Officeholders who weren't in the Pink Building in 1997 are finding out now what George W. Bush found out then: Even when everything appears to be lined up just right, it's almost impossible to pass a tax bill.

When the circumstances aren't perfect — now is a good example — it's even harder. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst blew off some steam at business lobbyists early in the week, basically saying they were out there protecting the loopholes they currently enjoy. That came after representatives of some of the bigger taxpaying businesses gave him a thumbs-down on the Senate's tax plan. They prefer the House plan, or nothing, or something they haven't seen yet, to what the Senate was pitching.

The kvetching deepened as the week wore on, and the twin bills to rewrite state education laws and cut local school property taxes — bills that were supposed to come up for floor votes in the last week of April and the first week of May — were pushed back another week.

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, wrote a letter to his fellow senators that outlines a less ambitious package for school finance. That gave voice to previously quiet concerns that the Senate bit off more than it can chew politically. Carona opposes a state property tax, wants to lower local property taxes a quarter instead of 40 or 50 cents, wants to revise the current corporate franchise tax while leaving out real estate and oil and gas partnerships, and wants to add about $4 billion to what the state spends now on schools.

"Nobody deserving of the office of state senator is going to be defeated at the polls for adequately funding our schools and casting a vote for lower property taxes," he wrote. "This is one among several possible alternatives that will fix the problem without devastating the Texas business climate." You can see the whole letter here.

While that noise level rose, the wonks chewing on the legislation started finding problems. The biggest might be with the Senate's plan for a state property tax, which, as proposed, would put voters in the state's two biggest counties in the position of voting for a constitutional amendment that would increase their school property tax bills. The timing mismatches in the bill have been mentioned here earlier — new tax money initially comes in faster than it's needed for buying down local property taxes. That makes it harder to argue that the legislation is a net tax shift — not a decrease or an increase. That claim would be true over time, but not at first. And it creates a real problem if voters decide they don't want a state property tax. State tax increases, in that instance, would outrun local property tax cuts. That's a tax increase, and Republican lawmakers don't like the sound of that.

Dewhurst was hoping the biggest taxpayers in the state would get on board and help sell the Senate plan to the House, to the governor, and eventually, to the public. Like the last guy who attempted this (and went on to much higher office), he's getting schooled. The current franchise tax applies to about 17 percent of the state's businesses, according to the tax wonks who watch this stuff. You're more likely to hear it described as five out of six businesses taking advantage of loopholes, but the fact is that only one in six is legally required to pay the tax.

The replacements cooked up by the House and the Senate are designed to spread that out, to increase the number of businesses paying the tax and to lower the rate so that they won't pay so much. The first problem is that 83 percent of the state's businesses — those not in the 17 percent paying now — would be subject to a new tax. There are cutouts for small businesses and so on, but that's the general idea.

For many of those new taxpayers, property tax cuts will offset the taxes. But one of the political questions is whether the Legislature can add that many taxpayers to the rolls without inciting a mob to grab the torches and pitchforks and march on the castle. Ask a legislator if she's more likely to hear from the new taxpayer or the old one when she goes home after voting to broaden the franchise tax.

Business lobsters have been telling the Senate and for weeks that they prefer the idea baked up in the House, which would let businesses choose from two different business taxes. Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Arlington, has been pitching a "basket" tax for nearly a year. The idea is similar to what got out of the House: Offer businesses the choice of a tax on payroll, one on compensation (which grabs partners and others who aren't technically on the payroll) and gross receipts. They'd pay some tax no matter what, but they'd have some flexibility. That's one of the options back on the table now that the Senate plan has unraveled.

As we went to press, the Senate Finance Committee, led by Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, was reworking the bill, trying to more closely match state tax increases with local tax cuts, incorporating appraisal caps for local school taxes, and trying to wire around exemption differences from one district to the next. They hope to get a bill in front of the full Senate after Mother's Day.

A Tax Break that Costs Homeowners Money

A state property tax will cost taxpayers in about a quarter of the state's school districts their optional local homestead exemptions, cutting into their property tax savings. In 180 districts — including Houston, the state's largest, current proposals for a state property tax could result in higher residential property tax bills.

If lawmakers choose a state property tax to solve school finance, state property tax rates will have to be 20 percent lower than current local property taxes before homeowners in many school districts would see any property tax relief. The state's top rate for maintenance and operations taxes would have to drop from $1.50 to $1.20.

The first-year cut proposed by the Senate is lower than that — dropping 13.3 percent to $1.30 — but homeowners would keep their local property tax exemption that year, so they'd be ahead. In the second year of the cuts, a state property tax would replace the local tax — and also the local exemption. That year, voters in districts with high local exemptions would tax bills increase.

With local add-ons, the overall property tax rate would eventually top out at $1.25, resulting in higher tax bills in some districts than homeowners pay today. Houston homeowners could actually do better if the legislative plans are a half-success, cutting local school property taxes but failing to replace them with a state property tax that kills local homestead exemptions.

Under current law, school districts are allowed to exempt up to 20 percent of a homestead's value from their tax rolls, in addition to the exemptions allowed under state law ($15,000 for homesteads, and another $10,000 for taxpayers over age 65).

The Senate's state property tax leaves state exemptions in place, but does away with the local options. It's not a local tax anymore, and that kind of local variation would make the tax higher or lower depending solely on the location of the taxpayer, which is probably unconstitutional. Houston might cut homeowners a break while McAllen might not, and that would result in unequal taxation at the state level.

The 20 percent tax break is, for the moment, a boon to homeowners in Houston and 179 other districts — including most districts in Harris County, in the Highland Park ISD in Dallas County, Galveston ISD, West Orange-Cove (the lead district in the lawsuit against the state's current school finance system), Mineral Wells, Lago Vista and Lake Travis in the Austin area, Ysleta in El Paso, and a mess of others. Other districts around the state give smaller but still significant local exemptions. Dallas ISD, the state's second biggest, knocks 10 percent off the value of homes for tax purposes. So do Richardson ISD, Midland ISD, Jefferson ISD and several others. The local breaks are in addition to the exemptions in state law for homeowners and, separately, for the elderly.

And the rest of the state's districts — the 700-plus that don't give local exemptions to homeowners — base their taxes on appraised values less the state's exemptions. Homeowners in those districts aren't getting a local break today, but they would get the full benefit of property tax cuts under a state property tax.

