House Speaker Joe Straus on House Democrats' slow-play: "I would say that the more they talk, the more explaining they have to do."You can listen to his interview with reporters here or on the player below (duration is 5:23). Straus said the Democrats are operating within the rules — and their rights — but said they're "clearly obstructing" the process in the last available hours to consider major bills. He also called it hypocritical for Democrats who voted for Voter ID in 1997 to stall the business of the House now. "I think it's complete hypocrisy... that a number of Democrats who've been here a very long time didn't object to photo ID legislation way back then and yet they're willing to bring the House to a grinding halt over the same issue now," Straus told reporters. He's referring to legislation that required people voting without their voter registration cards; they're required to sign an affidavit and present photo IDs in order to vote. Texans who have their voter registration cards are not required to show photo IDs. Republicans handed out a list of 25 Democrats in the House now who were also here when that earlier piece of legislation passed on a voice vote. They were present, and the bill was passed on voice vote; the presumption is that everyone in the room voted for it. That's the group Straus is referring to. (The Senate passed the bill unanimously and then-Gov. George W. Bush signed it into law.) This year's Voter ID bill would flip that, requiring voters to show a photo ID and allowing them to use two other forms of identification if they can't produce a photo. One Republican amendment would tighten that to exclude the alternative forms of ID. And there's a Democratic amendment that would expand it, to allow people to sign an affidavit as one of those alternative forms of ID. The speaker hasn't talked to the governor about special sessions in the last few days, but Rick Perry has already said he'll call lawmakers back if they don't repair the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association, or TWIA, before they leave. That's the insurance pool that's been depleted by damages from hurricanes; on the eve of hurricane season, the Guv has said he wants it fixed. It would be easy for him to tack Voter ID onto the agenda if there's already a special session on TWIA.

The talk of the blogosphere this week is House Democrats' willingness to talk about everything except photo voter identification. Also attracting bloggers' attentions are the governor's campaign and its possible ramifications, other Capitol happenings and non-gubernatorial politicians. We'll leave off with an analysis of crime statistics and other posts.

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What's All the Chubbub?

KVUE's Political Junkie has a copy of a point of order that Democrats think might kill the voter photo ID bill before it gets talked about on the floor. Democrats are in the driver's seat until pumpkin time Tuesday night, but Republicans will be in charge if this goes to a special session, BurkaBlog says here and we wrote here. And our boss goes on-camera about the topic for Notes from the Lege.

Not all Republicans seem disturbed by Democrats' chubbing, says NewspaperTree Blog. During the House's paralysis, some Democrats seized the opportunity to attend a party thrown by Rep. Norma Chavez, D-El Paso, on the occasion of her graduation from UT. And A Capitol Blog's Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, took time during the chub session to get his name fixed on the House vote panels.

Tensions are so high on voter ID that House Republicans are beginning to eat their own, specifically, Rep. Tommy Merritt, R-Longview. Postcards has video. The Austin Chronicle's newsdesk was there, too.

Photo ID requirements would disenfranchise 150,000 voters, according to state Rep. Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, via Burka. The Dallas Morning News's Trail Blazers counts potential floor votes for and against the ID bill, concluding that it would be close. Meanwhile, KUT's Notes from the Lege wins Headline of the Week award for an article on the tag-team filibustering, titled, "The Most Boring Fight EVER…"

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GOP Gov

Gov. Rick Perry told a group of high school journalists that if he had his way, he would make the Top 10 Percent Rule go away, according to Junkie. Meanwhile, Texas Monthly's In the Pink gives her view on the Perry-Hutchison race. And U.S. Rep. Kay Granger says she has no "lingering thoughts" about making a bid for Hutchison's seat, according to PoliTex, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's blog.

"What has Kay done? Seriously. What has Kay done for Texas?" wonders Lone Star Times, seriously. And Rick vs. Kay finds video of Hutchison disagreeing with Obama about Guantanamo Bay.

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No ID Required

A dozen Democratic senators are standing between Don McLeroy and his job as State Board of Education chair, Junkie says. Musings calls around some and says not all Democratic senators are saying "no" outright to McLeroy. She wonders if some might trade Senate Finance favors in exchange for their thumbs up to McLeroy.

Poli-Tex's Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, jumps all over Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, for saying that people told him that Hispanic parents aren't eager to allow their daughters to go off to college right after high school graduation. Bonnen healed the brief rift with a phone call and baby clothes.

Pollabear says windstorm insurance reform's "fate this session is bleak." Junkie was listening in on the pre-chubbing "quagmire" in the House over unemployment insurance. For readers' perusal, Bay Area Houston offers a paper he wrote on the possibly doomed Texas Residential Construction Commission for a California conference.

