It's been a bummer of a week for optimists. It looked for a minute there like the Texas Senate had everything lined up for a quick resolution on school finance, but they reverted to form and fell into a series of old and new traps.

More than a week remains in the special session — plenty of time to pull everything together. But as the third week came to an end, only one bill in the inventory had gone to the governor and two of the six bills in the package were mired in Senate Finance and the folks in charge in the upper chamber were fumbling for a strategy. Several Republican senators appear ready to strip extras from the legislation and to push through just the parts needed to solve school finance.

That one bill on Rick Perry's desk is the biggest tax bill in state history. Taken alone, it might as well have a skull and crossbones on it; Perry isn't likely to sign it without companion legislation that directs the money it raises to relief from local school property taxes. The rest of the package — two more tax bills, a bill forcing newly raised funds into property tax relief, another that uses part of the budget surplus to pay for the first year of cuts, and a last one that's supposed to catch any mistakes in the first five — is still winding its way through the Legislature. And as time has passed, the obstacle course has become more difficult.

New traps: Tobacco industry lobbying on the amount of the cigarette tax increase and on an intra-industry dispute over taxes on snuff; an insurance-friendly provision to a sales tax bill that would have the effect of lowering, in some cases, what you're paid when you total your insured car; and whether there's really enough money to cut M&O property taxes to $1 or anything in this legislation that forces local property taxes to that much-hyped mark.

Old traps: Recapture and equity; election dates; school start dates; homestead exemptions; caps on annual increases in property taxes; teacher pay raises (and amounts); and the health stipend for teachers and other school employees that has yo-yoed between $0 and $1,000 since it was put in place in 1997. Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, had been pushing to let local districts keep at least some of their locally raised money — the recapture/equity issue — but says she'll back down for now. Homestead exemptions won support in the House a year ago, but money spent there can't be spent to lower rates, a formula that drains business support. The other provisions have proponents, but remain controversial; they cost votes, too. And the list of add-ons helped kill previous efforts to patch the state's school finance system. 

Not a Penny More

Kids will teach you -- quickly -- that an easy to understand promise is one you'd better keep. It's a useful lesson when you're thinking about voters. Tell them you're gonna lower local school property taxes to $1, and anything else -- from $1.01 to $1.50 -- will make you look like a cheat.

So Gov. Rick Perry, prompted by the business groups who traded their endorsements on the tax bill for a 50-cent cut in property taxes, is doubling up his wager. His marketing machine is pushing the $1 promise hard. The state's eight biggest chambers of commerce held a press conference to push the point. Texans for Taxpayer Relief — the non-profit corporation that's raising money to promote Perry's tax plan — sent letters to lawmakers urging them to put the full cuts to $1 into law. Perry himself held a session with Senate Republicans — they've apparently given up on the Democrats — to tell them nothing less than $1 would do.

That puts him at odds, kinda, with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Dewhurst says the House's legislation doesn't balance, and promising a tax cut of a particular size could push future legislatures into a jam. If the taxes that pass during this session don't raise the money needed for the school tax break, lawmakers will have to scrape up the funds from other sources.

A 50-cent cut in taxes costs some $5.5 billion to $6 billion. Former Comptroller John Sharp, who headed the Texas Tax Reform Commission appointed by Perry, has acknowledged the panel's plan will need to use $1.4 billion of the state surplus as it gets off the ground. He says growth in the economy and in the new business tax will cover that in the years that follow.

But the current comptroller, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, says the plan has built-in deficits that will have to be covered in future years by money that's not coming from this session's new taxes. Sharp and others on Perry's end of the seesaw disagree. So you have two competing assertions, and Dewhurst has weighed in with his own numbers. They don't exactly match Strayhorn's, but they're along the same lines. And her numbers are the only ones with any legal weight.

The proposal from the tax commission included a 17-cent first-year cut in property taxes and a 33-cent cut in the second year. It also lowered the state cap on school property taxes to $1.30 from $1.50. All three numbers disappeared in the House; the first one was replaced with a provision that would take 11.3 percent off a district's current tax rate. The House bills make no promise for year two, other than saying the money from the new taxes will go to cuts. If more is needed to get to the promised dollar rate, they didn't make any provision for it.

Dewhurst has been reluctant to put the promise in law without some certainty that the money will be there. Perry and a fair number of Senate Republicans want to put the buck in the bill and hope for the best. Without a constitutional change, this Legislature can't force future lawmakers to do anything; as a practical matter, this could all change the next time the Lege meets. But it would be politically difficult, and that's probably enough.

Three timing issues ought to get mentioned somewhere in here.

First, even if she thinks the tax package is out of balance, Strayhorn's official pronouncement will only cover whether the plan balances between the time it takes effect and the end of the current two-year budget in August 2007. Since it uses surplus money for its startup, it probably will. And it was designed to get around a comptroller who's also running for governor. By the time the bills come due, Strayhorn's replacement will be running state finances.