The Senate wants to lower the cap on local school property taxes to $1.30 from the current $1.50. Senators would give voters a chance to replace those local taxes with a $1.10 state property tax. Local schools could add back up to 15 cents in local money onto that over time, bringing the ultimate rate to $1.25. If voters rejected the constitutional amendment, the state cap on local school property tax rates would stay at $1.30. As long as that's a local tax, the school districts have the option of continuing their 20 percent homestead exemptions. Even with a state property tax, they'd be able to grant the local exemption from taxable values for the locally added 15 cents for local enrichment. If they find themselves needing more money, they could also kill the local exemption altogether, bringing themselves in line with most of the school districts in Texas.

Some examples:

The owner of a $100,000 home in a district that gets only the state exemption takes $15,000 off the appraised value and thus pays taxes only on $85,000. At a $1.50 tax rate per $100 in value, that's $1,275. Under the Senate plan, the base value would remain at $85,000. In the first year, with a $1.30 local tax rate, the bill would come to $1,105, for a savings of $170. In year two, assuming voters went along, the state rate would drop to $1.10; the total bill would drop to $935, or $340 less than the current tax.

In a district with the 20 percent exemption, the numbers change. Take off $15,000 for the state exemption, and $20,000 for the local exemption. The taxable value of that $100,000 house drops to $65,000. At a $1.50 tax rate, they're getting a deal right now, paying $975. The Senate plan would lower the rate the first year and leave the exemption in place, resulting in a tax bill of $845, a savings of $130. But with the constitutional amendment and the state property tax, the exemption would disappear as the rate fell to $1.10, bringing the tax bill to $935. That's a net annual savings of $40. Rising property values and local enrichment taxes would eat at that amount.

For folks with 10 percent local exemptions, those $100,000 homes are on the tax roll at $75,000 now, meaning the tax at the $1.50 rate is $1,125. Their first year deal would net out at $975, a savings of $150. Their third-year number would be $935, a drop of $190 from current law.

Assuming voters approved the constitutional amendment, third-year savings for the owner of a $250,000 home would be $940 in the district with no local exemption, $565 in the district that currently has a 10 percent local exemption, and $190 in the district with the 20 percent cut.

That's how the state property tax is set up in the tax bill. There's an alternative version in the Senate version of the school finance bill that would replace the $1.50 cap with a $1.30 cap the first year, and then replace that with an 85-cent state tax combined with a 25-cent local tax. That still brings the second-year total to $1.10, but the local homestead exemption would apply to the local part of the tax, lowering the size of the final bill for people whose districts cut them a break.

For the owner of a $250,000 home in a district with the 20 percent exemption, the current tax at $1.50 is $2,775. It would drop to $2,405 at $1.30, and then would rise to $2,460 when the state/local property tax kicked in. That third-year would only set up that way with a constitutional amendment. As with the other state property tax, most voters in Harris County, under that plan, would be asked to vote to raise their school property taxes. In places with lower local exemptions, the tax bill would drop in both the first and second years of the shift.

Think about voting patterns when that constitutional amendment goes on the ballot: The first break would go to homeowners in places like San Antonio and Austin, the second in Dallas, the third in Houston. And remember that Houston homeowners (and others with 20 percent breaks now) would actually get a better deal if the Senate plan passes and the constitutional amendment fails. For them, that's the best mix of tax cuts and continued homestead exemptions. Remember, too, that Harris County accounts for more than 25 percent of the entire state vote in most constitutional amendment elections.

In all cases, local districts would be able to add on relatively small amounts for "local enrichment." School districts would be allowed to phase in those local add-ons, up to a maximum of 15 cents under the Senate scheme. That'd put the top tax rate at $1.25, or a nickel more than the break-even tax cut in Houston and other districts with 20 percent tax exemptions.

End of Days

The legislative calendar (get a printable copy here) starts getting very interesting next week.

The rules are designed to end legislative sessions without any sudden stops, kind of like putting on the brakes when the driver's ed teacher says you're supposed to instead of waiting until the red light is above you. This is more important on the House end of the building, since the Senate regularly suspends its rules and ignores internal deadlines. House Committees have to kick out legislation by next Monday, and next Thursday is the last call for House legislation on the floor of that chamber. After that, it's all local bills, Senate bills and conference committees. Committees in the lower chamber have to finish with Senate legislation on May 21, and the full House has to see those things by the 24th. Conference committee reports have to be approved by both houses by the end of business on Sunday, May 29.

Unstuck, Maybe

The slow wheels of legislation are starting to grind on workers' compensation insurance reform. The House committee that has been holding a Senate version for weeks made some changes and sent it along to the agenda-setting Calendars Committee. And the Senate panel that's been sitting on a House version for several weeks started doing some work on that, putting up its own version and voting it out of committee. We're not aware of a deal that gives one bill preference over the other, but at least they're moving. The issue has been held up in a dispute over which version should move forward. The governor's office has been quietly intervening to get the two sides talking, and apparently, they've made a bit of headway.

There are some substantive differences, not the least of which is how to regulate that kind of insurance. The Senate, working from its own interim study on the issue, wants the Texas Worker's Compensation Commission to remain a separate agency. The House, which is carrying the sunset legislation that would keep the agency alive or let it die, wants to merge TWCC into the Texas Department of Insurance. The idea, apparently, is to get the bills to a conference committee for a final fight before time runs out.

Tales of Self-Regulation

While the House was still working on legislation (HB 1706) that raises the level of identification voters must show election judges, 11 of the 12 Democrats in the Senate were signing a petition saying they'll vote against consideration of that legislation.

Unless somebody flips (or leaves the room when the measure arises), that kills the bill. It takes two-thirds of the 31-member Senate to bring up legislation for debate; 11 votes are enough to block it. Sen. Ken Armbrister of Victoria is the only Democratic senator who didn't sign the petition; the signers are the same 11 senators who moved to New Mexico for a month in a failed attempt to block a congressional redistricting bill in 2003.

