House Speaker Tom Craddick won't appoint any House members to a joint committee to work on school finance and education issues, though he and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst had previously agreed on the number and even the names of legislators who would be on it. Aides to both men were ready to announce the joint panel -- with seven members from each side -- as soon as the Texas Supreme Court announced a decision in the school finance case. That decision landed on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but the committee never was unveiled. And in a written statement, Craddick says he's now against the idea: "I have spoken to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, and I do not think it is necessary to appoint a Joint Select Committee on Public Education. Governor Perry appointed his Texas Tax Reform Commission, to which each of us contributed nominations for appointees. That committee is made up of a diverse group of individuals, and we need to support that group in coming up with different funding mechanisms for public school finance. I look forward to then working with the Lt. Governor and the Senate on developing a consensus plan that responds to the Supreme Court's ruling." When they were talking about a legislative committee, legislative leaders were working with the idea that the Sharp panel would make recommendations but wouldn't be able to vote on anything. Dewhurst, stung by Perry's appointment of the Democrat Dewhurst beat in 2002, wanted to put his imprint on the issue, and lawmakers might want to add their own stuff -- particularly in the realm of education reforms. From the East end of the Capitol, Craddick's decision looks like a second slap. They might also be better off working out their plans before the start of a special session. The task force formed by Perry doesn't have any lawmakers on it. As it stands, lawmakers will get to work on the issues at the start of a special session sometime between now and the Supreme Court's June 1 deadline. 

Senior Judge Pat Priest, the Man in Black in U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's trial on campaign finance charges, plans to rule by December 6 on DeLay's request to drop the charges against him. Lawyers have to have briefs in the judge's hands this week. If the case goes ahead, DeLay is still pressing a change of venue to get the trial moved out of Austin and also has filed papers contending prosecutors abused the grand jury process to get the former House Majority Leader indicted. Priest has already said he doubts DeLay could get to trial before the end of the year. The congressman wants to put the matter to rest before Congress reconvenes and possibly elects new leaders. He's not eligible for a top post while under indictment. 

In which we patch bogus information on property taxes and our muddy explanation of Texans' lagging educational attainment levels. In some editions last week, we said changing the property tax cap would require a constitutional amendment. It would not require an amendment or a public vote; the Legislature can change that $1.50 cap as it wishes and without voter approval. Sorry, sorry, sorry. We offered up a muddy explanation of some education stats last week, so we'll attempt a clarification. In his testimony to the governor's task force on taxes, Steve Murdock, the state's demographer, offered some numbers showing Texas behind other states and the national average in both high school diplomas and college degrees. The details: In the year 2000, 75.7 percent of Texas adults (age 25 and up) had high school degrees. That was a lower percentage than 44 other states, and lower than the national percentage of 80.4 percent. Likewise, 23.2 percent of those same Texas adults had college degrees, lower than the national rate -- 24.4 percent -- and the rates of 26 other states. Murdock was clear, and we weren't. Sorry for any confusion we ignited. 

Austin will have a special election to replace Rep. Todd Baxter in HD-48 before a special session on school finance. Gov. Rick Perry called that election for January 17.A runoff, if one takes place, would take place in February. Baxter, a Republican, quit at the beginning of November and took a job as a cable TV lobbyist. Ben Bentzin is the only Republican who's said out loud that he wants the job. Four Democrats are looking at it: Andy Brown, Donna Howard, Kathy Rider, and Kelly White. Bentzin lost a Senate race against Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, four years ago. White lost to Baxter by a few dozen votes two years ago. The Democrats have had conversations -- without resolution, apparently -- about going into a special election with just one candidate instead of four. And no matter who wins in January, the candidates who want a full term in the job will be on the ballot for party primaries in March and the general election in November. The special election winner could have an edge, and will get to vote in a special session on school finance. In his announcement of the special election, Perry cited the pending special session and the June 1 deadline set by the Supreme Court for a remedy to what they called a unconstitutional statewide property tax. Since Baxter announced, Democrats have been grousing about Perry's slow hand replacing the late Rep. Joe Moreno, D-Houston, who was killed last spring in a truck accident. The special election to replace him was set for Election Day in November (a runoff will be held in a couple of weeks), well after two special sessions on school finance. With several close votes on various school finance provisions, that empty seat arguably threw a real advantage to Republican House leaders. With the shoe on the other foot, they complain, Perry is moving quickly to try to replace Baxter's lost Republican vote. One other difference between the two situations is the court's firm June 1 deadline, but school finance has been sufficiently troubled to prompt Perry to call three special sessions without any word from the Supremes. Early voting is now underway (as of November 30) in that Houston runoff to replace Moreno in the Legislature. Election Day is Saturday, December 10. Ana Hernandez and Laura Salinas finished first and second, respectively, in a six-candidate field. The four losers in the first round endorsed Salinas, who has the backing of some former legislators in Houston; Hernandez is backed by Moreno's family and several current legislators. Both Democrats are running with significant contributions from normally conservative financiers, like Houston homebuilder Bob Perry and Texans for Lawsuit Reform. And the winner will have to defend the seat in normal elections next year.