Second: The last phase of the local school property tax cuts show up on tax bills due in January 2008, two months before the next primary elections. If voters like it, that'll be good for incumbents. If voters don't get what they want, it'll be a good year for challengers.

Third: The new business tax will come due for the first time in May 2008, and accountants and other number crunchers will be looking hard at the numbers at the first of that year. Again, it could influence primaries, for better or for worse.

A Deal on Teacher Pay

State legislative leaders have reached agreement on a $2,000 across-the-board pay raise for teachers and an average of $1,000 more in incentive salary increases that would be phased in over two years, but teacher groups wanted more and school workers who aren't in the classroom are miffed that legislators are cutting them out of a $500 annual stipend.

The incentive pay agreed to by House and Senate leaders would start with teachers in high-poverty districts that show big performance gains. About $100 million would be available for that. In 2008, they've proposed adding another $200 million that would go through both local and state incentive programs. They'd phase in spending on "high school improvement measures" of up to $500 per student with the goal of preparing students for college.

The deal doesn't restore the full $1,000 stipend that educators were hoping for. That started as a health care stipend and was later freed so teachers could use the money for whatever they wanted. In tight budget times, though, lawmakers cut the stipend in half. It'll stay that way for now, and non-teachers will lose it altogether. The griping from the educators irked Republican senators; one told us they might as well not have done anything, for the reaction they're getting; another suggested they should take all the money and put it into incentive pay.

That stuff has all been tucked into HB 1, which also includes using $2.37 billion of the state surplus to lower school property taxes by 11.3 percent, or up to 17 cents.

The agreement — nobody's actually voted on it as we write this — follows a month or so of talks between House Speaker Tom Craddick, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and a handful of legislators. It's designed to keep the state budget from triggering a cap on spending — the growth in spending isn't allowed to exceed growth in personal income without legislative approval, and nobody wants that vote on his or her record. The pay raises fit inside the cap, as does that first $2.4 billion spending of the surplus. But the high school program might have to start slowly.

Al's Not Here, but Lockboxes are Back

In the House version, any new tax money coming out of the special session would go into a special account, and all of the money in that account had to be used to cut local property taxes. The House made no reference to target tax rates and didn't require the state to lower school taxes to $1, as had been proposed by the Texas Tax Reform Commission.

In the Senate version, the lockbox money is dedicated solely to property tax reduction until the school tax rates all reach $1 (like the House version, it doesn't require that the rates be lowered to $1 — but the Senate decided to say what'll happen if they do reach that point). If the trigger is reached, additional lock box money would be split between local property tax cuts and education.

The education money — one-third of the money — would be used to for "basic allotments" in school finance formulas, and to help balance school finance funds between rich and poor districts. If the money ever lowers local property tax rates to 75 cents, any additional money would go into those school formulas.

Watch This Space

The main tax bill might be safe from tampering, but it's got a satellite that's built for hijinks.

The Senate added a sidecar to the business tax bill, opting to leave the tax bill in the exact form it passed the House and to put any changes or amendments or fixes or tricky lobby schemes into a new piece of legislation, SB 6 (that's how the tax bill got to the governor's desk without more stops). As filed, that sidecar is pretty unthreatening. But Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick are trading off a list of proposals that would go into that bill.

Craddick cautioned the Senate against anything that could turn the sidecar into a tax bill — those can't start anywhere but the House — and said a Senate-started tax bill wouldn't survive. That prompted Dewhurst to script a "parliamentary inquiry" from Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan. Dewhurst answered the planted question by saying Craddick was in on the creation of SB 6 and even requested a half-dozen provisions that ought to be included. 

Outside Pressure

At least one of the big tobacco companies bought full-page newspaper ads blasting the proposed $1 increase in the tax on a pack of cigarettes. The ads urged people to call in, and their calls were then routed to their senator or state representative. The lawmakers said the pressure wasn't working, but the cigarette tax had stalled in the Senate Finance Committee by the end of the week. Democrats who generally support it came off when none of the money was dedicated to health care, and some Republicans were nervous about a big tax increase that is so apparent to end consumer/voters. At least the proposed state business tax won't be paid directly by or seen directly by most voters. Without the tax on smokes, lawmakers would be $700 million short of what they need for tax relief. In property tax terms, $700 million would buy a reduction of about six cents. Put another way, that's about 12 percent of what's needed for the whole tax cut. You can look at a copy of the ad in our Files section: www.texasweekly.com/documents.

The tobacco lobby is all hired up — so much so that even some of the hirelings have remarked on it. Texans for Public Justice did a report on the damage: The companies have paid Texas lobsters between $1.4 million and $2.9 million so far this year (Texas' lobby reporting laws are, um, imprecise). The report's online: www.tpj.org; look under "Lobby Watch."