That legislation, sponsored by Rep. Mary Denny, R-Aubrey, in the Houston, has been a pet project for the state GOP. It would require voters to show photo identification to prove they are who they say they are. Democrats in the House opposed it — some branded it as a racist measure — but it passed 78-67 after a fairly long debate. The Senate petition says the bill's requirements are "onerous" and says allegations of voter fraud in recent elections have been overblown. "The bill attempts to solve a problem that has not been proven to exist," the petition says.

• The House spiked another piece of election reform legislation last week, but there's more news to come on that front. Reps. Todd Smith, R-Euless, and Jesse Jones, D-Dallas, filed papers saying they'll be writing a minority report on HB 1348, which stalled on a 4-2 vote in Denny's House Elections Committee. That legislation would limit the uses of corporate and union money in campaigns, and would prohibit so-called "issue ads" in the last weeks before an election. The House voted down an effort to pull the bill out of committee for consideration; the Senate companion bill is still alive, but stalled.

Back to the Future

Feeling the sting of a two-year-old vote to deregulate college tuition, the Texas Senate voted to reconsider. They're not lowering tuition, and they're not telling public colleges and universities to lower the price of higher education. But lawmakers who meet in two years would have to decide whether the Legislature or the schools should decide the price of public higher education.

The Senate voted to take away the schools' pricing freedom in September 2008, unless the Legislature votes sometime between now and then to let the schools set their own tuition prices. In the meantime, it assigns state officials to study the effects of tuition deregulation.

For decades, tuition at public universities in Texas was set by the Legislature as part of the budget. But two years ago, House Speaker Tom Craddick and other lawmakers allowed the schools to set their own prices. Prices jumped.

It didn't hurt, for purposes of getting this through the Senate, that it was a pet issue of Craddick's two years ago. The House and the Senate are in their biennial battle over which side is doing most of the work — a battle that at the moment has brought on a most severe case of legislative constipation — and putting an expiration date on a Speaker's pet.

According to Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, average tuition at state schools has risen 43 percent. The numbers are higher at the bigger and more popular universities, up 104 percent at the University of Texas at Austin, 65 percent at Texas Tech and the University of Houston, and 61 percent at Texas A&M.

The schools say the high prices are more in line with actual costs. And their advocates in the Lege say lawmakers have been under-funding state colleges for years. But the sticker shock had some political backlash (though not yet enough to get anyone unelected). The Senate's "sunset provision" was sponsored by Ellis and passed after Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst helped round up votes and then to work a deal between Ellis and Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, whose bill Ellis was amending. Her legislation called for a study on the effects of tuition deregulation; Ellis' amendment set up would set up the next Legislature to choose between setting rates itself or letting the colleges continue.

The bill's on its way to the House, where most Senate legislation — like House legislation in the upper chamber — is stuck.

Bells Will Be Ringing

Write about legislation for an audience interested in government and politics and you get some feedback. But write about a wedding on the House floor... Rep. Mary Denny, R-Aubrey, is supposed to get married on the House floor, during a break in the usual proceedings, on Friday, May 6, to Mr. Norman Tolpo. We noted that a couple of weeks ago, and said it was unusual. Maybe, but three exceptions came quickly to the minds of readers. Former Rep. Bill Carter, R-Fort Worth, and his wife Virginia, who was a Senate employee at the time, got married in the House Chamber. Helen Dey Valdez, (Dey then, Valdez now) got married to her former husband in a ceremony that required a House resolution for permission, in 1993. And former state Rep. Ralph Wallace was married in the House Chamber in 1979, also after a special resolution. Thanks (honest!) to the emailers for the history lessons.

It Tolls for Thee

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn's appearance at a rally against new toll roads in the state prompted the crowd to change its road chants to political chants against Gov. Rick Perry.

There, at the South entrance to the Capitol right outside the governor's state offices, the crowd of about 150-200 broke into chants of "No more Perry!" and "Impeach Perry!"

Strayhorn was hard against toll roads, blaming the resurgence of the idea on Perry and his appointees at the Texas Department of Transportation. She also took several swipes at the contractors who won the right to build the first part of the Trans-Texas Corridor, an enlargement of the state's highway, rail and other transportation systems being implemented by TXDOT. A Spanish company dominates that consortium, leading Strayhorn to a "TXDOT, not Euro-DOT" line. And she said the roads ought to be approved only after public votes.

Perry aides shot back with a list of past performance reviews from her office they said sympathetic to toll roads. But she refuted that item by item, saying the reports talked about toll roads, sometimes in the context of solutions to transportation problems, but didn't endorse them.

And One More Thing...

Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, got three bills affecting ethics and lobby regulation passed on the local calendar. What was unusual about that? They weren't on the local calendar.

We have to give credit where it's due: the Texas Legislative Service noted the discrepancy and flagged subscribers. Harris, the author of all three bills, is the chairman of the Senate Administration Committee that's responsible for assembling the local calendar and seeing it through in a weekly session in the always empty Senate Chamber — a "trust me" system where the vote is always 31-0.

Two of the three unscheduled bills (SB's 1009, 1010, and 1161) require lobbyists to report buying gifts worth under $50 that are delivered to legislators somewhere other than in the Pink Building; and allows lobbyists to represent clients that conflict with each other if the clients know about the conflict. The third gives candidates and officeholders some slack if they file reports late with the Texas Ethics Commission.

Up, Up, Up

Former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Beaumont, has filed his papers and is officially raising money to challenge U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land in next year's elections. The districts are barely adjacent — a finger of Lampson's old district touches DeLay's. After the GOP-dominated Legislature redrew his congressional district, Lampson lost to Republican Ted Poe. Houston City Councilman Gordon Quan is also considering a run against DeLay. Richard Morrison, who lost to DeLay last year, has said he won't seek a rematch.

