Our take on school finance, written for the San Antonio Express-News' Sunday Insight section. Arnold "Arnie" Card, who used to teach elementary school in El Paso, could hit you with a blackboard eraser from anywhere in his classroom. The discipline didn't do any physical damage, but the white puff of dust and the snickers from classmates could shame sixth graders into better citizenship, at least for a while.
If Mr. Card were running the Texas Capitol, the state's top leaders would be covered with chalk.
Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, House Speaker Tom Craddick and other Republican leaders took over the state with great fanfare after the 2002 elections, putting all three branches of state government in GOP hands for the first time in a century. But once in control, they fell into the school finance bog that often thwarted their predecessors.
That swamp hasn't been completely drained since the late 1940s, when the state's modern school system was assembled. State leaders located the quicksand immediately, by failing to agree on what it was they were trying to accomplish. They attempted to pass a tax bill through an anti-tax Legislature and a set of school reforms by lawmakers who were hearing from educators back home that the changes would hurt more than help. And they tried to do all of that without a prerequisite for any sweeping change in Texas government: A court order.
The consequences
In the process, the relationships among the top three officeholders strained to the cussing point. Craddick's hold on the House was loosened, and senators threatened a revolt if Dewhurst pushed them to take more risky votes on measures doomed to fail in the House. Perry got nothing in his fourth run at school finance, but he won the political lottery when Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison announced she'd seek reelection instead of challenging him. He is still at risk, challenged by Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the top statewide vote-getter in the GOP last time around.
While they wait for that final, unassailable court order -- which could come any time between now and next spring (or longer, if the Texas Supreme Court wants) -- nervous state lawmakers are steeling themselves for the 2006 elections. Did voters notice, and are they upset? Did any of those votes hurt the politicians looking for reelections or for higher offices? Votes on taxes and education reforms? On limits to property tax increases? On retirement benefits for lawmakers and salaries for judges? On legislation making it easier for the friendly neighborhood phone company to compete with the friendly neighborhood cable TV company?
Almost a year ago, state District Judge John Dietz of Austin decided the current system violates the state's constitution. He said the funding system doesn't allow districts enough money to meet the standards set by the state and prevents them from providing Texas kids with adequate educations. And he ruled that the state's $1.50 cap on property tax rates has become, in effect, an illegal state property tax since most districts don't have any meaningful choice in charging taxpayers a lower rate. The state appealed, and everyone is looking now to the state Supreme Court for a final ruling on those points.
Three decades of woes
It's easy to reach a political solution to school finance: Just make about 1,100 school districts happy at the same time. Unless you can give each district more money in a new system than it already gets, that's impossible. But lawmakers didn't stop at that conundrum; they simultaneously tackled another dangerous puzzle by attempting to raise state taxes to buy down local school taxes. To raise taxes, you seek a plan with more winners than losers. One business lobbyist who's watched this sort of thing says, "You can't pass a tax bill unless you raise enough money to buy off the opposition."
School finance has bedeviled Texas politicians for more than 30 years. The modern problems began with parents in San Antonio's Edgewood ISD, who sued over inequities created when the quality of local schools was dependent -- much more than now -- on the value of local properties. The basic idea they were challenging was restated earlier this year when a Republican senator -- Todd Staples of Palestine -- said the quality of education for Texas kids shouldn't depend on their zip codes.
The state has worked on this for years. Every fix lasts for a while -- the current system is more than ten years old -- but the makeup and population of the state changes and people learn how to take advantage of the rules. It gets out of balance again, somebody gets mad and sues and wins, and a new patch is applied. That's always the way: The Texas Legislature has never made major changes to school finance without pressure from its highest civil court.
That pressure didn't exist during the last two years. Lawmakers met in special session in spring of 2004, then in regular session a year later, and then in the two special sessions this summer. Without a final order from the high court, nothing came of that work: Senators and representatives would have had a more productive summer on Mustang Island, building sand castles.
Competing to-do list
One reason they can't find the answer is that they can't agree on what questions to ask. State leaders and the lawmakers looking to them for guidance had at least a half-dozen different and often competing goals. In no particular order:
• Reform schools, to make them more accountable for the money they get and to make sure as much of it as possible is used to educate kids (as opposed to feeding them, busing them, herding them, counting them, etc., etc., etc.). Gov. Perry followed the session by ordering part of this, saying districts ought to be using at least two-thirds of their money for classroom education by 2009.
• Lower local school property taxes and cap increases in property values to take pressure off home and other property owners.
• Give teachers and other school employees a pay raise, to bring salaries closer to the national average and to try to attract and retain the best people in education.
• Limit how much locally raised property tax money in wealthy districts has to be shared with poorer districts.
• Increase the state's share of the public education bill to 60 percent or more from its current level around 40 percent, a goal that was pursued with only temporary success by state leaders like George W. Bush and Ann Richards in the 1990s.
• Increase education spending to try to bring up student achievement, pulling more schools up to standards set by the state.
• Lower the number of districts where -- in spite of share-the-wealth formulas -- property wealth still means higher spending per pupil than is possible elsewhere in the state.
And there were several other issues loosely assembled under the umbrella of "school reform" that some hold dear: Start school after Labor Day and do away with some of the holidays that poke holes in the annual school calendar; move school board elections to November, which probably would make them more partisan and probably would increase voter turnout; put more technology into schools as part of what some gear-heads hope will spell an end to 30-pound backpacks and a beginning to students lugging computers that contain textbooks and other education software.
Talk to five legislators and you can probably add to the list. A court decision -- with a narrow enough definition of just what's broken and must be fixed -- would be handy right now. And the Legislature is apparently ready to wait for the court to do what its leaders couldn't do: Say what needs repair and what can be left for later.