Here are the Austin American-Statesman's Postcards' guesses for the TxDOT Sunset conference committee: Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, Rep. Wayne Smith, R-Baytown, Rep. Linda Harper-Brown, R-Irving, and Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio.

Mike Falick's Blog has a list of bills that are likely to die in the House, and Grits for Breakfast highlights legislation related to criminal justice that might not make it. And the Travis Monitor looks at bills the Texas Alliance for Life is keeping an eye on.

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Running Men (and Women)

Beltway Confidential catches up with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in his capacity as GOP Senate campaign chair. Cornyn predicts the GOP "will at least stop the bleeding" in 2010 and reiterates his hunch that Hutchison will resign this fall. Meanwhile, a guest blogger for the Houston Chronicle's Texas on the Potomac skewers Cornyn's Congressional counterpart U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions.

Pondering Penguin takes a look at a "rising star" in the Texas GOP — former Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who's running for Attorney General. Red Ink: Texas says Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, could get some trouble in his next campaign if the Houston airport seizes homes for land to build two new runways. And Ellis County Observer endorses Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams for the U.S. Senate.

Former El Paso Rep. candidate Dee Margo is backing a GOP group called Grassroots El Paso, reports NewspaperTree. The law firm of Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, made $100 million off public sector clients in Big D in 2008, says Texas Watchdog. Read the multi-part story here. Meanwhile, former Reps. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, and Fred Hill, R-Richardson, top the list of 10 "revolving-door lobbyists" tracked down by Texans for Public Justice's Lobby Watch.

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Potpourri

A new report on statewide crime stats is out, and Grits talks about the good and bad news here and here. Meanwhile, Tex Parte Blog reports on the knighting of UT-Austin President William Powers Jr. And Capitol Annex takes note of a foul-up by the Railroad Commission.

Greg's Opinion has created maps marking U.S. Congressional, state representative and state senatorial legislative districts in the South, according to party affiliation. He's got numbers to back up the maps, too. A Texas court awarded a Toronto-based company a $200 million verdict against Microsoft, says Tex Parte. And the county seat writes about a possible challenger to Harris County GOP chair Jared Woodfill.

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This edition of Out There was compiled and written by Patrick Brendel, who hails from Victoria but is semi-settled in Austin. We cherry-pick the state's political blogs each week, looking for news, info, gossip, and new jokes. The opinions here belong (mostly) to the bloggers, and we're including their links so you can hunt them down if you wish. Our blogroll — the list of Texas blogs we watch — is on our links page, and if you know of a Texas political blog that ought to be on it, just shoot us a note. Please send comments, suggestions, gripes or retorts to Texas Weekly editor Ross Ramsey.

Lawmakers attempt to finance a tax cut for business by raising the tax on smokeless tobacco. [updated] [updated again]The Senate Finance Committee voted to change the formulas for taxing smokeless tobacco — and the full Senate agreed a day later — effectively raising $105 million in new revenue for the state. They'll use the money to finance part of the $172 million in franchise tax cuts approved earlier by the House. The smokeless tobacco fight has been going on for years. At issue is whether that ought to be taxed on the basis of price — the current system — or on weight. The lower-priced brands like the tax as is. Higher-priced brands like the weight-based tax, which trims the difference between regular and premium brands to the customer. Lawmakers have rejected the idea in several sessions before now, but a couple of sweeteners this time might do the trick. First is the money; this would allow the Legislature to free thousands of businesses from the corporate franchise tax. Second is a doctor loan program that's been tied to the tax this session; some of the money will be used to help pay off student loans for doctors who agree to work in under-served areas of Texas. The smokeless tobacco tax is currently 40 percent of price. The proposed change would put it at $1.10 per ounce, and the tax has a built-in escalator, raising the rate each year until 2013, when it would top out at $1.22 per ounce. Instead of setting the new tax to bring in the same revenue the old tax yielded, lawmakers decided to include a tax increase. But some conservatives like the new tax better than the old one in spite of that; the Texas Conservative Coalition, for instance, endorsed the change. The new tax will raise $104.8 million over the next two years. Of that, $22 million will go to the loan program and the rest will pay for the business tax cut. That business tax cut has a two-year sunset on it — lawmakers will have to renew it in 2011 if they want to keep it — and the money for the doctor program will increase to $58 million in 2012, $68 million in 2013, and so on. Doctors would get paid $25,000 for their first year in the program, $35,000 for their second, up to $55,000 for their fourth year. The franchise tax cut hasn't passed the Senate yet. The House version allows businesses with gross receipts of less than $1 million avoid paying any tax. That would free about 39,000 businesses, and would leave what was sold as a broad-based tax with fewer taxpayers than paid the old levy it replaced. The tax was the biggest piece of the 2006 "swap" — when lawmakers attempted to lower local school property taxes by increasing the state's share of the costs of public education.