• Republican attorney and banker Francisco "Quico" Canseco of Laredo says via press release that he deposited $1 million into a federal campaign account, to be used in his race to succeed U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, R-San Antonio, should Bonilla run for the Senate spot currently occupied by Kay Bailey Hutchison if she decides not to seek reelection next year. Hutchison has been looking at running for governor, and told voters years ago that she'd limit herself to two terms in office. Bonilla says he won't run if she does, and Canseco won't run if Bonilla stays put. Canseco says the state's "Hispanic Republican seat" should remain just that if Bonilla moves on. He says the contest, if there is one, would cost him $2.5 million to $3 million. Republican consultant Todd Smith is signed up for that one. And of course there's a website: www.cansecoforcongress.com

• This one's just a website so far, but along those same lines: Juan Garcia III of Corpus Christi is starting up a campaign for U.S. Senate. He's a naval aviator and Gulf War vet who left the service last October. He claims college degrees from UCLA and John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and Harvard Law School. He doesn't note his party affiliation anywhere on his website, which can be found at: www.garciafortexas.com

Political People and Their Moves

Kinky Friedman, one of only two people definitely running for governor of Texas, went and got the same hired hand who helped make Jesse Ventura the governor of Minnesota. Dean Barkley, founder of that state's Independent Party, will be campaign director and chief strategist for Friedman. Barkley, appointed by Ventura to fill in when U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash, said the Ventura candidacy increased voter turnout. In Texas, where 29.3 percent of eligible voters showed up for the last governor's race, he's hoping to repeat the performance.

Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans signed on as chief executive of the Financial Services Forum, which describes itself as a group 18 CEOs of large diversified financial institutions designed "to promote policies that enhance savings and investment in the United States, and that ensure an open, competitive and sound financial services marketplace."

Former Texas Secretary of State Geoff Connor is joining the Jackson Walker law firm's Austin office, where he'll work on administrative, regulatory and governmental affairs. He did stints in the governor's office, the agriculture department and the Commission on Environmental Quality, and also worked as a lobbyist, before becoming the state's chief elections officer.

Appointments

Gov. Rick Perry appointed Lupe Fraga of Sugar Land and Gene Stallings of Powderly to the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents. Fraga is chairman and CEO of Tejas Office Products and chairman of the Dallas-Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank. He's an Aggie alum, and played baseball there. Stallings is an Aggie, too, and was the school's head football coach, an assistant coach for the Dallas Cowboys, head coach at the University of Alabama, and for the St. Louis-turned-Arizona (football) Cardinals.

The Guv appointed Cindy Lyons, a CPA from El Paso, to the state's Finance Commission, which oversees state-chartered financial institutions.

Perry named Andy Sheppard of Rockwall to the Texas Polygraph Examiners Board, which regulates Sheppard and other lie detector operators in the state.

Carlos Chacon of El Paso and Whitney Wolf of San Antonio are Perry's latest picks for the Texas Skill Standards Board. He directs federal sales for Computer Assets; she's VP of labor relations for SBC.

Add three names to the Texas Board of Architectural Examiners: James Walker II of Houston, president of James S. Walker Architects; Rosemary Gammon of Plano, a national account manager with Orthofix, Inc.; and Peggy "Lew" Vassberg of Lyford, president of Valley Designs, Inc. 

The governor picked Kenneth Mitchell of El Paso for a spot at the State Office of Risk Management. He's the president of an insurance agency there.

Quotes of the Week

Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, arguing over whether public colleges should be allowed to continue setting their own tuition, as the Legislature ordered two years ago: "This is a great debate we're having. We should have had it last session."

Gov. Rick Perry, telling The Dallas Morning News that the state law that gives college admissions preference to students in the top ten percent of their high school class drives good students out of Texas: "I'd do away with it tomorrow... The top 10 percent [law] is the best thing that ever happened to LSU and Arkansas and Oklahoma."

Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, on why booze got included in the Senate's tax plan: "There is no particular social motive behind it. If you're going to raise sales tax, you're going to raise cigarette tax, the question is why not alcohol. The answer is there is no good reason."

Rep. Robert Talton, R-Pasadena and the chairman of the Harris County delegation, letting groups dine with and lobby lawmakers in a room at the Capitol: "I told them when I was elected that the only time I was going to meet was if somebody fed us and talked to us."

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "Justice depends on the law. The law depends on democracy. Democracy depends on clean elections. Elections in which large corporations and large labor unions buy elections represent a threat to democracy, so the job of a prosecutor is to safeguard democracy."

Dallas County Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, a Republican, telling The Dallas Morning News that state attempts to limit local government growth will hurt business development: "The governor clearly doesn't understand — perhaps he doesn't have the capacity — that local governments can attract businesses, not the state. It's the city and county, by offering more attractive tax abatements, that bring in business."

Russell Shannon with the Andrews Industrial Foundation, quoted by the Associated Press on that town's efforts to attract a hazardous waste disposal facility: "If we thought we could get an NFL franchise or a river walk, we wouldn't have looked at this industry. We just believe it will bring us some jobs, bring people to our community to get involved in an industry, like they did with oil."

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, talking to toll road opponents outside the state Capitol: "Perry and his hand-picked highway henchmen say we have a choice: No roads, slow roads or toll roads. I say to Governor Perry and his highway henchmen, 'Hogwash.' Vote our way today for freeways."

Rep. Al Edwards, D-Houston, arguing for his legislation regulating cheerleading routines in public schools: "Girls can get out and do these overtly sexual performances and we applaud them. And that's not right. This is the beginning of an era to change some of what we've been seeing."

Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, arguing against that same bill (which passed the House): "This is a ridiculous bill. I don't know how it got to the floor. We don't have any business mandating anything. We are spending time on '2-3-4, we can't shake it anymore.' It's an embarrassment."

Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, quoted in the San Antonio Express-News saying cheerleader regulation ought to remain in the school districts: "What happens in those local districts needs to stay in local districts."

Texas Weekly: Volume 21, Issue 45, 9 May 2005. Ross Ramsey, Editor. George Phenix, Publisher. Copyright 2005 by Printing Production Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. One-year online subscription: $250. For information about your subscription, call (800) 611-4980 or email info@texasweekly.com. For news, email ramsey@texasweekly.com, or call (512) 288-6598.

The Senate wasn't willing, but the House voted to reconsider the law that requires state universities to show preference in admissions to students who finished in the top 10 percent of their high school classes (in Texas schools).Some of the universities -- particularly that big just to the north of the state Capitol -- complain that they're hamstrung by the rule. Some folks in highly rated school districts say the rule is unfair to good students who weren't in the top rank but would have been in a lower quality district (that was a side issue in the school finance lawsuit that's still running through the courts). But proponents say it's producing a more ethnically and racially diverse population of students with better brains, on average, than their predecessors. The Senate left it be, but the House voted -- with a margin of just four votes -- to halve the number of 10s the schools admit. Under the House version, only half of a given incoming class would have to be filled solely by top students. Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, offered an amendment that would have required schools to have the same racial ratios in their incoming classes as on their football teams.

