The 1962 New York Mets ended their season —  their first — with 40 wins and 120 losses. They were at the bottom of the National League, 60.5 games out of first place. They were historically inept, inspiring Jimmy Breslin to write a book titled with a quote from the manager, Casey Stengel: "Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?" 

What was the Texas Legislature's version of 40 wins and 120 losses? What taxpayers got for their $2 million — roughly the cost of a special legislative session — was a resurrection of the public school section of the state budget, which had been vetoed last month by Gov. Rick Perry, and a bill designed to promote renewable energy. Solar panels, for instance, or turbines powered by water or wind. They were promoting wind farms in west and north Texas, not at the palace of government in Austin.

As for the other issues on the governor's special session agenda, Texans got bupkis. Nothing on school finance, tax swapping, or education reform. Nothing on legislation increasing judicial pay and legislative retirement. Nothing on opening telecommunications and cable television markets, or allowing data to be sent via broadband over power lines. Nothing on limiting governments' ability to force private landowners to sell their properties for economic development.

But it's all back. Perry called them back to work starting the next morning and set an agenda that includes some education reform, school property tax reductions, tuition revenue bonds to fund facilities at state colleges and universities, and telecommunications legislation allowing phone companies into the video/TV business. The big issue that snuck up on lawmakers after the regular session — whether governments should be able to use eminent domain to take over land for economic development, and how — will probably be added to the agenda when the kinks are worked out. 

The Train Schedule 

At a joint news conference, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said they've got a plan for the second special session, but they weren't willing to predict whether it would end in less than the allotted 30 days. 

For your calendar, draw a line starting on July 21 and ending on Friday, August 19. Some of the state's public schools will start classes before lawmakers have worked out their funding for the rest of the school year.

The plan is for the House and the Senate to zip bills through the various committees without hearings or much debate, get them to the respective legislative chambers for floor votes, send them across the rotunda, lather, rinse, repeat, and then send them to conference committees for tinkering. The theory is that lawmakers have already been over this stuff and that there's no need to invite the public for testimony this time out. Several pieces of legislation were queued up for final votes during the first special session, but weren't finished because lawmakers put school finance first.

That has an advantage; groups that want their own special bills — like the phone companies that have been clamoring to get into markets now dominated by cable television companies — are forced to lobby for school reform and tax swaps. If things are in the right order, legislative leaders get free help from expensive lobbyists. Legislators with colleges and universities at home want tuition revenue bonds to pass, and the TRBs become levers for their votes on the school stuff.

Craddick and Dewhurst hope to move bills through the originating houses during the first week of the session, lining things up for resolution in or after the second week.

Sidebar: Craddick is skipping the usual committees this time and handing matters directly to the ten people who've been trying to get the two school bills out of the Pink Building for the last seven months. His conference committee on taxes and his conference committee on education have been put into special committees. The two bills will start there, go to the full House and then into the ether of House-Senate parley. 

Fall Down Six Times, Get Up Seven Times

However you prefer to spin this — either as the biggest tax cut in state history or the biggest tax increase in state history — Texas lawmakers were looking at a shrunken version of what they said they'd consider "significant."

More than a year ago, all 31 senators said they wanted to cut local school property taxes in half, to 75 cents from $1.50. The House, a few months later, went after its version of property tax relief, aiming at a 50-cent cut. When they broke camp on the tax bill in the last days of the special session, they were millimeters apart on a proposal that would have cut about 25 cents from local bills.

And this time, when they said they were close, they really were. The deal sheets floating between the two houses showed they had agreed on most of the big elements of a tax bill. They remained apart, however, on some key issues, and neither chamber's leadership got far enough along to know whether their machinations — all behind closed doors, a nasty habit of this Legislature — had produced bills that would win the support of most senators and representatives.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst wanted some things that House leaders said would kill the bill on parliamentary grounds. The Senate's proposal for a sales tax break for low-income Texans, for instance, wasn't "germane" to the bill in the House's view. A point of order from an opponent, saying the provision was out of bounds, would kill it. Both sides said they'd sign off on a 0.7 -cent increase in the state sales tax, bringing it to 6.95 percent. But the Senate wanted to tie that to a voter referendum on sales taxes and homestead exemptions, while House Speaker Tom Craddick and his negotiators wanted a clean increase without any embellishments.

They agreed on some big stuff and might remain in agreement. Both sides want to close loopholes left in the franchise tax by earlier lawmakers. They agreed to tax companies on out-of-state transactions where the other state doesn't have a franchise tax. They agreed to end the sales tax exemption for Internet access, for motor vehicle repair, and for some computer programming and maintenance. They'd both add $1 to the tax on a pack of smokes, ignoring an ad campaign launched by tobacco interests. They appeared to agree to put away plans to tax bottled water and to increase taxes on alcohol. They'd tie sales taxes on used cars to Blue Book values instead of using "liar's affidavits" where sellers and buyers can write down the price and base the tax on that.