The budgeteers are done, and (finally) the final version of the $182.3 billion budget is posted online.

Look here, on the Legislative Budget Board's website (also the source of the numbers in the growth chart). Numbers in the chart are in millions of dollars. Over the last two decades, the state budget has grown 260 percent. General revenue spending — that's the part paid for with state taxes and fees — has risen 133.6 percent.

The Senate started releasing more than 500 House bills that have been passed in the upper chamber and that have to be approved or sent to conference committees by the House by the end of the week. Hidden in that pile of legislation is much of what died on the House's deadline Tuesday night. Next, the House will decide whether any of those add-ons violate germaneness rules that require amendments to have something to do with the original intent of the legislation. If they're picky about that, some of the parasitic measures will die all over again (along with the hosts). And if they're lenient, some of the stuff killed by a five-day Democratic chub-fest in the House will be resurrected. The first load of bills came to the House in a cart pushed by Sens. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, and Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio. The next 48 hours will determine whether that was a cart or a hearse.

The state employee bonus — $800 for every worker who a) makes less than $100,000 and b) isn't getting a pay raise — is now in the state's supplemental budget, a $2.4 billion spending bill that whizzed through the Senate and now goes to a conference committee to settle up with the House. That bill, or something else, could also be the defibrillator for a "fiscal matters" bill that includes some wonky state finance stuff and also $150 million for a hospital tower at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. As a practical matter, this is the bill used to tie up any financial loose ends that weren't apparent when the 900-page budget was printed. It's easier to amend the smaller bill than to cut back into the big one.

The first numbers on the business franchise tax were on the mark, to the relief of budget-watchers who saw it come up short of the mark in its first year. That doesn't mean the tax has improved — just that the estimates were on the mark. The Comptroller's folks say they counted $3.7 billion in receipts during the first week after the May 15 due date. That's about what they expected. The proceeds could shrink next year if the governor agrees to raise the exemption on the business tax to $1 million (it's currently $300,000, and businesses don't pay the full rate unless their gross receipts exceed $1 million). After two years, the exemption would drop to $600,000. That's financed, in part, with a tax increase on smokeless tobacco. The Senate and House have both passed it, but need to settle some differences. The price tag on the tax cut is $172 million, and it would free an estimated 39,000 companies from that tax.

The House wants to parley on a four-inch-thick transportation bill and told their negotiators to kill enforcement cameras at red lights and a local option gasoline tax increase approved by the Senate. That Sunset bill overhauls the Texas Department of Transportation. The House approved an elected 15-member board, but the Senate wants to keep five appointed commissioners. And the House would give much broader finance and project selection authority to local boards, while the Senate would leave more decision-making in state hands. Several senators (17 of them) answered that with a letter to House members arguing that the provisions wouldn't raise taxes, but would allow voters to raise taxes locally if their county commissioners first approved the elections. And they asked them "to embrace local control." Here's the letter:

No legislation is ever really dead until the Legislature has left Austin, and that doesn't happen this week. [UPDATED]Accordingly, the House is poring through 500+ bills that have been approved and amended — sometimes in astonishing ways — in the Senate. And the Senate spent the last hours of Wednesday night — a deadline night — grafting dead bills onto live ones in the hope that the House might approve the little monsters before time runs out. A sampling of measures on the revivification list: Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (SB 14, the only bill Gov. Rick Perry has said would definitely prompt a special session), Budget transparency (SB 736), clean air (SB 16), Children's Health Insurance expansion (SB 841), low income housing tax credits (SB 1429), groundwater well-drilling regulation (HB 4258), tax exemptions for wind and solar projects (SB 832), gang-related investigation, prosecution and punishment (SB 11), post-conviction DNA evidence (SB 1864 & SB 1976), a state alternative fuels program (SB 1425), criminal asset forfeiture (SB 1529), water development grants in low income areas (SB 2284), open meetings at electric coops (SB 921), and a solar incentive program (SB 545). Some bills got past the deadline without hitching rides, both before and after the Senate stopped its clock and worked for about two-and-a-half hours past the midnight deadline: Pre-Kindergarten education (SB 130), an innocence commission to look at new evidence in death penalty cases (hb 498), and sunset bills for the Department of Public Safety (HB 2730) and the Texas Youth Commission (HB 3689).