Proposals and ideas are starting to wither as the session-ending rules begin to kick in. Sort-of. Lawmakers are busy looking for viable legislation that will accommodate non-viable legislation; if a bill dies, there's often a semi-related bill that can be amended to reanimate the dead one.Publicly funded vouchers for private schools took a huge hit in the Senate, when Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, promised his colleagues that he would block efforts to add vouchers to the Texas Education Agency's sunset bill. That bill has to pass -- it keeps the agency in business after this year -- and it's an easy vehicle for vouchers. But before voting it out, Democratic senators peppered Jackson with questions to nail down the Senate's intentions: If the House insists on adding vouchers, the bill won't be approved in the upper chamber. (We'll be adding to this...)

The Texas Senate is running an obstacle course on the way to a school finance fix... or to a brick wall.The three pieces of legislation in the Senate's school finance package share an attribute unacceptable to the Texas House: a state property tax to pay for public education. But any senator nervous about voting for a big fix can find any number of reasons to remain spooked. • Last week, when Senate Finance Committee moved the bills, four members voted no, and one -- Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, unfurled an argument against the tax that had some of her colleagues nodding in unison. House Speaker Tom Craddick has said repeatedly that the House won't support a state property tax; senators are debating whether they want to offer their support to something that's in trouble on the other side of the building, or to let it die without taking a position on it. • The Center for Public Policy Priorities pounced on a Legislative Budget Board analysis of the legislation that concludes the so-called "tax swap" would raise taxes on people making less than $140,000 annually. There's a trick to that: The numbers are averages and assume, for instance, that the average taxpayer smokes and drinks. Taxes on those unrepentant hedonists would go up a lot, while taxes on teetotalers and clean breathers would not; but on average, it's a tax hike on the average Texan. The CPPP says the tax bill would make Texas taxes harder on the poor. • And the comptroller, at the separate requests of several senators, cranked some numbers showing the legislation would actually cost some school districts money. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn later issued a letter saying the "legally binding" estimates on the bill are to be found in the Legislative Budget Board's official fiscal note. Her numbers were based, she said, on different assumptions.

The campaign finance agitators at Campaigns for People take on highway contractors in a report showing how the beneficiaries of new highway spending gave financial backing to some of the politicos who have made and continue to make highway spending a state priority.According to their report, the top five state officials -- Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, House Speaker Tom Craddick, Attorney General Greg Abbott, and Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn -- got $1.2 million in contributions from the biggest highway builders and from companies bidding to build parts of the Trans-Texas Corridor over the past four years. The legislators on the committees doing the decision-making got $215,000 from those contributors. The report, called Big Money Paves the Way for the Trans Texas Corridor: How Big Money Bought Texans the Nation's Most Expensive Toll Road Project, can be downloaded: www.cleanuptexaspolitics.com/images/TollCorridorMoney.pdf

Asbestos legislation that stymied lawmakers for years finally gets through both the Senate and the House.The House quietly went along with a deal worked out on the Senate side between trial lawyers who represent people suffering from asbestos- and silica-related diseases and the companies liable for causing those illnesses. The legislation puts limits who can file suit, and at what stage of their illness. It's been bottled up in negotiations for a couple of legislative sessions, but after tort reformers and trial lawyers worked out a deal in Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's private conference room, both the Senate and the House signed off on it.

Residency in politics is whatever they say it isThe House tentatively approved -- and then killed, by a teensy margin -- a bill by Rep. Joe Nixon, R-Houston, that would have disqualified legislative candidates who have homestead exemptions outside the districts where they're running for office. One veteran lawmaker who ought to know told us that would jeopardize the political futures of dozens of incumbent legislators.

When the Senate started on the school half of the school finance bill, funding formulas, student testing and the start and stop dates for the school year were among the biggest differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. When the Senate was done, dates had been taken care of, but the other two obstacles were left to the still-to-be-named conference committee.The state gives school districts more money for students with special needs, whether those are language problems, physical handicaps, or a number of other things. The Senate wants to keep those "weights" for funding; the House wants to get rid of them. Where Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, wants to test students as they exit courses of study, Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, has shown a preference for the TAKS test given now to measure student achievement. They're the leaders of the respective education committees in the House and Senate and the likely heads of the conference committee that will hammer out these differences. The House and Senate didn't have the same things in mind when it comes to the beginning and ending dates for schools in Texas. Businesses that depend on that timing -- from summer camps to amusement parks to the joints that sell t-shirts and wave boards on the Texas Coast -- want the school year to start later than it does now (some Texas school districts begin in the first week of August). And they'd like the school districts around the state to sync up, so as to encourage family vacations and such. Call this one a win (so far) for Shamu: The Senate agreed to order districts to start the school year after Labor Day each year, as the House did earlier. And they have to finish by June 7, putting everybody in the state on the same nine-months-mostly-on, three-months-off calendar. That's unpopular in some districts -- we've talked to legislators on both sides who'd like to get their votes back -- but the change is in the bills headed for conference committee.

Parental consent for minors seeking abortions stalled in the House, but is moving in the Senate.A controversial parental consent bill was set aside in the House, but the Senate moved forward with a less dramatic set of changes. The Senate's bill would turn the state's current law -- which requires minors seeking abortions to notify their parents or, in extraordinary cases, to seek permission from the courts -- into a consent law, where parents (or judges) would have to approve before the operations could proceed. Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, withdrew his bill from consideration when it came up in the House; Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, has a similar bill moving on the East End of the Pink Building.

Nothing's ever dead while the Lege is still working, but retirement requirements for teachers apparently won't change this year.Rep. Yvonne Davis, D-Dallas, using the old point-of-order gambit, killed House legislation that would have changed retirement requirements for Texas teachers. But that assassination didn't kill a Senate bill that would do many of the same things. Teachers would still be eligible for benefits when their age and years on the job add up to 80 -- that's called the Rule of 80, logically enough -- but only if they were also at least 60 years old. A 55-year-old teacher with 25 years on the job is eligible for retirement and currently, for full benefits. With the proposed revisions, that educator would be eligible, but would have seen a five percent cut in the retirement annuity for each year short of 60.