One of the last deal sheets floating back and forth between the House's back hall and the Senate's back hall put the new property tax rate at $1.22 — down from the current $1.50. And it would have funded a $7,500 increase in homestead exemptions, which is worth about the same as a nickel cut in property tax rates. A rough example that doesn't take local property exemptions and such into account: The owner of a $200,000 home would see the local school property tax bill cut to $2,165.5 from $2,775. That's a little better than $50 per month in lower local school taxes in return for the higher state taxes raised to pay for it. Actual mileage may vary. 

The Once and Future School Bill 

The two Democrats on the Senate negotiating team — Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio and Royce West of Dallas — didn't sign the conference committee's report. And while you never know for sure how the Senate would have voted in the light of day, their usual backroom talks appeared to produce a tie vote or something close to it. It's not clear, in other words, that the legislation would have passed even without the walk-off filibuster from Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, which ended the special session.

Whitmire's close frustrated the Republicans but had a certain rationality to it: Why hurry, since Perry was hauling everybody back to work on the tax bill anyhow? If they like the bill they had on Wednesday, legislative leaders could roll it out again in a new session on Thursday, give everybody time to examine it, and pass it a week or two after the originally scheduled vote.

Democrats and some Republicans sniffed at several provisions of the school bill. A vote — had one been taken in either chamber — would have been close. House Speaker Tom Craddick told reporters he had only three votes to spare on the measure, by his count. And Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said he had the votes, before Whitmire's filibuster. The Senate appeared to be even tighter than the House, and the bill's success would have depended in part on which senators were absent when the vote was taken. A test vote on a related measure raised the possibility that Dewhurst himself would have had to cast the deciding vote.

Expect something like that last-day measure to come out in the second special session. It did clear the conference committee, after all, before getting dragged into the legislative undertow. As more people read the legislation, however, more problems turn up. Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, passed a cleanup resolution that would have fixed 29 pages worth of errors and miscues in the legislation. One would have allowed school boards to post meeting times on the Internet instead of in local newspapers, a money-saving idea that lights up newspaper publishers (in a bad way) and that lawmakers generally don't want to change. Another created an unintended cap on spending in some big school districts, like Highland Park and Dallas. The "fixes" during this second session could reopen issues that seemed settled earlier this week, so put an asterisk on all of this — it could be subject to renegotiation.

Even with those glitches, the Republicans on the conference committee — five from the House and three from the Senate, with two Senate Democrats refusing to sign — gave their consent to some provocative changes you're likely to see again, and soon.

• They want November elections for school boards, moving those nonpartisan affairs out of the spring and into the fall. Supporters of that idea say the higher turnout will put more voters in the decision-making loop. Opponents say school boards will fall prey to partisans who are in season in November. Whitmire gave it as one big reason for his filibuster.

• The legislation creates a new 65 percent rule that some school districts don't like. The basic idea is that at least 65 percent of the money spent on public schools should go into classrooms, as opposed to transportation or janitorial or food services or administration or school safety or whatever. That's been broadened to include classroom teaching outside of the basics, but some districts still don't like it and they've made sure their legislators know it.

• It includes a cap on how much money the rich districts in the state have to share with the poor districts in the state. With some exceptions, those districts wouldn't have to share more than 38 percent of the money they raise locally. That cap would move if it threw equity formulas too far out of whack. Districts would be required to use the money to cut property taxes or to increase the amounts they send to poor districts, and they wouldn't be able to use the formulas to lower rates too much. They'd have to set tax rates no lower than 75 percent of the state's cap on property taxes; if the state cap was at $1.20, they'd have to tax their property owners at least 90 cents to keep the recapture protection. Even with all that, the caps increase the gap between rich and poor districts, and that gap is a key point of argument in the school finance fights in the Lege and in the courts. Some of the same legislators who say the rich districts should be able to spend more money on public education will also tell you that higher spending on public education doesn't improve it's quality. Go figure.

• The legislation would make school district finances more "transparent" or easier for outsiders to examine.

• Legislators have been tussling over textbooks for more than two years. In a budget crunch in 2003, they cut funding for textbooks. And while they were increasing the state budget by $22 billion this year, they still didn't fund the $295 million it would take to catch up on textbooks for public schools. That funding made it into the school reform bill, but only if the school reform and companion legislation both become law. With the start of a second special session with no changes in place, there's a better-than-even chance that some of the state's schools will start the academic year with their new materials still piled up in warehouses instead of lockers, backpacks and desks.

• It would impose a state set start date for public schools, to the first day after Labor Day, a change that's been pushed for several years by amusement parks and other businesses dependent on summer crowds. They contend earlier start dates cut into their business.