It might not matter if an expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program gets to the governor; he doesn't like it.Rick Perry, quoted by the Austin American-Statesman this afternoon on the subject of the CHIP bill: "I would probably not be in favor of that expansion even if it came to my desk. I think the members know that. That is not what I consider to be a piece of legislation that has the vast support of the people of the state of Texas." Both the House and Senate approved the expansion, but in different forms. The Senate let the House version die in committee, then attached it to another bill in yesterday's spree of rescue attempts. But they attached it to a bill that is arguably a bad match, and it might die without reaching the governor.

Legislation they wanted is dead. Legislation they didn't want is alive. Some people behaved well (ask Edmund Kuempel about John Zerwas), and some didn't (you did see that El Paso Times story about Norma Chavez and Marisa Marquez, right?). And so on. Was the pace too slow? Was the result any different than usual? Don't sessions always end like this?

Have a little perspective. Start with some things that, if you've been around the Capitol much, you're sick of hearing.

"The budget is the only bill that has to pass."

"The system is set up to kill legislation — not to pass it."

"The Senate only has rules when it wants them."

"Every speaker is a reaction to the previous speaker."

They're all true.

So how does the Legislature handle the only bill that has to pass? In four of the last five sessions, the budget has been out of the first chamber by April 1 (it starts in the Senate one year, the House the next). The exception was in 2003, when lawmakers cut billions from the budget at the same time they were adjusting to a new speaker, Tom Craddick, R-Midland. With that same year as an exception, the bill emerged from the second chamber by mid-April. The conference committee always started up in two weeks or less, and the budget went to a final vote in both houses after the deadlines for other bills were out of the way (so that a long conversation about state spending won't kill other legislation). This year, with members adjusting to a new speaker, Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, the budget was out of the Senate on April 1, out of the House on April 17, and the conference committee formally met for the first time on April 27. The only bill that has to pass gets underway early, hits its marks and comes out on schedule. This year is no exception.

Westerns, gangster movies, space operas, and legislative sessions build to a climax, where the chances of success or survival narrow. Heroes and heroines get wounded, but survive. Sidekicks get shot. Bills die. The credits roll. That's how the story line works. The House and Senate just escaped from the big end-of-session shootouts. The particulars were different, with the looming Voter ID bill on the House calendar, the Democratic Stall to avoid it, and the Senate's clock-stopping attempt to bring life back to bills sent to the legislative graveyard as a result. But the effect is the same. Some skirmishes remain. But they're saving what they can, finding that many of the things they really, really wanted are intact, burying and mourning their dead, and getting ready to ride off into the sunset. If you want to see the credits roll, catch the final debates on the budgets, when everyone in the room hails everyone in the room for the fine work and the creative genius and all.

The House seems to get into a tight spot at the end of each session. The Senate waltzes in, frowns, and starts breaking any rules necessary to clean up the mess. This time, the rule-breaking started when the session started, with Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, cutting a path around the Senate's two-thirds rule to allow passage of a photo Voter ID bill that wasn't acceptable to a full two-thirds of the Senate. It came out on a straight party vote. The bookend — a bipartisan effort — came the other night, when a Senate staffer unplugged the official clock at two minutes before midnight so the upper chamber could spend another two-and-a-half hours resurrecting dead bills.

As for that fourth cliché, Craddick concentrated power in the speaker's office, taking it away from committee chairs and members. He was a policy speaker, using the position in pursuit of his agenda for the state. After three terms, the other members of the House — his voters — replaced him with Straus, who promised to return power to the members. Straus, in his first term, has been a process speaker, making sure the machinery of the House works and letting the members pursue their own agendas without pushing his own. At a meeting of Straus and the committee chairs about halfway through the session, recounted by several participants, he told them that the pace was up to them and that they should quit looking to his office for instructions on how to run their panels. And over the past week, he made sure everybody was following the rules without diving into the partisan squabble over Voter ID legislation. The Republicans and the Democrats struggled with each other, and he let them. He clearly didn't like it — remember the "obstructionist" remarks at the first of the week — but as long as the boxing was within the rules, he didn't call any fouls.

It's not over yet. But as the sun sinks, the budget is done, a mess of bills got killed after a lot of hard work, the Senate's rules were highly situational, and the House, for better or worse, got the kind of leadership it was seeking back in January.

It's down to fixing the differences between House bills and Senate bills and getting final sign-offs and sending them to the governor for signatures, vetos, or approval without fingerprints (unsigned bills go into law automatically).