Some numbers couldn't possibly make any difference outside the halls of the Texas Capitol, but they matter much to some of the more self-absorbed politicos in both chambers of the Legislature. To wit: One of the elves in the Pink Building -- one whose sympathies lie with the upper chamber -- compiled numbers showing the Senate is ahead of last session's pace while the House is behind.Officeholders in both places have filed fewer bills: 3,692 in the House, as against 3,735 two years ago; 1,926 in the Senate, up from 2,007 two years back. So far, the House has approved 744 bills, including 47 with Senate authors. Two years ago at this point, they'd passed 1,029, including 117 Senate bills. The Senate so far has passed 779 bills, including 44 House bills. Two years back, the numbers were 746 and 53, respectively.

New briefs from the school districts whose successful lawsuits prompted the Legislature's search for a school finance fix.As you'd expect, they want the Texas Supreme Court to find that the current system is: 1) hitting Texans with an unconstitutional state property tax, since most districts are at or near the state's $1.50 maximum and can't make cuts, given the state's rising education standards; 2) "constitutionally inadequate or unsuitable," since they contend the current system doesn't provide schools with the resources they need to provide the results the state demands; and 3) that the courts should rush in where the Legislature fears to tread, interpreting current statutes against constitutional guarantees instead of leaving the whole mess to the House, the Senate and the Governor. The new legal briefs and earlier filings from both sides can be found on the Supreme Court's website: www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/ebriefs/files/20041144.HTM The court will hear oral arguments in the case on July 6 and can rule anytime after that. "Anytime" in this context usually means anything from a few months to many.

Most Texas senators don't want slots, and now there's proof.Slot machines (or, if you prefer, video lottery terminals, or VLTs) finally made it to the full Senate, in the form of an amendment on the tax bill that goes with the school finance package. And they got there in the best possible form for the promoters, when Sen. Mario Gallegos, D-Houston, offered a 90-page bill packaged as an amendment, which needs only a simple majority to pass. But even with the Senate looking for money and only 16 votes needed, the measure fell short. By one vote. Senators did add a gambling amendment -- allowing electronic bingo in places where bingo is already legal -- but that's not in the House version of the bill and could still come out.

The Texas Senate dropped its state property tax, overhauled its overhaul of business taxes, and approved a school finance bill more in line with what the Texas House approved earlier this year. Big differences remain to be worked out in that package, and also in companion legislation that includes some school finance and some new education law. But the Legislature is closer to a deal on school finance now than it was a day, a week, or a year ago. Upgrade the condition of the patient from impossible to merely improbable. That's an improvement, and previous legislatures have overcome bigger differences.Trouble spots include a gross receipts tax that was included in the Senate's tax bill, and large but vague differences in the amounts of money raised in the House and Senate versions of the bills. The analysts are still working on the tax and school bills approved by the Senate, and the fiscal effects of the bills will (hopefully) be clearer when they're finished. This is already clear: Lawmakers have about two weeks to reconcile differences in several pieces of interlocking legislation at the same time: the tax bill, the school bill, the budget, the supplemental budget, and a "clean-up" bill that amounts to a bagful of taxes, fees, and accounting tricks that allow the state to spend more money. Instead of a state property tax to replace local school taxes, the Senate voted to lower the state's cap on school taxes to $1.15 per $100 in valuation from the current $1.50. The next night, on the tax bill's conjoined school bill twin, they voted to lower the rate another nickel, to $1.10. Either way would leave the so-called "Robin Hood" system in place, where school districts with more wealth export local tax money to districts with less. It's unpopular, but it has survived constitutional challenges and it turned out, in the end, to have more Senate votes than the state property tax. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, along with the heads of the Finance and Education committees, Sens. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, and Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, wanted the state tax. That levy would have squelched persistent legal attacks on the current system in which locally set taxes are subject to state caps. When the state's requirements for schools push districts to raise taxes, the system eventually reaches a point -- it's there now, according to the courts -- where what is called a local tax is in fact set by the state. That's unconstitutional, and installing a state tax in the constitution would end that particular problem. But the House doesn't like state property taxes, and Dewhurst couldn't get two-thirds of the Senate to go along. It's safe to call it dead. The Senate's new plan would lower the state cap on local school property taxes to $1.10 next fall. That's a 26.6 percent cut in districts where the tax rate is currently capped out at $1.50. Some districts have lower tax rates, and a few have tax rates below both the current and the proposed caps. And local districts could, over time, increase the rates for "local enrichment," bringing the total up another 15 cents by 2010. (Caveat: We're talking about maintenance and operation taxes here, and many districts have additional school taxes to pay for bonds and facilities and so on.) To pay for the cuts in local taxes -- each dime decrease costs about $1.1 billion at the state level -- the Senate installed a "choose your poison" tax for businesses that would replace the current state franchise tax. Right now, Texas only taxes one business in six; lawmakers looking for school money want to lower the rate from 4.5 percent and to expand the franchise tax to include more businesses. Senators have been talking about variations on a business activity tax, but that finally stalled for a couple of reasons. It included a tax on compensation that, when applied to some partnerships and other businesses, amounted to a potentially unconstitutional personal income tax (one version of the legislation included the tax those partners would pay if the courts said the first tax was illegal). And the alternative on the table -- the House's idea of letting each business choose which tax it wants to pay -- was more attractive to businesses and to their persistent lobsters. In the Senate's version of tax choice, businesses will pay the lower of two taxes (this item has been corrected): ? A 2.5 percent tax on a company's earned surplus (taxable income plus pay to officers) added to its compensation for employees, with a deduction for the lesser of a 50 percent or $30,000 per employee deduction; or • A 1.75 percent tax on payrolls, not to exceed $1,500 per employee. The first is similar to the state's current franchise tax, but includes compensation for all employees; the current version only adds back the compensation of a corporation's big dogs. In either case, the companies would also compute a state minimum tax -- one-quarter of one percent of their gross receipts -- and would have to pay at least that amount to the state no matter how the computations came out on the "choice" taxes. The new business taxes would not apply to sole proprietorships or to "passive" real estate, oil & gas, or investment trusts. Companies would get a deduction for providing health benefits to employees. Small businesses -- those with gross receipts under $150,000 a year -- would be exempt from the tax. The business lobby has problems with the options and especially with the gross receipts tax. Dewhurst and Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, met with trade groups the morning after the school bill passed to calm people down and gauge reactions. The lobbyists we've talked to say the choices in the Senate version are too much alike; both rely in some measure on payroll. And the gross receipts tax makes them weak. It would apply when companies are losing money. For some businesses, it would compound: They'd have to pay it on transactions with affiliated companies. And it works, in some ways, like a sales tax. It is a levy on a company's sales that is paid by the company instead of by the customer, who'd be paying it if you called it a sales tax. Either way, it adds to the price of a purchase, and Bidness don't like it. It does, however, fill a hole that was left in the House's tax plan. If companies can choose their tax, they'll go low. No kidding. But the House didn't put in a minimum tax, and Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn said that and other problems left the House plan billions out of balance. One alternative getting some attention would require businesses to pay the lower of two taxes, but not less than an amount equal to half of the higher tax. If Option One was $10,000, and Option Two was $3,000, the taxpayer would pay $5,000, or half of Option One. Keep watching. Consumer levies remain in the Senate's bill, including a half-cent increase in sales taxes (phased in over two years), a 75-cent per pack tax on cigarettes, and a 25 percent increase in taxes on alcoholic beverages. The House's version includes a full one-cent rise in sales taxes, a $1.01 increase in the tax on a pack of smokes, and no alcohol tax increase. A 3 percent "snack tax" approved by the House was not included in the Senate bill. • The Senate voted 20-11 on straight party lines to deny passing property tax relief directly to renters. The folks on the winning side of that vote say The Market will take care of renters and that landlords will pass along the savings, or not, depending on what their competitors do. • They expanded what began as a back-to-school sales tax holiday, killing sales taxes on clothing items priced under $100 during the first full weekends of August and December. • The 21 votes for the bill: Armbrister, Averitt, Brimer, Carona, Deuell, Duncan, Estes, Fraser, Harris, Hinojosa, Jackson, Mike, Janek, Lindsay, Lucio, Madla, Ogden, Shapiro, Staples, Wentworth, Whitmire, and Zaffirini. And the 10 votes against: Barrientos, Ellis, Rodney, Eltife, Gallegos, Nelson, Seliger, Shapleigh, Van de Putte, West, Royce, and Williams.