• It would phase in a change pushed by House leaders, testing students as soon as they finish each state-required course to see how they did. The Senate didn't include that; the legislation would start it up in the 2009-10 school year.

• Teachers would get a pay raise, and it would total $500, $1,000, $1,500, or $2,000, depending on where you get your information. Legislators wanted to add $500 to teacher pay across the board. They wanted to add $500 to a "pass-through" salary (state money passing through the local district to the teacher) that was created in 2001, halved in 2003. Lawmakers count that as $1,000, since that's the original amount of the stipend and since it would disappear altogether without legislative action. Teachers count it as a promise kept, broken and kept, but it would result in them getting $500 more next year than they got last year. The legislation also would add an average of $500 per teacher in incentive pay. Some teachers would get nothing, some would get more, and it would average out to $500. Call that nothing, or call it $500. Add everything up and you get $2,000. We count it as $1,000 — the amount of money going to teachers, for sure, they didn't get last year. Some would get incentive pay, but they'd add it to the $1,000 base. 

Another Austin Attraction 

Travis County prosecutors have been visiting with a steady stream of House members about the 2002 elections, asking questions about their contests that year and, more specifically, about the involvement in those contests of House Speaker Tom Craddick ad others. 

We don't have a complete list of who's gone through — subpoenas apparently weren't issued to them and they weren't talking to grand jurors. Several were accompanied by Craddick's lawyer, Roy Minton. He says the questions have generally centered on how things worked in the elections and he may be the only one who would characterize it as "really kind of an entertaining deal." Minton said at least a half dozen have talked to prosecutors during the last couple of weeks, and said not all of them were from the group of lawmakers elected for the first time in 2002.

One of the state reps who talked to us on the condition we left him or her out of this said assistant district attorneys asked a lot of questions about "where checks got sent and routed and so on." That lawmaker also said many of the people in the class of 2002 — the freshmen who were elected that year — were being quizzed by prosecutors who "seemed to be crossing their T's and dotting their I's." Another interviewee was asked how involved Craddick got in that person's campaign, whether he was privy to campaign information like how much money was needed to complete the race, the status of the campaign, and copies of campaign plans. As we've said before, the statute of limitations runs on many of those cases between now and November, and the grand jury working on the case is in business until the end of September.

Travis County prosecutors declined our invitation to comment. 

Political Notes

Sen. Jon Lindsay, R-Houston, won't seek reelection to the Senate next year. That sets up a replacement contest that could draw a half-dozen Republicans. Reps. Peggy Hamric, Joe Nixon, and Corbin Van Arsdale have been mentioned, as has Ben Streusand, a self-financing congressional candidate who fell short a year ago. The elbowing has just begun, though; there could be more and different names in this thing. Lindsay was Harris County Judge for 20 years before starting what will be an eight-year run in the Senate.

• Richard "Kinky" Friedman (that's how they're putting his name on press releases these days) raised $301,471 and spent $284,554 on his gubernatorial bid during the first six months of the year. Friedman, who'll be trying to get on the ballot next year as an independent, got a $100,000 contribution from John McCall of Spicewood, and another $60,000 from McCall later on. That's his campaign treasurer. He also pulled in $61,278.43 from "merchandise sales."

• Chris Bell, who plans to announce his intentions in a couple of weeks — he's in exploratory mode now — raised $152,653 and spent $127,593 during the first half of the year. The Houston Democrat's total includes a $50,000 contribution from Poppi Georges-Massey, listed as a Houston homemaker in the report.

• Texas Republican Party chair Tina Benkiser has a race in front of her. Dallas County GOP Chair Nate Crain's interest in the race made The Dallas Morning News, and Republicans who follow this sort of thing are buzzing about it. The election isn't for 11 months, and Collin County GOP Chairman Rick Neudorff sent an email to those folks telling them to keep their powder drive. He hints in that email that there will be more entries: "I urge you to join me in stepping back and refrain from making any early commitments until all of the facts and candidates are known."

• Put Republican Rich Phillips on your list of people who'd like to succeed Terry Keel, R-Austin, in the Texas House. We warned you that HD-47 would have more names, and so it does. Phillips, a self-employed management consultant, was once the public affairs director for the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, and he worked in George H. W. Bush's reelection campaign in 1992. He's got a campaign website up: www.voterichphillips.com. Jimmy Evans, a lawyer who's also seeking to replace Keel, has also filed the initial papers to run for that seat. 

And Former Rep. Dick Reynolds wants another go. Reynolds, a Republican, will be in the HD-47 race, too. He's had a number of government jobs: insurance commissioner, Texas Workers' Compensation Commissioner, executive director at TWCC, councilman and mayor pro tem of Richardson, and then two terms in the Texas House representing Richardson, Garland, and North Dallas.

• Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, hasn't officially declared his candidacy for Texas agriculture commissioner, but there are four people running for the seat he holds now, and the Texas Farm Bureau's political action committee — AGFUND — has endorsed him for the statewide post.

A few days earlier, AGFUND blessed current Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs' bid for comptroller. She's the only candidate actively running for that job, which is open because Carole Keeton Strayhorn is running for governor against Rick Perry next year.

• Austin attorney William "Bill" Davidson is running for the 3rd Court of Appeals as a Republican. He's running for the position now held by Democrat Bea Ann Smith, who's not seeking reelection. He's a lawyer with Minter, Joseph & Thornhill and he's been in Austin for 49 years. Diane Henson, a Democrat, has already said she's after the same job. 

Strayhorn's Top Contributors 

Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn raised $1.5 million for her challenge of Gov. Rick Perry in the GOP primaries next March and said she had $7 million in the bank at the end of last month.  

Below is a list of people and organizations that gave her more than $25,000 during the truncated fundraising season that began on June 20 and ended June 30. Some notes are in order to fill in blanks you'll see below. Ryan & Co. is a tax consultancy in Dallas that employs, among others, former Comptroller John Sharp. AtlanGroup of Dallas is a dental practice owned and operated by David and Martha Al-Ameel. Scooter Griffin, described by the campaign as an old friend of Strayhorn's, is the name behind MML Ventures and Family Land Heritage Trust of Kilgore. People listed twice gave twice. Click here for a chart that includes all donations of $10,000 or more. And you can also look at the entire report online at the Texas Ethics Commission. Contributions are grouped by amounts given.

• $200,000.00 : Ryan & Company PAC, Dallas.

• $100,000.00 : AtlanGroup, L.L.C., Dallas; John Eddie Williams, Jr., Attorney, Williams-Bailey L.L.P., Houston; WalterUmphrey, Attorney, Provost Umphrey Law Firm, LLP, Beaumont.

• $50,000.00 : George Ryan, CPA, Ryan & Company, P.C., Dallas; Gerald Ridgely, Principal, Ryan & Co., Dallas; Kenneth Banks, Owner, International Muffler Co., Schulenburg; MML Ventures, Ltd., Kilgore.

• $40,000.00 : James Trester, CPA-State and Local Tax Services, Ryan & Company, Plano.

• $30,000.00 : Patrick Moran, Oil & Gas Exploration, Moran Resources Company, Houston; Ramsay Gillman, President, Gillman Companies, Houston.

Perry's Top Contributors 

Gov. Rick Perry raised $2.3 million during the last ten days of June, but his campaign got confused about how much money they had in the bank. After first reporting cash on hand of $8.4 million, they revised the number a few hours later to $8.8 million. Either way, it's a bundle. 

The goof, according to campaign manager Luis Saenz, was made when someone double-counted a radio advertising buy and somehow managed to record it as an expense in June and in July. It was in July, he says, and the campaign added $400,000 to what it had first reported as money in the bank. Perry's list of big supporters (over $25,000) is a few lines longer than the comptroller's, as you can see. (Click here for a list of donors who gave $10,000 or more. The full versioqn can be had from the Texas Ethics Commission.) The contributions are grouped by amounts given.

• $50,000: Bob Perry, CEO, Perry Homes, Houston; Charles Wood Jr., Chairman, Dallas Fire Insurance Company, Dallas; Doylene Perry, Retired, Retired, Houston; H. Perot Jr., Chairman, Hillwood Development Corp., Plano; Harold Simmons, CEO, Contran Corporation, Dallas; James Leininger, Chairman, Kinetic Concepts, Inc., San Antonio; John Nau III, President & CEO, Silver Eagle Distributors, L.P., Houston; Kenny Troutt, Investments, Self, Dallas; Larry Anders, Chairman/CEO, Summit Alliance Companies, Plano; Loeffler Tuggey Pauerstein Rosenthal LLP, San Antonio; Lonnie Pilgrim, Owner, Pilgrims Pride, Pittsburg; Robert Rowling, investor, TRT Holdings, Inc., Irving; T. Friedkin, President, Friedkin Companies, Inc., Houston; Thomas Friedkin, Chairman, Friedkin Companies Inc., Houston; Woody Hunt, Developer/Contractor, Hunt Building Corporation, El Paso.

• $40,000: James Lee, Principal, E,Trade Professional Trading, LLC, Houston.

• $34,000: Charles Lawrence, Chairman, Kirby Corp., Houston.

Quotes of the Week 

Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan: "It's not really a tax-cut bill. It's a tax-shift bill, and it's hard to build a solid constituency for a tax shift. For every person that gets a break, another one has to pay a higher tax, so every time you make somebody happy you make somebody else mad."

Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria, talking about the school reform bill in The Dallas Morning News: "I've got 98 school districts. I haven't had one call me and say, 'Man, we've got to have this.'"

Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, before starting a filibuster against the (then) surviving half of a school reform package: "We can do better if given additional time. We're going to be here tomorrow anyway."

Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, in The Dallas Morning News: "The overwhelming sentiment in the Capitol is the House doesn't want to vote on a tax bill because they can't pass one. The speaker may have been protecting his members."

Gov. Rick Perry, on the situation at hand, in The Dallas Morning News: "Education reform and property tax relief are the two most significant issues the Legislature faces. Lawmakers won't leave Austin until both priorities are addressed."

Robert Black, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry: "It's the governor's position if they want to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Festivus here, that's fine, because they're staying till they get it done." 

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Texas Weekly: Volume 22, Issue 8, 25 July 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.

Minorities outnumber Anglos in Texas, according to the Census Bureau. Non-Hispanic whites remain the largest ethnic or racial group in Texas, but they make up less than half of the state's population for the first time this century. That makes official what state demographers have been saying for the last several years, and puts Texas in a small group of states where historical majorities are giving way to demographic changes. California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and the District of Columbia also have non-Anglo majorities. Five more states -- Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, and New York -- each have combined minority populations of about 40 percent, according to the people-counters. The Census Bureau said the minority population in Texas hit 50.2 percent in July 2004 -- the newest estimate. By their reckoning, the state had 11.3 million minorities in its total population of 22.5 million. When you look inside the numbers, minorities outnumber non-Hispanic whites among men, but not among women in Texas. By the government's July 2004 estimate, minorities made up 50.8 percent of the male population, and 49.7 percent of the female population. (Women outnumber men in Texas by 87,486; they made up an estimated 50.2 percent of the total population a year ago.) Hispanics made up 34.2 percent of the population, by the Cenusus Bureau's estimate. Blacks accounted for 11.7 percent, Asians for 3.2 percent, and other groups made up the 1.2 percent balance. Females outnumbered males in each of those groups. Texas was third among the states (behind New Mexico and California) in the percentage of Hispanics in its population; 20th in Blacks and 15th in Asians. Two Texas counties -- Harris and Dallas -- are among the nation's most populous overall. But if you rank counties with more than 1 million residents by racial and ethnic makeup, the numbers move around some. Those two counties make the top ten list for total Black population. Harris is the only Texas city on the top ten list for total Asian population. And those two counties are joined by Bexar on the list of the ten U.S. counties with the largest numbers of Hispanics. Harris is among the top ten with Anglo populations; no other Texas county is on that list.  

School finance might be stuck, but judicial pay raise legislation -- passed in various forms (and more than once) by both Houses earlier this year -- is on its way to Gov. Rick Perry.  It would raise minimum annual pay for state district judges to $125,000 from $101,700, for appellate judges to $137,500 from $107,000, and for Texas Supreme Court justices to $150,000 from $113,000. If that comprised the entire Number One Dinner, they'd have already digested it. But there is a side dish: Legislative retirement checks are tied to judicial pay, so lawmakers have been stuck between helping the judges and avoiding the appearance of helping themselves. They've opted, finally, to help the judges and themselves (and would have done so earlier, but for a last-minute legislative shootout during the regular session that knocked the bill off the calendar). Perry hasn't said he'll sign the raise, but he's favored it in speeches and would have to calm some ticked-off judges if he were to veto it. For lawmakers, retirement pay is figured by multiplying the years served by .023 by the minimum salary for state district judges. So the 23 percent pay hike for judges is also a 23 percent boost for retired legislators, present and future. A lawmaker with 12 years in office would get $34,500 annually upon retirement under the new law ($125,000 x .023 x 12); under current law, the annual benefit is $28,069.20. Legislators have to serve at least eight years to qualify and can start getting benefits when they're 60 years old. If they serve at least 12 years, they get the bennies starting when they're 50 (as long as they're also out of office by then). If you poke through the House Journals -- the official records of the proceedings, used by lawyers and campaign consultants and others to reconstruct the Legislature's actions -- you'll find a surprising number of lawmakers took time to explain their votes. They fell, roughly, into two camps. Some lawmakers voted yes and said they did it for the judges and in spite of the benefit to themselves. Others voted no and explained it the other way, apologizing to the judiciary while saying they couldn't stomach the legislative retirement benefits. There were some conversations here and there about unlinking the judges and the lawmakers, but that idea never appeared as an amendment to the legislation and so never came to a vote in either the House or the Senate. Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, originally tried to link legislative pay to the governor's salary, so lawmakers could give judges a raise without feathering their own nests. But state budget-writers increased the governor's salary, and Duncan retreated from that idea. It never came up again. Some legislators like to complain about their pay, which is set at $600 per month, or $7,200 annually. But they get that great retirement for part-time work, and they also do better than average Texans when they're actually on the job. The state pays $128 per day when lawmakers are working in Austin. While 30-day special sessions are hard on some legislators' regular jobs, they're also an opportunity to get an extra $3,840. Without special sessions, lawmakers can get $32,320 for a two-year term in office, including their $600 per month and their "per diem" for the 140-day regular session. Assuming the current special session goes the full 30 days, they'll make an extra $7,680 this year, bring them to $40,000 for this particular two-year term. For comparison, the U.S. Department of Commerce's estimate of per capital income in Texas last year was $30,222. 