• Gov. Rick Perry's political operation is apparently of two minds about the progress of the tax package through the Senate. They want people to give the Senate a smack. But it's not clear which sort of smack they want. Suggested Smack Number One was the kind that leaves a bruise. Smack Number two, about an hour later, was a big, wet kiss...

Take a look at excerpts from these emails from the Guv's political office. The first, sent between 5:30 and 6pm last Friday evening (the punctuation and emphasis is from the original):

"It is becoming apparent that the Lt. Governor and the Texas Senate are NOT committed to lowering your property taxes by 33% to the $1 tax rate!! ... We will lose support for the plan in the House if the Senate does not get "Back on the Buck" and lower the rate to $1. "Please call the Lt. Governor and your Senator NOW!!! Your property tax cut depends on it."

The second went out about an hour later:

"Today the Senate took decisive action and passed school finance reform and taxpayer protection legislation. This legislation, almost identical to the bills earlier passed by the House of Representatives, are part of a plan that will provide historic property tax relief to homeowners and businesses and long-term protections to taxpayers. The Lt. Governor and the Senate are to be commended for moving swiftly. The Senate action will result in the largest property tax cut in Texas history, will make homeownership more affordable for millions of Texas families, and will allow employers to spend more resources on jobs and growth.

• The anti-tax wing of the GOP has been in high dudgeon over the governor's plan to increase taxes on business, smokes and used cars while the state is also in possession of an $8.2 billion budget surplus. They've generated a bunch of email and a bit of testimony in the tax committees, but the angry mob some lawmakers feared hasn't materialized.

• Teacher groups that want the stipend raised (or replaced, for support personnel in the schools) are pushing their members to call senators to press their case. No word on whether that's tangled up anyone's switchboard.

• And textbook publishers are crying foul over a Senate provision that would free the state from the "proclamations" that set up the schedules for replacing math books in elementary schools in the 2008-09 school year. The new books line up with the standardized tests the Legislature requires kids to take in school.

Dewhurst Standard Time

A group of senators, irked by the lieutenant governor's chronic tardiness, are circulating a letter asking David Dewhurst to let them know when he's not gonna make it to the start of each legislative session so they can put someone in the chair to get things going until he's present.

Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, wouldn't give us a copy of the letter and said the senators are not trying to embarrass anyone. He didn't say how many senators have signed, or which ones. But they'd like to get going when they're supposed to get going, and the letter is meant as a gentle prod in that direction.

Other senators have talked about changing the rules in the upper chamber to automatically put the president pro tempore or the Dean of the Senate in the chair when the Lite Guv isn't on hand. That would be more than a gentle prod.

A Little Parliamentary Note

You know that two-thirds rule that requires a supermajority in the Senate to consider a bill out of the "regular order of business"? You can find some loud voices on the Republican side of the plane — Houston radio host and (probable) senator-to-be Dan Patrick is one — who want to get rid of that thing because it empowers minority parties. But there's a loophole in the rule and if the Senate uses it, Patrick and others who don't want any new taxes will be on the losing side. That regular order of business flips in mid-week, so that House bills are at the top of the lineup instead of Senate bills. On the Senate list, there's a "blocker bill" that's in the way of the real business; it takes two-thirds to cut in line ahead of that one. On the House list, there's usually a blocker (especially during regular sessions), but there's not one this year. If they don't have two-thirds but want to take up one of the House's tax bills, all the Senate has to do is wait until Wednesday.

Political Notes

 • The Texas AFL-CIO will hear from all three challengers to Gov. Rick Perry next week, but not from Perry himself. Democrat Chris Bell and independents Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn will all talk at that group's annual convention in Irving on Monday.

• Friedman and Strayhorn have to turn in the signatures they've collected to get on the ballot by the end of business May 11, but it's still not clear how those signatures will be checked, or how quickly. Strayhorn went to court to force Secretary of State Roger Williams — a Perry appointee and supporter — to sample the names to determine whether she's got enough to get on the ballot. He has said he wants to check each of the signatures on her petitions and Friedman's, and that it'll take up to two months. The federal judge who's got that case, Lee Yeakel, said this week he'll decide quickly.  To refresh your memory: Independents running for governor need 45,540 signatures from registered voters who didn't vote in the primaries or the runoffs and who didn't sign petitions for any other gubernatorial candidates. Strayhorn says the two-month counting delay would make it hard to raise money. If that's so, it would probably be good news for Bell, the Democrat in the race. Perry, as an incumbent, can raise money. Anti-Perry money that's not sure independents are a good investment might jump into the Bell camp.

• U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, has taken to running an Exxon sign with high gas prices on it in his emails. It emphasizes a shot he took at the Republican in the race: Van Taylor's personal financial disclosures indicate he owns $5 million to $25 million in Exxon stock. Edwards has been pressing him to say how much he's made off of the surge in gasoline prices.