To steal a line from former House Speaker Gib Lewis, it's time to chirp or get off the perch: Candidates for state office in 2006 can start filing on Saturday, December 3, and must file by the end of the day on Monday, January 2, to be on the March ballot. Unless something pops, 2006 will be a relatively calm election year in Texas. Of the 215 people elected to legislative jobs in Texas (we're including the 34 feds), only 17 definitely won't be back, and a bunch have their fingers crossed, hoping they'll run unopposed next year.None of the 32 members of the state's congressional delegation have indicated anything other than reelection bids. And only three challenges -- at this point -- have the makings of potentially serious contests (U.S. Reps. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land; Chet Edwards, D-Waco; and Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo). Cuellar's in a primary fight, but the other two have 11 months left before voters put an end to the suspense. The Texas Senate has three open seats out of 31 and possibly one more -- depending on the unannounced reelection plans of Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria. Sens. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin; Jon Lindsay, R-Houston; and Todd Staples, R-Palestine, won't seek reelection. Lindsay, Staples, and Armbrister are all committee chairs. Armbrister's HD-18 could flip to the GOP; lightning could strike, but each of the other three will probably remain with the party that's got it now.
The House should have 20 to 30 interesting races, but only has 14 empty seats out of 150 (put an asterisk there -- you'll see more dropouts as candidates actually file for reelection). At this writing, the list of departed and departing House members includes Ray Allen, R-Grand Prairie; Todd Baxter, R-Austin; Mary Denny, R-Aubrey; Bob Griggs, R-North Richland Hills; Peggy Hamric, R-Houston; Ruben Hope Jr., R-Conroe; Bob Hunter, R-Abilene; Suzanna Gratia Hupp, R-Lampasas; Terry Keel, R-Austin; Joe Moreno, D-Houston (deceased); Joe Nixon, R-Houston; Richard Raymond, D-Laredo; Jim Solis, D-Harlingen; Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio. Half of those -- Allen, Denny, Hamric, Hupp, Keel, Nixon, and Uresti -- are committee chairmen.

Kinky Friedman has to have almost 50,000 signatures to get on the ballot as an independent candidate for governor next year. His campaign folks are aiming higher, hoping to get two or four times that many -- 100,000 to 200,000 signatures -- to show outsiders how serious they are.And while state law seriously restricts anybody's ability to get on the ballot without a party affiliation, organizers hope Friedman's outsider cachet and the cheap community-building power of the Internet will raise their chances. Friedman supporters aren't allowed to sign up until after the March primaries. The campaign has 60 days to collect those signatures. Each signature has to come from a registered voter, and anyone who votes in any party primary or runoff next year is disqualified as a valid petitioner. The people who collect the petitions have to swear that they witnessed the signings, that they read a brief legal statement to the signers, and that they minded all of the state's other rules for petition-driven campaigns. The last independent candidate to win the Texas governorship was Sam Houston. Nobody in recent memory has cleared the hurdles for the state ballot, though Ross Perot got on the presidential ballot by presenting box loads of petitions in 1992. Without the Internet, the campaign would have to rely on door-knocking and person-to-person contacts. With the Internet, they can snag people who visit their website, asking whether they'd like to volunteer or help or just sign up for more campaign information. Some of the people caught in that net then organize local groups, regional groups and so on. Dean Barkley, the campaign manager, and Reid Nelson, the field director, say they've signed up enough people to build organizations in 50 to 60 Texas counties. They ask them to take a pledge: "I pledge that I will save myself for Kinky and will vote in neither the Republican nor the Democratic primaries in 2006. Instead I will save myself and when the day comes to sign the petition to put Kinky Friedman on the ballot as a candidate for Texas Governor, I will do so proudly." And they ask them to download a "collection kit" that lets volunteers sign up friends and mail their names into the campaign. They're trying to recreate what a healthy political party already has in place -- a network of people who'll do the grunt work of a campaign. In this case, they're building a network that will produce all of those signatures, either with volunteers and paid coordinators who'll handle the supervising and collecting of signatures, or by assembling the lists of people who'll actually sign their names. In effect, they're assembling the names and contact information about their voters before they have to go out and actually collect signatures. Nelson says they should know even before the primaries whether they'll be able to pull it off. For the most part, the network isn't a critical part of the campaign's fundraising. The local groups can hold fundraisers, but that's done out of Austin, for the most part, and the organization is mainly set up to collect the needed signatures and generate enthusiasm. The effort is invisible if you're not looking for it, and there are some holes in the network -- Amarillo and Laredo, for instance, have been slow to join up. But they have the rest of the big counties and among those, some real hot spots like central Texas and the Hill Country. This is familiar ground to anyone who has worked with volunteers; what's different is that the volunteer group isn't already in place. As it grows, the idea is that the new organization will maintain itself, contacting volunteers and signers, sending pre-primary reminders not to vote, reminding them not to vote in the primaries. When the primary elections are over, they'll start signing the actual petitions through the regional and local and small group leaders they've already contacted. Their deadline is in May. At that point, the election people at the Texas Secretary of State figure out whether Friedman has enough legitimate signatures to get on the ballot.