House Speaker Tom Craddick is running radio ads in "selected markets across the state" -- Houston, Dallas and San Antonio are on the list -- defending the House's actions on school finance, attacking the Senate, and suggesting the Texas Supreme Court will have the final say on what lawmakers should do.  Advisors say he wants people to hear his version of what's going on in Austin. The ad repeats, more or less, what he said to reporters a day before, but Bill Miller, a publicist and lobbyist friendly with Craddick, noted that those stories only ran for one day. The radio, he said, is geared to sink the message in. The script: "Recently, I acknowledged the Legislature's impasse on school finance and tax reforms. I wanted to level with all Texans concerning our difficult struggle in Austin. "The House passed strong school and tax reform measures early in the regular and first called special sessions. The Texas Senate, however, sent a bill to the House that watered down or eliminated those reforms. As Speaker, I don't believe the House should be a party to passing legislation that doesn't contain proper education reforms such as more local control and accountability. "In the event that the Texas Supreme Court issues an opinion requiring some action, the Legislature will make the necessary adjustments. However, we will not continue to put more money into a system without the reforms to fix it. "I promise you: Any school reform bill that passes the Texas House will contain real reforms. DISCLAIMER: Political ad paid for by the Tom Craddick Campaign." Craddick's aides didn't disclose exactly where or for how long the commercials are running, how much he paid for them, and what consultants helped him put the project together. They did say he paid for it out of campaign funds. Aides to Gov. Rick Perry declined the chance to comment, but Mark Miner, spokesman for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, offered this: "Speaker Craddick's time and energy would be better spent on solving the state's educational needs than on unprecedented and misleading advertisements. The Senate's bill, SB 8 is a good bill that provides real reform in our schools, additional pay for teachers and puts additional funds in classrooms which are tied to accountability." 

Radio ads are the latest volley from the Speaker, but not the first. Tom Craddick has said several times over the last few months that lawmakers have historically been unable to resolve school finance issues without some direction from the courts, and he's consistently said the House had little or no wiggle room on the issue.  The voting since January has proved him out: In those instances where the House could move anything, it did so with the narrowest of margins. It's quite unusual to attack the other half of the Legislature in an ad campaign (particularly when it's run by someone in the same political party), but Craddick and the Senate have been going at it for a while now. A week before he uncorked his marketing campaign, Craddick surprised participants and onlookers with this written statement: "We have worked diligently to find a final compromise to HB 2 and HB 3. At this point in the special session, neither chamber has been able to pass any legislation, and it does not appear that they will. We are wasting time and money, and it is unproductive to prolong this process." "In less than two weeks schools are set to start, and it is vital for them to have the updated textbooks necessary to do so. The funds for those books can only be granted through budget execution, which cannot be done while we are in session." "I suggest we sine die, continue working together to reach an agreement, request the Texas Education Agency send us a list of reforms they can carry out without the Legislature changing the statutes, and wait to review the Supreme Court's ruling before formally meeting again." The Senate responded to that with a new education bill that was approved in the upper chamber and delivered, DOA, to the lower chamber. Another bill would put a constitutional amendment on the ballot letting voters lower school property tax caps to $1.25 from $1.50, but the Senate couldn't offer a way to pay for that tax cut. Craddick labeled it a stunt: "Why don't we just say we're going down 50 cents and pass a bill? We'd look good in the press. Rather than $1.25, if you're not going to fund it, let's look great." A couple of senators said they voted for those things only because they knew they weren't going anywhere. A House proposal designed to fund textbooks and some new technology passed unanimously there, but met a similar fate when it crossed the rotunda to the Senate: Education Chair Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, told reporters she wasn't planning to consider it in her committee.
  Craddick followed that soap opera with two strange moves. The first was the unprecedented radio campaign. The second? He jump-started the tax bill that was killed on a 124-8 House vote a week before, the vote that prompted his "sine die" statement above. The constitution says a piece of legislation, once killed in either chamber, is dead for the duration of a legislative session. The House parliamentarian ruled that the new tax bill isn't exactly like the first and that the first was killed on a preliminary vote instead of a final one. For those reasons, she said, the tax issue can come alive again. (There's another way to do that without the controversy, by asking the House to reconsider its vote on the original tax bill.) Craddick sent the new tax bill to a new committee -- the Select Committee on Public Education instead of the tax-writing Ways & Means panel -- and it's sponsored by Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas, instead of Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, who has carried all previous tax bills this session. Craddick aides say the new plan is, with minor variations, the proposal made earlier this summer by the governor. Aides to Perry say they weren't included in conversations about the new legislation and don't know whether it's theirs or not. In any case, Craddick is shopping it around to see whether the House would be willing to pass it. If it's not, he says, he won't bring it up.  