• There's a third "kinky-toon" up on Friedman's website. He isn't the richest candidate, but he can attract endorsements: the Dixie Chicks, Pat Green, Willie Nelson, Bruce Robison, Billy Joe Shaver, and Kelly Willis. It's online: www.kinkyfriedman.com/multimedia/_video/kinkytoon_03/.

Political People and Their Moves

Tanya Vasquez, until now a staffer with Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, is leaving to join Equitas Strategies, a new Democratic consulting firm in Austin started by the Robert Jones who's not a lobbyist.

Matt Phillips is leaving Sen. Steve Ogden's employ after five years with the Bryan Republican; he's the new government relations director for the Brazos River Authority.

The Associated Republicans of Texas has new officers: Hector DeLeon of Austin will be chairman and treasurer; Dr. Walter Wilkerson of Conroe, vice chair; William McMinn of Houston will be finance chairman and Pat Sweeney Robbins of Austin will be the secretary. Related: Norm Newton, who's still on that group's board, is cooking up a new political action committee: The Alliance PAC will back pro-bidness candidates.

Gov. Rick Perry named Conrith Davis, a sales exec with AS Legal in Sugar Land, to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

The governor named Juan Sanchez Munoz of Lubbock to the Texas Youth Commission. He's an associate professor at Texas Tech University and a special assistant to that school's president.

Perry named James Greer, an exec and engineer with TXU Electric Delivery in Keller, and G. Kemble Bennett, vice chancellor for engineering at the Texas A&M University System, to the Texas Board of Professional Engineers.

Perry reappointed John Snider as chairman of the Finance Commission; he's president of Shelby Savings Bank in Center.

And the State Health Services Council has two new members and two reappointed ones. The newbies are Graciela Cigarroa, a San Antonio attorney, and Jacinto Juarez, a computer science prof and dean emeritus at Laredo Community College. Perry reappointed Dr. Jaime Davidson, who teaches at UT Southwestern Medical School and is president Endocrine and Diabetes Associates in Dallas, and Jim Springfield, president and CEO of Valley Baptist Health System in Harlingen.

Quotes of the Week

Don Stewart, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, telling The New York Times about the public reaction to Republican proposals to send every taxpayer $100 to offset high gasoline prices: "The conservatives think it is socialist bunk, and the liberals think it is conservative trickery."

Attorney Randall "Buck" Wood, quoted by the Houston Chronicle telling a federal judge he's not worried people have signed petitions for his client, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, and also for Kinky Friedman: "My client is not soliciting signatures in bars and dance halls, and Mr. Friedman is not soliciting signatures among teachers or around schools."

Former Texas Supreme Court Justice Craig Enoch, quoted in the Midland Reporter-Telegram on whether there will be challenges to whatever lawmakers do with school finance in this special session: "I don't think there's any question."

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, after Attorney General Greg Abbott said she doesn't have the legal authority to review state agencies: "I was asked by a legislator to investigate the Texas Residential Construction Commission. I did it, and if the Attorney General wants to take me to court, let's go."

Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, whose office regulates elections and health clubs, among other things, quoted in the Houston Chronicle: "If I can't get you in a hot tub, I want you in the voting booth."

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Texas Weekly: Volume 22, Issue 43, 8 May 2006. Ross Ramsey, Editor. Copyright 2006 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 (512) 302-5703 or email biz@texasweekly.com. For news, email ramsey@texasweekly.com, or call (512) 288-6598.