Staff lawyers at the U.S. Department of Justice thought the congressional redistricting plan approved by Texas lawmakers in 2003 was unconstitutional, but were overruled by their bosses. The Washington Post got hold of the memo.Washington Post: Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal/Voting Rights Finding On Map Pushed By DeLay Was Overruled. A copy of the memo is available in our Files section, by clicking here. The U.S. Supreme Court is still considering whether to hear the challenge to the plans which, after being approved by DOJ, were approved by a panel of three federal judges. In their memo, staff attorneys in the agency's voting rights section said the Texas plan dilutes minority voting strength. Those lawyers unanimously recommended rejection. Their superiors overruled them and that position -- that the maps were legal after all -- has so far held up in court. In the meantime, those Texas maps produced a gain of five Republican seats in the delegation and swung the partisan balance of the Texas crew in Washington to the GOP. Those five seats gained in Texas were the only five seats the GOP gained in Congress in the 2004 elections.

Former House Speaker Pete Laney, D-Hale Center, won't seek reelection next year.Laney, first elected to the Texas House in 1972, was elected Speaker in 1993 and served for five terms. He was knocked off in 2003, after Republicans won a majority of seats in the House in the 2002 elections and raised Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, into the top office. Laney has been a thorn in Craddick's side and a daily reminder to veteran legislators of the differences between the current administration and the old one (which administration they preferred varies by member). He's also served as the focal point for conspiracy theorists on the Republican side, who credit him for many of the trip-ups engineered by House Democrats. Other Democrats, meanwhile, have been stuck in Laney's shadow. Because he's still in office and because the Republicans presume he wants his old job back, a lot of partisan activity by Democrats has been dismissed as an effort to resurrect Laney. His departure also changes the game for moderates in the GOP, some of whom have grown accustomed to being labeled as Laney supporters. With him out of the House, their quiet conversations about Craddick successors can focus on new blood. Laney took over the House after one of its periodic forays into legal trouble, and he was the first House Speaker in years to serve more than a term or two without scandal. He was elected with the class of Texas politicos who rode the Sharpstown Scandal into office in 1972, an episode that brought down then-Speaker Gus Mutscher and others. Billy Clayton was acquitted on charges of taking a bribe in 1980; he survived another term but gave way to Gib Lewis. And Lewis survived ethics misdemeanor fines early in his tenure only to have another round of ethics troubles sink him in the early 1990s. Laney followed him into office pushing ethics reforms and open access to what had become a very secretive legislative process, and served five terms (only he and Lewis have lasted that long in the high chair) before Craddick upended him in 2003. Laney changed the legislative process by rearranging the House's session calendar to wind business down in the last six weeks rather than let everything go to midnight on the last day. That change forced the Senate to change its approach and remade the legislative process. And he was the last in a string of Democrats at the top of state government who -- because of circumstances or personalities -- had to work with Republicans to get their work done. Laney and then-Gov. George W. Bush and then-Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock had a famous working relationship, partly because they actually got along, and partly because none could get anything done without the help of the other two. Only two members -- Craddick and Paul Moreno, D-El Paso -- have been in the House longer than Laney. And only one other member of the huge reform class of '73 -- Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston -- is still in the House. Laney's House district might be the most Republican landscape in the state that's still got a Democratic incumbent. Laney, who remains popular there, got 59 percent of the vote in last year's general election while every other Democrat on the ballot was getting creamed in HD-85. Bush got 76 percent of the vote, and the average Democrat running statewide got just 41 percent of the vote there. Only one Republican has filed for the seat -- insurance agent Jim Landtroop of Plainview -- but if Laney's out, it could get busy quickly. In his retirement announcement, Laney encouraged potential candidates to run for the job, and said, "the people of this district have an expectation of bipartisanship."