Wood, Johnson, Harper, and TullosLewis Wood, a Justice of the Peace in Queen City (northeast Texas) agreed to quit "in lieu of disciplinary action" after the State Commission on Judicial Conduct investigated reports he sexually assaulted a woman in his office. He did not admit guilt in the agreement, but did agree not to sit or serve as a judge in Texas ever again. State District Judge Faith Johnson of Dallas was Publicly Admonished by the commission after telling her staff she was going to pick up cake and ice cream to celebrate the return of an escaped convict she had sentenced to life in prison. Her staff then decorated her courtroom with balloons and streamers when Billy Wayne Williams returned, and the judge made national headlines when she told him, "You just made my day when I heard you had finally come home. We're so excited to see you, we're throwing a party for you." Johnson, in a statement, said she had cooperated with the commission, that she'd been surprised by the attention the event attracted, and ended with this: "If my celebration of the return of fugitive Billy Wayne Williams offended any member of the community, I deeply apologize." Former Judge H. Lon Harper of Houston got a Public Reprimand from the commission for not doing enough of the legally required judicial education work while he was on the bench. At one point, he offered to resign in response to the complaints, but didn't follow up. And finally, the commission issued a Public Reprimand against Oscar Tullos, a JP in Brownsville. He told a lady suing a body shop to include the court fees in the amount she was claiming (in small claims court). She did, but the other side eventually got the case killed, by Tullos, because of an error in her original filing. The error? She included court costs in her claim and didn't specify what they were for. The commission had previously sanctioned Tullos for similar behavior, saying this time that he "failed to comply with the law and demonstrated a lack of professional competence..."

In a speech delivered to the Camp County Republicans in East Texas on Saturday, April 23, 2005, former Republican Chairman and ex-Reagan official Tom Pauken called for major policy changes in Austin and Washington, D.C. He wrote this piece afterwards and passed along to us. The state property tax was killed by the Texas Senate this morning."At a state level, we have Republicans in the Senate pushing a statewide property tax which will further erode local control over our public schools and flies in the face of our Republican-led efforts twelve years ago to successfully defeat the "Robin Hood" School Finance amendment to the Texas Constitution. Voters rejected a statewide property tax by a two-to-one margin. The Texas House has passed a school reform plan which is effectively a tax on wages combined with significant increases in sales taxes. It leaves "Robin Hood" intact. What happened to the Republican policy pledge over the past decade to eliminate Robin Hood, an unfair school financing scheme which imposes too heavy a tax burden on property owners to fund Texas public education." Pauken called for the replacement of Robin Hood with the Hartman Plan -- a broad-based, low percentage business activities tax which would replace the franchise tax, severance tax, and insurance tax. Proposed by Austin businessman David Hartman, Pauken called the Hartman Plan the fairest and most equitable way to tax business in Texas while reducing our excessive reliance on property taxes to fund public education. The Hartman proposal can be found at www.lonestarfoundation.org on the Studies page under Economic Policy-State: "Texas State Tax Reform Via the Flat BAT by David Hartman". Pauken added, "I am concerned that Austin lobbyists representing a variety of special interests are exercising far too much influence over the legislative process as our legislators try to come to grips with an appropriate solution to the failed Robin Hood scheme. We need a tax plan that is equitable and fair to our entire business community, rather than one that favors some businesses to the detriment of others. Otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for a personal income tax, which Texas doesn't need." At the national level, Pauken claimed that neither Republicans nor Democratic leaders were addressing the loss of our manufacturing base and the move to outsource jobs to workers in other countries which Pauken believes threatens the long-term viability of our American middle class. We are losing too many jobs overseas. According to Pauken, "every trading nation in the world -- except the United States of America -- has a value added tax to protect its domestic industries. Moreover, we are running trade deficits that are approaching the $700 billion level this year. This is not sustainable. As Warren Buffet has noted, what we are building in America is not "an ownership society" but "a sharecropper society". We need to replace the corporate income tax which penalizes companies for creating jobs in the U.S. with a border-adjusted VAT tax, as proposed by David Hartman, which will help level the playing field for American businesses. Pauken went on, "Any Republican leader who claims 'deficits don't matter' doesn't' know what he is talking about. You cannot continue to run current account (or trade) deficits in excess of $600 billion annually and budget deficits of more than $500 billion a year without facing a day of reckoning. What happened to our traditional economic principles which encouraged thrift and capital investment while warning of the dangers of excessive debt?" Pauken also called for a re-thinking of our War on Terrorism and criticized the neo-conservative influence over foreign policy in the Bush Administration. We have gone from a policy that views war as a last resort to one that talks about the necessity of preemptive war. Pauken added, "I am not sure the American people realize that neo-conservative leaders are committed to the principle of "perpetual war" to force democracy all throughout the Middle East. According to Pauken, "Unlike neo-conservatives, true conservatives are wary of utopian schemes to remake human nature." Pauken called for a foreign policy that is principally driven by what is in America's national interest. Pauken noted that the Soviet Empire fell without a shot being fired. Yet the neo-conservative architects of the War in Iraq now are calling for the overthrow of the regimes in Iran and Syria at a time when our U.S. military is already stretched too thin. According to Pauken, hardly any of the neo-conservative advocates of "perpetual war" have ever served in the military, much less in our last major war in Vietnam (Pauken is a former Military Intelligence Officer who served a tour of duty in Vietnam). Pauken questioned whether the neo-conservative strategy of perpetual war in the Middle East does not run of the risk of destabilizing the Middle East, turning more Muslims into Al Queda supporters, and furthering bin Laden's objective of radicalizing the Middle East. Pauken concluded, "What happened to our conservative principles of local control, limited government and government spending restraints? And, why have we abandoned a foreign policy guided by what is our national interest and replaced it with one which seeks to impose so-called American-styled "democracy" everywhere in the world? Conservatives need to speak out on these issues rather than allow blind party loyalty to cause us to go along with whatever our Republican officials in Austin and Washington tell us we have to support, no matter how much those policies are at odds with our conservative principles." Tom Pauken is a Dallas lawyer and the former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. He can be contacted at 469-235-3995.