A proposal to level education spending for more Texas school students split the Senate Finance Committee, prompting a walkout by a handful of Republicans who said it was unfair to districts with higher property values. Meanwhile, the House was rejecting -- on technical grounds and without a vote -- the Senate's changes to legislation that forces new tax revenues to be used for school property tax reductions. Those two bills and the momentarily endangered tobacco tax increase are all on their way to the full Senate.Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, led the walkout after trying to strip the Senate's changes and stop further changes. A surprised looking Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, wouldn't let her proceed, and she responded by leaving, followed by Sens. Kim Brimer of Fort Worth, Bob Deuell of Greenville, Kyle Janek of Houston, Jane Nelson of Lewisville, and Tommy Williams of The Woodlands. Ogden and Shapiro had stood next to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst a day earlier when Dewhurst told a press gaggle that stripping the legislation back to the House version wasn't an option the Senate would consider. But Shapiro tried to do it anyway, removing everything the Senate had added the bill, including teacher pay raises, high school achievement money, uniform school start dates and a number of education measures. Ogden said he hit the brakes because he thought stripping the bill would kill it, and with it, the chance for a school finance fix in this special session. The walkouts included several of the Republicans who were angriest when 11 Democrats left for Albuquerque a couple of years ago to block congressional redistricting. The Republicans were careful to say they hadn't denied the committee a quorum and that work could continue in their absence. That differentiated them from the Democrats, for good and ill: They didn't stop the process, but they didn't stop the proposal they were against, either. Shapiro was trying to block an amendment by Sens. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, and Todd Staples, R-Palestine, that would increase the percentage of students in what's called "the equalized system" to 96 percent from 90 percent. It would also block richer districts from adding locally raised money to their own budgets until the poorer districts catch up with them. The poorer districts, in the meantime, would be allowed to use those local enrichment monies. That, according to Shapiro, was unfair. She told reporters she would rather kill the whole bill -- including property tax relief and pay raises for teachers -- than pass it with the Staples/Duncan proposal on board. Janek said the bill that started the day treated all the districts fairly and that's why he opposed the amendment from Duncan and Staples. Shapiro was blunter: "The purpose of this special session is to deliver property tax reduction and address the court's concerns; not create a personal piggy bank for certain members." She said the amendment created big state obligations in the "out years" -- the years after the current budget is over, when more and more students are brought into the system. And she said it wasn't fair to restrict local funds in some districts while allowing them in others. Ogden was asked by a TV reporter what he would say if Shapiro prolonged the walkout until the evening news: "Come home, Florence." But after lunch, Shapiro's Half Dozen were back in their seats. The amendment they didn't like was added to the bill, and the committee voted to send it to the full Senate for a vote. That last vote was 9 ayes, 2 nays, and 3 present-not-voting. Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, summed it up when they were done: "We're trying to get Iraq to go to this system." HB 2 -- the lockbox bill -- goes back to the Senate for fixes after the House decided Senate changes had departed from the original subject of the bill. That's a battle for next week. And the Senate Finance panel overcame an impasse on cigarette taxes, sending that legislation to the full Senate with a promise that the floor debate will include efforts to cut the tax hike from $1 to 65 cents, or to phase it in over three years. Also on deck are a couple of amendments over how to tax smokeless tobacco; you can refresh your memory on that one by clicking here.

Just when you thought the House and Senate could get along and the special session would end quickly with a tax swap, the usually-staid Texas Senate busted out in all kinds of drama: Vote-switching, quorum-busting, and calls for member round-ups. Someday, at a Senate Ladies' Club dinner in the not-too-distant future, they'll all be able to look back on this week and laugh. If they finish this thing.Rumor de Jour State Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, suggests this session might unravel so quickly it'll have to be put out of its misery. Writing at A Capitol Blog, Rep. Peña said, "Weeks ago you may have thought you had a handle on what we were doing, well don't stop watching, it may take a detour or two or three in these last days of the Legislature. This may be the last week legislators will gather. A number of members think the session could end as early as Wednesday." Right of Texas reports that the Governor's e-mail box is full and not receiving any further communications. This blogger also has an alleged copy of an e-mail from former Senator, former Perry aide, and now lobbyist Dan Shelley to Dr. Steven Hotze of Houston, who's leading the Texans for No New Taxes group. Shelley told Hotze, "I will pass on to the members of the legislature they have little to worry about when in comes to your threats." [Editor's Note: The Guv's office now tells us Hotze & Co. gave some incorrect email addresses to their mob -- including whatever they listed for Gov. Rick Perry -- and that those are bouncing back because that's what mis-addressed emails do. A spokeswoman for Perry says their mailboxes aren't full (she's gonna wish she hadn't said that) and that people can email the governor from the form on his website at www.governor.state.tx.us.] * * * * * M.I.A. When Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Odgen, R-Bryan, refused to allow Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, to kill her own bill (S.B. 1) and she walked out of the hearing, Pink Dome quickly created a poster to help in the search efforts. The walkout was the subject of much derision: John Coby of Bay Area Houston: "Too bad Tom DeLay quit. He would have called on Homeland Security to find the Republican Senators who broke quorum and left a school finance committee meeting." Eileen Smith of In the Pink Texas: "... When Ogden refused to bring up a vote on the House bill in committee, Shapiro ran. That's how I used to face my problems too -- IN PRESCHOOL." Vince Leibowitz of Capitol Annex: "For those of you who don't follow the Lege on a regular basis, imagine that your TV suddenly became possessed and that the TV shows Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, Lost, Survivor, and The West Wing all kind of morphed into one strange drama (mixed with a little Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), except, instead of people getting voted off the island, they were walking out of committee, sulking like Desperate Housewives." * * * * * Senate Swing Vote Only days before the Senate committee walkout, tongues were wagging about Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, changing his "aye" to a "nay" to an "aye" on H.B. 3. Again, Pink Dome doctored a photo for laughs and Smith of In the Pink Texas cracked up the blogosphere with a humorous description of what she thinks must have happened after Sen. Jackson's no vote: "The alarm bells immediately went off in the Governor's mansion, forcing Perry to stop feathering his hair and slide down the firehouse pole into the situation room." Capitol Annex smelled a trade-off because of Sen. Jackson's interest in CD-22. "I predict Perry will endorse Jackson to be the Replacement Nominee or will make some calls (or have his people make calls) to precinct chairs in the four counties plugging Jackson, and encouraging those in Fort Bend County to vote for Jackson in the poll they're doing down there," Vince Leibowitz said. Okay, no more quoting of Vince, Eileen, or Pink Dome for the rest of the column… we don't want to be accused of favoritism. * * * * * CD-22 Questionnaire The Bay Area Houston Blog got its hands on an 8-page questionnaire wannabe nominees for CD-22 had to fill out before being interviewed by that district's precinct chairs. Even though Congressman Tom DeLay hasn't officially vacated the position, CD-22 precinct chairs are charged with selecting a replacement. E-mails about the private May 6th candidate forum in Pasadena were posted at a decidedly un-Republican website called Juanita's. Bay Area Houston believes Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace is the "Chosen One." * * * * * Gas Tax Relief Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, has started a website and blog in support of his idea to create a "Gas Tax Holiday" which would require the state to stop collecting its 20-cents per gallon of gasoline for 90 days this summer. Rep. Martinez Fischer has acquired 43 co-authors and says, "... Chairman (Jim) Keffer gave me his assurance he would grant the bill a hearing." But first, this legislation (HB 120) would have to be added to the governor's call. A conference call he held with bloggers led to lots of support from Brains and Eggs and Burnt Orange Report, among others. Nate Nance at Common Sense Texas had an alternate idea, "A statewide holiday where no one drives. I know it is crazy at first glance, but if they put me in charge of messaging, I'll make it crystal clear: Driving and using lots of gas is the reason there is a high price, so don't do it." * * * * * Net Neutrality The biggest issue on the Internet is not tax reform or gasoline prices or even immigration reform (although that's close). It's "net neutrality" -- the effort to keep large telecommunications companies from setting up different delivery systems for information flow on the Internet. It's one issue that conservative blogs, such as Boots and Sabers, and liberal blogs, such as The Agonist, can agree on. Sean-Paul Kelley at The Agonist was so upset by U.S. Rep. Charles Gonzalez's vote against a key amendment that he created a commercial criticizing the San Antonio Democrat. Another Texan, U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee that's considering the net neutrality issue. He's becoming a favorite target of bloggers because of this issue, and rising gas prices. Rick Moran (brother of ABC News anchor Terry Moran) gathers some interesting opinions on net neutrality on his blog Right Wing Nut House. He's not a Texan, but we read his blog anyway because of its excellent summaries of the Fox television show "24." That Jack Bauer is having a hell of day, and if you spend your time watching Texas politics, it's nice to know that someone is. * * * * * Broken Promise We swore we wouldn't quote her again, but that wacky Eileen Smith at In The Pink Texas had the best line of the week regarding U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy's, D-RI, early morning crash into a Capitol Hill barricade: "Following the accident, Kennedy was not given a sobriety test and officers were told to drive him home, marking the first time in history that a Kennedy has received preferential treatment." As a "Kennedy," Smith is able to poke fun at her own family and get away with it (okay, she's not a Kennedy, but she has a fantasy about it, as you can see on her blog).