The Texas Legislature might be dysfunctional when it comes to school finance and tax cut legislation, but a few other issues flew through the Pink Building faster than a middle-aged man in a Mini Cooper.  Lawmakers made quick work of judicial pay raises, legislative retirement increases, limits on government seizures of property and allowing phone companies to get into the business of delivering television signals to homes and businesses. Legislation limiting government's use of eminent domain for economic development projects sailed through the Senate and then the House and has one more Senate stop before it goes to Perry. Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston, says he's likely to go along with changes made in the House. Perry hasn't said what he'll do, but he added the issue to the Legislature's agenda this week, allowing it to fly through. That legislation is a response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year in a case where a city wanted to bulldoze some houses to make way for private development. The court said that was legal, and in reaction, more than a dozen states have passed laws restricting eminent domain. Telecommunications legislation sought by phone companies wanting into the television business is on the way to the governor. SBC and some other phone companies like the legislation, but Texas cable television companies fought it, trying to keep the phone companies out of the TV business.  

Say you want to walk a controversial issue through the House. Suppose, for whatever reason, you've decided to do it without the help of most or all of the 61 Democrats. That leaves you trying to win, in effect, 85 percent from what's left, and it puts 13 Republican swing voters in really powerful positions (it rises to 14 when the speaker is voting).  When HB 2 -- the education bill -- was amended by Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, over the objections of the sponsor, Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington -- all of the House Democrats were on board. Six Republicans didn't vote, including House Speaker Tom Craddick, who was recorded present (the others were absent). And 14 Republicans joined them, completing the majority that sunk their leadership's latest shot at school finance reform. The companion tax bill provided the asterisk for that loss; when Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, brought it to a vote -- and voted against it himself -- it was toast. Only eight House members -- all Republicans -- supported it. The same sort of arithmetic would come into play if lawmakers lose faith in Craddick. They haven't done so, but more people are talking about the possibility as the special sessions drag on and the education/finance impasse deepens. Members on both ends of the Capitol are blaming their three leaders for the lack of a resolution, and that's always roughest on a speaker of the House, whose constituents are the other members of the body. Republicans credit Craddick with planning and executing the overthrow of the Democratic majority in the House and of his predecessor, Rep. Pete Laney, D-Hale Center. Democrats do, too. And any healing that might have followed that coup evaporated during the bitter fights over congressional redistricting. That's one reason many votes start with a baseline of 88 Republicans and 61 Democrats (the death earlier this year of Joe Moreno, D-Houston, left one seat empty). School finance muddles that some because many of the issues have more to do with geography and demographics than with party affiliation, but the splits are still there. School finance is a notoriously difficult matter and has bedeviled leaders from both parties. But the Republicans are in charge now, and legislative Democrats quietly revel in their troubles. And they have been encouraging any signs of rebellion among their Republican colleagues, suggesting the Democrats would join up with a Republican speaker candidate who can bring along enough votes from the GOP to create, with the Democrats, a new majority. No frontrunner has emerged in the speculation and we're not aware of anyone doing any overt lobbying for the job -- it's not open -- but the names of several representatives have been mentioned as potential successors: Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth; Edmund Kuempel, R-Seguin; Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock; Brian McCall, R-Plano; Tommy Merritt, R-Longview; Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie; and Todd Smith, R-Euless.  