SurveyUSA, a polling company that does work for several media outlets in Texas and elsewhere (we're not a client), says Gov. Rick Perry ranks 38th among U.S. governors in popularity in his own state. More Texans disapprove than approve of the job he's doing, according to the poll.The pollsters say 38 percent of Texans approve of Perry while 48 percent do not. They based that on a sample of 600 people polled by phone over the past weekend, and put the margin of error at 4.1 percent. Their question was "Do you approve or disapprove of the job Rick Perry is doing as governor?" You can see the full results and cross tabs and such at this address: www.surveyusa.com/50governorsrated051005.htm While Perry's numbers were upside down, he hasn't crossed into that dangerous land where more than half the population wants him out. Fourteen of the nation's governors got disapproval ratings over 50 percent, including California's Arnold Schwarzenegger. The most popular governors on the list are from smaller states. In fact, the governor's from the biggest states don't make the top 25 in approval ratings. The leader of the pack: John Hoeven of North Dakota, with 71-20 approval-disapproval numbers. The stinker? Ohio's Bob Taft, who gets 19-74 ratings, is the least popular chief executive in the U.S. according to SurveyUSA. Big state governors, with their ranking: Jeb Bush of Florida, 28; Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania, 29; Sonny Perdue of Georgia, 30; Richard Codey of New Jersey, 34; Schwarzenegger, 36; Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, 42; Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, 44; and George Pataki of New York, 45.

Appointments, a Libertarian gets 68 percent, and the House remembers Joe Moreno.Appointments: Gov. Rick Perry named T. Dan Friedkin of Houston and Peter Holt of Blanco to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission. Friedkin is president and CEO of Friedkin Companies, which includes Gulf States Toyota among its investments. Holt's the jefe at Holt CAT, which bills itself as the biggest Caterpillar distributor in the U.S. He's also the principal owner of the San Antonio Spurs. He's on the commission now, and Perry's reappointing him. Perry put six people on the Brazos River Authority's board and named Steve Peña of Round Rock, who's already on the board, to chair it. The newbies include U.S. Air Force Gen. (ret.) Christopher Adams Jr. of Granbury, former chief of staff of Strategic Air Command and former associate director of Los Alamos National Laboratory; former Clifton Mayor Truman Blum; U.S. Army Col. (ret.) Robert Christian of Jewitt; Christopher DeCluitt of Waco, an exec with The Sovereign Corporation; Carolyn Johnson of Freeport, an environmental consultant with Dow Chemical; and Roberta Killgore, a Somerville rancher. The local elections last week included the City of Lago Vista, which elected Pat Dixon, chairman of the Texas Libertarian Party, to its city council. He got 68 percent of the vote. Deaths: Rep. Joe Moreno, a well-liked Houston Democrat who worked as an aide in the Capitol before running successfully for office in 1998, in a much-reported traffic accident. He was 40. Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, was treated and released after the accident, and Monica Piñon, an aide to Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, remains hospitalized with injuries from that accident. The three were returning to Austin after a basketball game in Houston. The House adjourned for a day out of respect and moved one day's legislative work to 6 p.m. so friends and colleagues could attend the funeral in Houston and the burial in the state cemetery.

Revving the engines for 2006...Ag Commissioner Susan Combs sets a "statewide leadership team meeting" for May 21 in Austin to talk about her race for comptroller. That's a purse/wallet-safe event; state officeholders can't raise money while the Legislature is still in session. The current comptroller, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, hasn't said for sure that she's leaving office, but she's not making any noise about Comb's recent moves on that spot. Kinky Friedman, running for Texas governor as an independent, is in the midst of the first trip he's openly calling a campaign foray. It's in Houston, and the capper is his gig as grand marshal of "Everyone's Art Car Parade," an event that proves Austin is not the only weird place in Texas, or even the biggest one. And Democratic gubernatorial explorer Chris Bell, a former Houston congressman and city council who's considering a run next year, is holding "house parties" here and elsewhere to raise money and support for his candidacy. He's got two coming up in Texas, one in Chicago, and another in Washington, D.C.