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OUT THERE is something new for Texas Weekly: Robyn Hadley cherry-picks the state's political blogs each week, looking for news, info, gossip, and new jokes. Robyn, a veteran of both journalism and the state Capitol, is the owner of Capitol Crowd, a networking site for people who work in and around state government. The opinions she quotes belong to the bloggers, and we're including their links each week so you can hunt them down if you wish. Please send comments, suggestions, gripes or retorts to Robyn at robyn@capitolcrowd.com, or to Texas Weekly editor Ross Ramsey, at ramsey@texasweekly.com.

Democrat Chris Bell won labor's endorsement at the annual COPE convention of the Texas AFL-CIO.He had to fight to win it. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn courted the group for weeks and already has won support from some teacher and public employee groups. That wasn't enough. To get the endorsement, a candidate has to win support from two-thirds of the delegates. Kinky Friedman also spoke to the labor reps; Gov. Rick Perry declined their request to speak at the convention. Bell's speech included some boilerplate, but it's core was his first real attack on Strayhorn, who was, after all, his only real rival for labor's endorsement. He attacked her for a long list of recommendations she's made to privatize government services and said she backed several of Perry's proposals "as long as it suited her political plans." The money shot in his speech made the daily papers: "She has no business being here today because Carole Strayhorn speaking to a labor convention is like Godzilla running for Mayor of Tokyo." You can see the whole speech on his website, at this address: www.chrisbell.com/insights/AFLspeech.

