeded and the GOP majority made Tom Craddick the first GOP speaker since the civil war. A rumor around the Capitol had Roy Minton, the attorney Craddick hired to deal with those inquiries, saying HB 1348 would be bad for the Republicans being investigated. It ain't so, he says. Minton says it's a bad idea to list the proper uses of corporate money in the law because "you'll always find something in there that shouldn't be on the list, and something that's not on the list that should be." He says the definitions in the law should be broad enough to let the courts decide what's in and out of bounds, and says that's all he's told anyone about any proposed laws. "I've never tied it to a client or to this investigation in any way," Minton says.

The Texas House wants to put this on the ballot for voters next November 8: "The constitutional amendment providing that marriage in this state consists only of the union of one man and one woman and prohibiting this state or a political subdivision of this state from creating or recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage."With 101 yups, 29 nopes, eight members in the room but declining to vote, and 12 members absent, the House sent the constitutional amendment on to the Senate, where it has no sponsor. Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, said he'll increase his efforts to get the measure moving in the upper chamber, but didn't name anyone in particular as a potential sponsor. He and other supporters of the constitutional change say it would bind Texas courts hearing cases involving an earlier law -- called the "Defense of Marriage Act" -- that says essentially the same thing. That's a national movement as courts in a couple of states have struck down similar statutes as violations of state constitutionals. The amendment, if passed by senators and approved by voters, would take that argument away from anyone challenging the laws in Texas courts. Chisum took only one amendment -- his own -- and in the end, House Speaker Tom Craddick cast a relatively rare vote to make sure the constitutional change had the 100 votes it needed to prevail. The bill started with 78 co-author and co-sponsor signatures on it, and they added 23 more when the votes were taken. No Republicans voted against the measure; one was there and didn't vote and three were absent. And 18 Democrats voted for it, with 29 voting no, seven present but not voting, and nine absent when the votes were taken. The votes, according to the House's own website: Yeas -- Mr. Speaker(C); Allen, R.; Anderson; Baxter; Berman; Blake; Bohac; Bonnen; Branch; Brown, B.; Brown, F.; Callegari; Campbell; Casteel; Chisum; Cook, B.; Cook, R.; Corte; Crabb; Crownover; Davis, J.; Dawson; Delisi; Denny; Driver; Edwards; Eissler; Elkins; Escobar; Farabee; Flynn; Frost; Gattis; Geren; Gonzalez Toureilles; Goodman; Goolsby; Griggs; Grusendorf; Guillen; Haggerty; Hamilton; Hamric; Hardcastle; Harper-Brown; Hartnett; Hegar; Hilderbran; Hill; Homer; Hope; Hopson; Howard; Hughes; Hunter; Hupp; Isett; Jackson; Jones, D.; Keel; Keffer, B.; Keffer, J.; King, P.; King, T.; Kolkhorst; Krusee; Kuempel; Laney; Laubenberg; Madden; McCall; McReynolds; Merritt; Miller; Morrison; Mowery; Olivo; Orr; Otto; Paxton; Phillips; Pickett; Quintanilla; Raymond; Reyna; Riddle; Ritter; Rose; Seaman; Smith, T.; Smith, W.; Solomons; Straus; Swinford; Talton; Taylor; Truitt; Van Arsdale; West; Woolley; Zedler. Nays -- Allen, A.; Alonzo; Anchia; Bailey; Burnam; Coleman; Davis, Y.; Deshotel; Dukes; Dunnam; Dutton; Farrar; Gallego; Herrero; Hochberg; Hodge; Martinez Fischer; McClendon; Moreno, J.; Moreno, P.; Naishtat; Noriega, M.; Puente; Rodriguez; Strama; Thompson; Veasey; Villarreal; Vo. Present, not voting -- Castro; Chavez; Giddings; Gonzales; Jones, J.; Leibowitz; Turner; Wong. Absent, Excused -- Eiland; Luna; Menendez; Nixon; Oliveira; Pitts; Smithee. Absent -- Flores; Martinez; Peña; Solis; Uresti.

Act surprised if you hear much more from the House this session about limiting corporate and union money in elections.An attempt to dynamite that legislation out of a hostile committee backfired badly enough that 50 of the bill's 93 sponsors ducked, either voting against the effort absenting themselves from the House floor during the vote. On the strength of a 95-36 vote, it remains in committee. The legislation by Reps. Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, and Todd Smith, R-Euless, would define what corporate and union money can be used for in campaigns, and would ban third-party "issue ads" in the last 30 days before primary election and the last 60 days before general elections. The idea is to reduce corporate and union influence over Texas elections. The legislation has been bottled up in the House Elections Committee for weeks. It finally emerged from a subcommittee, but the main panel, led by Rep. Mary Denny, R-Aubrey, hasn't done anything with it. Denny has said she is against the bill and that she doesn't know whether it would come to a vote or not. So the Democrats decided to force the issue, calling up a dusty rule that allows the full House to yank a bill out of a reluctant committee. Instead of ambushing their opponents, they telegraphed their effort by asking House Speaker Tom Craddick a day in advance how he'd handle that rule if they called for a vote. He said he'd honor the rule, and sure enough, when the bill sponsors asked for a vote, he gave them one. Rep. Tommy Merritt, R-Longview, asked for the vote and appealed to members to end the sort of ads that helped him lose a special election for state Senate last year. Rep. Terry Keel, an Austin Republican who was listed among the bill's co-sponsors, took the other side. Merritt told the House that ads from "Americans for Job Security" attacking his support for a school finance-related tax bill were paid for by donors who still have not been identified and warned that the same could happen to them. Keel attacked the Democrats for turning the bill into what he called a public relations stunt designed to embarrass Craddick. He said the House shouldn't mess with its committee system, reminded them of an old axiom about the process being designed not to pass bills but to kill them, and he flipped the question, telling the House that voting to "thwart the committee process" would kill the ethics bill more surely than to let the system work. The legislation had 93 authors and co-sponsors at the beginning of the week, including each of the House's 63 Democrats. After Keel and Merritt talked, the House voted to leave the bill in committee. Of the 93 co-sponsors, 38 voted against the legislation and 12 were recorded as absent when the tally was taken. Those 50 non-supporters included 27 Democrats. * Department of Irritating Visualizations: Petards are bombs commonly used in the old days to blow up gates on castles. But they were unreliable, and sometimes went off while they were still being carried by the enemies of the castle. The explosion meant for the castle would instead "hoist" the bombers.