Even if legislation buying textbooks for schools doesn't pass, the textbooks will likely make it to the schoolhouses. The Legislative Budget Board can meet with the full Lege isn't in session, and they have the leeway to pay for the books. Gov. Rick Perry told the Texas Education Agency not to wait for the money, but to go ahead and open its computer system to take orders for books. The idea is to speed up delivery of the books once the money is available. • Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs picked up an endorsement from the Texas Apartment Association. Combs, a Republican, is the only candidate running for comptroller. The current comptroller, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, is running for governor instead of seeking reelection. Combs also got a nod from EMPACT, the political arm of the Texas Public Employees Association. And another from HOMEPAC, the political arm of the Texas Association of Homebuilders. • Gov. Rick Perry picked up several endorsements. The Texas State Association of Firefighters signed on for both the March primary and the November general elections. The Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC is sticking with him, citing his help on legislation limiting medical malpractice and asbestos lawsuits in Texas. The Texas Apartment Association is on board, as are the Associated General Contractors (Texas building branch). And U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Plano, a former state rep who served with Perry in Austin, says he'll back the governor. • Former Rep. Glen Maxey, D-Austin, will head "No Nonsense in November," a group trying to keep a ban on gay marriage out of the Texas constitution. That passed the Legislature earlier this year and voters will get a crack at it on November 8. Surprise! There's a website: www.NoNonsenseInNovember.com. • Add Alex Castano to the list of candidates wanting to replace Terry Keel, R-Austin, in the Texas House (HD-47). Castano is a Rice grad with seven kids who works in commercial real estate. He hasn't run for office before. Political consultant Jason Johnson has signed on to help with that one. Castano joins Bill Welch, Scott Sanders, Jimmy Evans, Richard Reynolds, and Rich Phillips on the list of Republicans who want that spot. • Houston City Councilman Mark Ellis is definitely running for Texas Senate in SD-7. He's term-limited on the council and wants the spot being vacated by Jon Lindsay, R-Houston. Reps. Peggy Hamric and Joe Nixon, both R-Houston, are also in the hunt. Hamric has hired Ted Delisi to help out; Ellis says Lee Woods, Court Koening, Susan Lilly and Herb Butrum will be his political team. Ben Streusand, who self-financed an unsuccessful run for Congress last year, is also looking at that contest. • The Professional Advocacy Association of Texas -- the lobby's lobby group -- is holding a seminar in mid-September to try to help people stay out of ethics trouble. It's a brush-up, apparently that includes sessions on ethics law, reporting requirements, conflicts of interest, and a keynote speech from Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, whose office has spent almost three years investigating allegations of campaign finance misdeeds in the 2002
state elections. More on their website: www.texasadvocacy.com. 

The March party primaries are 28 weeks from now. Maybe that's not alarming to you, but it's on the minds of the people who'll be on the ballot then, and on the people -- statewide elected officials, mainly -- whose campaigns will start when the gavels mark the end of the legislative efforts on school finance. This session ends on Friday, August 19, and chances for another one are, at this writing, small. It would be early and somewhat unusual to start advertising in August of the year before the elections, but it's not unprecedented. Clayton Williams Jr. started his ads in August 1989 and by March had shouldered his way past six other Republicans (three were what you'd call major candidates) to win a primary without a runoff. Someone reminded us the other day that that run of commercials cost him $9 million. That amount was a record at the time, but it wouldn't last long in today's television markets: A week of saturation advertising on a statewide basis in Texas now costs roughly $1 million. If you get out a calendar and work backwards from Election Day, subtracting $1 million for each week, Gov. Rick Perry could start advertising in the first week of January. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who's running against him, could start a week or two later. If they start early, they're betting supporters with thick wallets and heavy purses will step forward to help them buy more ads. And lots of commercials don't make a Texan a governor. Williams lost in November, as did the next wealthy oil man to self-finance a campaign for that office: Tony Sanchez Jr., who ran against Perry in 2002. Whether they're on TV in a month, Perry and Strayhorn and the others will be in the papers, traveling the state and trying to drum up support. • Democrat Chris Bell of Houston will officially end his explorations and announce for governor over the weekend. The former congressman and Houston city councilman will be the first Democrat in the race. Separately, Bell was named to the board of StemPAC, a political action committee "created to fight back against those holding up the promise of stem cell research." • Kinky Friedman, trying to get on the ballot as an independent, announces Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin is joining the campaign as a "staff advisor." DeGuerin is a well-known criminal defense attorney; he defended U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison when a Travis County grand jury indicted her on charges she abused her office. She won a directed verdict after prosecutors lost a ruling on evidence and refused to present their case. 

Former Austin Mayor Kirk Watson left the law firm he founded to join the Austin office of Hughes & Luce. Watson, a Democrat who lost the 2002 attorney general race to Republican Greg Abbott, is considering a run for the Texas Senate seat now held by Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin. Jim Ray is rejoining Ray Associates after a run as executive director of the Texas Association of Regional Councils. Ray co-founded the public affairs firm in 1977, and he was the ED at the association for 28 years. Lisa Elledge is leaving the government affairs office at the Texas Department of Agriculture for the private sector; she'll be a lobbist for Wal-Mart Stores. Before working at TDA, she worked in Washington, D.C., including, at one time, for then-U.S. Rep. Larry Combest, R-Lubbock. Patrick Sullivan is the new deputy executive director at the Texas Building and Procurement Commission. His last gig was at the Texas State University System, where he worked in planning and construction. Ann Fuelberg, who heads the Employee Retirement System, won the "administrator of the year award" from the Texas Public Employees Association. Press Corps Moves: Deon Daugherty joins the Quorum Report, leaving the employ of Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, to return to reporting. She was the last Austin correspondent for Morris Newspapers, writing for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and the Amarillo Globe-News.