Assigning the blame
When the session ended on August 19, the state's three top leaders blamed special interests, but not the same ones. Craddick blamed the education establishment in Texas, saying teacher groups and superintendent groups and school board groups were all betting they'll get a better deal from the courts than from the Legislature. There is some truth in that.
For two years, state leaders couldn't get a single education group to support their efforts. That's no surprise, given the mix of districts that joined to sue the state in the first place. Districts like Alamo Heights and Edgewood were on the same side in the lawsuit, telling the state it's current system is broken and unconstitutional. They've been winning in court and don't think the repairs offered by the Legislature measure up to what the courts might order, and their lawyers have advised against making concessions while the issue remains in court. Moreover, they're winning in the Legislature. After all, lawmakers came back to Austin after talking to educators at home and decided -- collectively -- not to pass a bill.
Perry and Dewhurst aimed their guns at the opponents of the various tax bills that were proposed. Dewhurst was specific, pointing to petrochemical and oil and gas industries and at a couple of their top lobbyists in particular. Without a state tax bill to pay for lowered school property taxes, nothing went forward. Inducements like teacher pay raises, money for textbooks and technology and other bells and whistles weren't enough to make the thing go.
Mincemeat at the polls?
In the process of crashing several tax bills, rank and file lawmakers were potentially minced, spiced and baked into little pies to be served to future opponents. The House, at one point, approved sales taxes on bottled water and car repairs. More than half of them voted for an extra tax on snack foods, raising the total sales tax to more than a dime on things like Cheetos and Milky Way bars and Cokes. The records of some senators now include votes in favor of a state property tax to replace local property taxes.
To be fair, all of those were designed to raise a penny on one hand to lower taxes by a penny on the other hand: State taxes would rise and local taxes would fall. The details killed the thing. An old joke: If you put one hand on ice and one in boiling water, on average, you'll be comfortable. The tax bills proposed this year worked like that: The Legislative Budget Board, a nonpartisan state agency that cranks numbers for lawmakers, estimated that the tax bill -- while balanced overall -- would raise taxes for roughly nine of ten Texans, on average. The benefits to that tenth taxpayer matched the costs, more or less, to the other nine (some lawmakers question the calculations, but the studies gave skittish members of the House and Senate one more reason to vote against the tax bills).
Is all of that enough to beat anybody at the polls next year? Maybe. It's still possible -- if the Supremes are quick and the Legislature comes back before the primaries -- to resolve the issues before lawmakers face voters. And there would be a greater chance of an uprising if lawmakers had passed reforms that proved to be unpopular. Put it another way: Texas lawmakers didn't do much to attract voters' attention this summer and in this case, that's their good luck.
A group includes Dallas lawyer Fred Baron -- the chief fundraiser for the John Kerry-John Edwards ticket last year -- wants to reboot the Texas Democratic Party, infusing money and people to try to get that moribund organization running again. Baron says the Party needs to build its voter files, its idea development and its marketing to try to return the state to two-party status. As it stands, the Party is suffering from pecuniary strangulation -- it's broke -- and candidates in the last couple of cycles tended to depend more on their own wits and the wits of their consultants than on the home base back in Austin. Several local Democratic groups around the state have been strong, but most candidates don't rely on the state party for much. "We have, as Democrats, a very strong message that's not being communicated very well," Baron says. No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas in ten years, and none has held statewide office since January 1999. The party lost control of the Texas Legislature in 2002, and that new Legislature redrew congressional districts to favor the GOP, which decisively took over the state's delegation to Washington in last year's elections. If this was a football team, the coaches would all be saying it's a rebuilding year and there's a lot of young talent and all that. The boosters (stick with us, there's a payoff to this longwinded metaphor) would be calling for the coaches' heads. And the fallback position would be to keep the head coach and fire all of the assistants. So it is with the TDP. Chairman Charles Soechting isn't going anywhere for now -- he's an elected official and isn't up for a re-bid until next summer. But Baron and a group of consultants and financiers want to add six or seven full-timers to the Party staff in an effort, Baron says, to build infrastructure. The so-called "Lone Star Trust" would add full-time fundraisers, an event planner, a database expert, a new executive director and press person to the staff of the party, according to a couple of folks who've heard the pitch. Baron plans to unveil the whole plan on Wednesday (August 31) for members of the State Democratic Executive Committee. He wouldn't share specifics -- saying he wants to show the party people first -- but talked about problems the Texas Democrats have been having. For one thing, they can't raise enough money to remain effective. Baron's group wants to put in seed money in an attempt to become an "effective opposition party" and to someday contend for control of state government. If they can jumpstart the Party, he says, Texas Democrats who give generously to other causes and to Democrats out of state will return to funding the battles here. Baron says the group is not wed to any particular candidate or personalities, and he says the state's trial lawyers aren't controlling it. Matt Angle, a longtime political advisor to former U.S. Rep. Martin Frost of Dallas, has been organizing the effort and talking to other Democrats about it for the last few months. He didn't immediately return our calls, but friends say he'll return to his home and business in Virginia as soon as this is either set up or rejected by Democratic Party leaders. Some Democrats are quietly grousing about the idea, calling it an attempt by trial lawyers to take over the machine, and saying it'll return the Democrats to some of the things that made them unpopular with Texas voters in the first place. One change preceded Baron's pitch to the Democrats and has been in the works for a while. Mike Lavigne, the party's executive director, is leaving the TDP. His replacement is Ruben Hernandez, who worked with Engle and others in Frost's old organization, for former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Beaumont, and for a group called Grassroots Democrats. He'll start in October.