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn took petitions with 223,000 signatures to state election officials, saying she has far more than the 45,540 needed to get on the ballot as an independent.Our unofficial Spin of the Week award goes to Robert Black, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry's reelection campaign. His press release reacting to Strayhorn's numbers said she only managed to attract 1.9 percent of the voters eligible to sign her petitions, and he closed with this line: "It will be interesting to see how many invalid signatures Carole Strayhorn has turned in just to keep up with Kinky Friedman." The reason so many voters were eligible to sign petitions is because so few showed up at the primaries thrown by the two major parties. But so you'll have the numbers on hand to settle bar bets, Perry got 552,545 votes in his primary, and Democrat Chris Bell got 324,869 in his primary. Friedman's signatures are due by the close of business on Thursday, and Secretary of State Roger Williams then has the job of verifying that one or both of those candidates got enough legitimate names to win a place on the ballot. Williams is a Perry appointee, which raises the levels of paranoia in the independent camps. And he has said he wants to go through the signatures one at a time to make sure they come from registered voters who didn't vote in the primaries or the runoffs or sign another candidate's petition for governor. Strayhorn made a federal case of it, and a decision from U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel is pending. Strayhorn says Williams should sample the petitions, as his office has done in other high-profile cases (like when Ross Perot ran for president). That's quicker, and would get her either out of the race or back into the fundraising game without any uncertainty about whether people are contributing to a candidate or a short-timer.

The most important program in Texas state government is now local school property tax relief. The political promise to voters -- a one-third cut in those taxes -- is simple to understand and it has a due date. If property owners don't get the right report on the taxes due in January 2008, then the primaries in March 2008 could be bloody. You can make an argument that Job One next session will be to make sure there's enough money going to that relief; other state programs will be in line.The legislation originally proposed by the governor's tax reform panel was -- in the opinion of the comptroller -- out of balance because it raised less money in new taxes than it proposed to spend lowering local school property taxes. What has already passed and what is well on its way to passing raises the same amount of money, more or less, as the tax reform proposal. But it spends more, on things like teacher pay raises, money to prop up high school performance, and equity between rich and poor schools. That almost certainly means a bigger gap between spending and revenues. The state surplus will cover the difference for now, so the politics of the comptroller and the Legislature and the governor's race and all that can be ignored. But watch the numbers going forward. The first real examples of what the new business tax will raise should become available early next year, after the comptroller collects data from the biggest companies in the state (ranked by number of employees, property value, gross receipts, and how much they pay under the current franchise tax).

A week of Senate infighting closed with a unanimous vote on tax cuts, school finance and education that put Gov. Rick Perry's tax reform package close to completion. But there was something more -- Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst got his ears pinned back by a group of (mostly) Republican senators who weren't willing to follow his lead on the key tax cut and education bill. They've been grumbling for some time. They finally asserted themselves.A week ago, a proposal to level education spending for more Texas school students split the Senate Finance Committee, prompting a walkout by a handful of Republicans who said it was unfair to districts with higher property values. Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, led the walkout after trying to stop further changes. A surprised looking Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, wouldn't let her proceed, and she responded by leaving, followed by Sens. Kim Brimer of Fort Worth, Bob Deuell of Greenville, Kyle Janek of Houston, Jane Nelson of Lewisville, and Tommy Williams of The Woodlands. Ogden and Shapiro had stood next to Dewhurst a day earlier when the lieutenant governor told a press gaggle that stripping the legislation back to the House version wasn't an option the Senate would consider. But Shapiro tried to do it anyway, removing everything the Senate had added the bill, including teacher pay raises, high school achievement money, uniform school start dates and a number of education measures. Ogden said he hit the brakes because he thought stripping the bill would kill it, and with it, the chance for a school finance fix in this special session. (The walkouts included several of the Republicans who were angriest when 11 Democrats left for Albuquerque a couple of years ago to block congressional redistricting. The Republicans were careful to say they hadn't denied the committee a quorum and that work could continue in their absence. That differentiated them from the Democrats, for good and ill: They didn't stop the process, but they didn't stop the proposal they were against, either.) Shapiro was trying to block an amendment by Sens. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, and Todd Staples, R-Palestine, which would have increased the percentage of students in what's called "the equalized system" to 96 percent from 90 percent. It would also have blocked richer districts from adding locally raised money to their own budgets until the poorer districts catch up with them. The poorer districts, in the meantime, would be allowed to use those local enrichment monies. That, according to Shapiro, was unfair. She told reporters she would rather kill the whole bill -- including property tax relief and pay raises for teachers -- than pass it with the Staples/Duncan proposal on board. And she said she had the votes, too. It turned out she did. Janek said the bill that started the day treated all the districts fairly and that's why he opposed the changes from Duncan and Staples. Shapiro was blunter: "The purpose of this special session is to deliver property tax reduction and address the court's concerns; not create a personal piggy bank for certain members." She said the amendment created big state obligations in the "out years" -- the years after the current budget is over, when more and more students are brought into the system. And she said it wasn't fair to restrict local funds in some districts while allowing them in others. But after lunch, Shapiro's Half Dozen were back in their seats. The amendment they didn't like was added to the bill, and the committee voted to send it to the full Senate for a vote. In the days that followed, the arguments -- always behind closed doors, as is this Senate's habit -- got increasingly personal. Dewhurst at one point wanted the Senate to give up its effort to lower property taxes to $1, saying it was too expensive and couldn't be done with a teacher pay raise; $1.15 was suggested as a doable number. He appeared to be on board with Duncan and Staples, and part of a group that was pushing Ogden to take HB 1 away from Shapiro and sponsor it himself. But Shapiro had added seven senators to the six who walked out with her, and that Baker's Dozen held together while she negotiated the bill back to something she liked. (The new names included one Democrat, Ken Armbrister of Victoria, and six Republicans: John Carona of Dallas, Kevin Eltife of Tyler, Troy Fraser of Horseshoe Bay, Chris Harris of Arlington, Mike Jackson of La Porte, and Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio. They wanted the $1 target rate left alone. They wanted to get rid of the bits in the Duncan/Staples package they thought were hard on richer districts. They wanted to shave the 96 percent equity number for fear of its future costs. And they wanted to reinstate the "high school allotment" meant to boost performance in secondary schools. And they got most of that. As it passed, the bill still had the structural look of the Duncan/Staples package. But rich districts won't have to share any of the four cents they were raising for local "enrichment." Poor districts would get equalizing money from the state (instead of recapture) to make their local enrichment taxes more lucrative. Another two cents could be added to that local money source a year later, also without recapture from the rich districts. The 96 percent number got shaved, but not by much. And a little more than half of the high school money was put back in. A shuttle diplomacy team led by Dallas oilman and Republican political funder Louis Beecherl and his advisor Bill Ceverha came in to keep the House and the Senate and the governor's office all on the same sheet, serving the same function Tom DeLay served on congressional redistricting a few years ago. And when they were voting and the Senate's unanimity was again in bloom, we ran into one of Dewhurst's policy folks. He said he had the sheet music for "Kumbaya."

And the number of signers aligned with Kinky Friedman is... 169,574. Friedman delivered his boxes to the Secretary of State a few hours before the deadline, completing the first phase of what we've been calling the Middle Finger Primary.His operation didn't include any conventional media -- television, radio, and newspaper advertising, or apparently, direct mail. But he had three Internet spots, a lot of free media (that's what political ops call news stories on campaigns), and he did a lot of traveling around to generate interest. The campaign also had some serious infrastructure. They were already organized in 60-some-odd counties in December, before they were allowed to collect votes. Assuming all the signatures are valid, they got 3.7 signatures for every one they needed. • Carole Keeton Strayhorn brought in another 5,800 signatures in a second batch on deadline day, but SOS Roger Williams wouldn't accept them. Under state law, the petitions have to come in with the application, and she brought in the application on Tuesday with the first 223,000 signatures. That'll get counted, but the late stuff won't. She'd have been able to include the 5,800 had she held all of her stuff until the deadline. It cost her to release them earlier, but there was an ulterior motive: She swamped the news that Democrat Chris Bell had outrun her for the AFL-CIO endorsement.

It's hard to get on the ballot as an independent candidate for governor, but non-party candidates for other offices have fewer obstacles; it only takes 500 signatures to get on the ballot for a spot in Congress, for instance. So there are more of them, with less hoop-de-do.The non-gubernatorial list, from the Secretary of State's office, includes U.S. Senate candidates Robert Belt and Arthur Willis Loux; CD-3 candidate Bob Hise (the incumbent is Republican Sam Johnson of Plano); and HD-17 candidate Harold Pearson (the incumbent is Democrat Robby Cook of Eagle Lake). The best-known name on the list is in CD-22, where former U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman will be on the ballot with former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, a Democrat, and a Republican to be named later in the race to replace Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, whose resignation will be official on June 9.

Tracye McDaniel's old boss lured her to the Greater Houston Partnership; she's leaving the economic development and tourism department in the governor's office to rejoin Jeff Moseley in Houston. Moseley was head of the state's economic development before he moved east. McDaniel will be GHP's chief operations officer starting next month. Gov. Rick Perry appointed Welcome Wilson Sr., chairman and CEO of GSL Industrial Holdings and a real estate developer, and Jim Wise, managing member of Haddington Energy Partners III, as trustees of the University of Houston System. Both men are alums. The Guv named Govind Nadkarni of Corpus as presiding officers of the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. He's vice president at Maverick Engineering and founder of Govind and Associates. Perry appointed James Ratliff, a Garland appraiser, to the Texas Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board, and reappointed three others to that panel. The returning members are William "Rusty" Faulk, a Brownsville attorney, Larry Kokel, a Walburg appraiser, and Shirley Ward, an appraiser from Alpine. Bells will be ringing: Democratic consultants Jeff Hewitt and Eleanor D'Ambrosio are getting hitched Saturday. He remains a consultant; she's now chief of staff to Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin. Deaths: Former state representative, movie star, Aggie football sensation and Heisman runner-up John Kimbrough of Haskell. He was 87.