This last bit started with the Senate unleashing more than 500 bills it had been holding during the five-day stall in the House. The House ran a triage operation, deciding which of those bills needed surgery and which could get by with a couple of aspirin. The surgeries are sorted, broadly, into two groups. One holds bills with major differences between the House and Senate that need to be hashed out in the normal way. The sunset legislation on the Texas Department of Transportation is one of those. The other group is in for painful amputations. The Senate tried to save a bunch of dead bills by attaching them to live bills. Sometimes that works. But when the subject matter of the two bills doesn't mesh, the offending material has to be chopped away to preserve the original bill. Legislation expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program, for instance, was badly paired by the Senate, leaving the House with no choice but to kill it.

The House still has to vote on the budget and the supplemental appropriations bill — the Senate's finished both — and the rest of the weekend will be busy with conference committees settling differences and the full House and Senate getting together every few hours to ratify or reject the compromises. Barring any major new problems, the state's 181 lawmakers will be going back home Monday night or Tuesday morning.

The governor then has 20 days to dispense with the results, including a tear through the budget, where he has the power to prune some items he doesn't like. Father's Day is the deadline. And if he wants to call a special session — on windstorm insurance, for instance, if it fails to pass — that would probably follow. A note: Calling a special session during that 20-day veto period opens a governor to a veto override. If lawmakers aren't here while he's vetoing stuff, they can't reverse his decisions.

There is an old Italian saying: Dai nemici mi guardo io, dagli amici mi guardi Iddio.
It means "I can protect myself from my enemies; may God protect me from my friends!"

It's no secret by now that the conference committee report contents were not what I was led to believe, and that the report was signed and filed before I was ever shown the decisions. What we have is a deal negotiated in bad faith. I can handle the personal and professional insult involved; after all, there is another Italian saying:

Quando finisce la partita, i pedoni, le torri, i cavalli, i vescovi, i due re e le due regine tutti vanno nello stesso scatolo.


When the chess game is over, the pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, kings, and queens all go back into the same box. We will recover and work together again, and the Senate will survive.

Unfortunately, the practical effects of HB 300 for Texas transportation are negative and still must be addressed. For example, in the absence of the Local Option Transportation Act, other provisions included in either the House or Senate bill but discarded by conferees such as Local Participation take on new importance and should have been adopted. Had I known LOTA would be stripped, I would have pressed that point.

If HB 300 dies, the only real loss is the enabling legislation to issue Proposition 12 bonds. Frankly, given the debt service entailed over time, there is a good argument to putting off this debt until we can pass legislation reducing or eliminating transportation diversions, legislation I filed, but mysteriously came to a stop in the House.

It further appears that the Senate conferees ended up giving away the store. The fatal flaw in HB 300 is buried in the process for determining whether the state or the MPO picks the projects. HB 300 has the Transportation Commission developing criteria for selection and placement of projects in the Transportation Plan, which is good. However, for the major funding categories the Commission must then use the MPO's priorities unless they conflict with federal law or rule. Finally, the department "shall use the planning organizations' project lists to create the statewide transportation program and budget." Through these steps, found on page 38 of the side by side, the conferees complete the transfer of decision making authority from the state level to the MPO, which in my view is the wrong direction.

Accordingly, here is how I will proceed today.

First, I will read the bill to the body. HB 300 on conference committee report is 344 pages long, which is even bigger than the infamous HB 3588 by 10%. Given that the House bill came to the Senate with over 100 amendments stapled to the back and not rolled in, there has never been a compiled version that makes sense, entire sections of law are repealed by handwritten notes in the margins, and we have barely had the bill long enough to absorb so much as the table of contents, you can expect this effort to take a while.

In that process, we will explore a few of the very curious provisions of this bill. For example, why would there be a provision inserted after Senator Hinojosa was appointed to the committee that addresses a TCEQ permit currently in litigation and if passed, I am told would put a constituent of Senator Lucio's out of business?

Why if LOTA was so impossible, would there be a provision appearing for the first time in the conference committee report that enables the El Paso County Commissioners, without a vote of the citizens, to increase vehicle registration fees by an additional $50?

If rail transit in North Texas is too much for the House to vote on, why would the conference committee report include a first-ever provision directing the route of a rail line serving Irving?

Second, I will describe for my colleagues in detail the development and content of the Rail North Texas proposal, so they can fully understand and appreciate the resolve of local leaders, businesses, and taxpayers in North Texas to have this opportunity.

Third, I will address the knee-jerk, self-professed tax watchdogs whose outcry on the local option transportation act betrays either ignorance of the session or a callous use of LOTA as a straw man to garner headlines and addresses for their mailing lists. I will do that by reminding my colleagues of the content, analysis, and fiscal impact of legislation I proposed that would end diversions and index the motor fuels tax.

Fourth, I will share with each Senator the projects in their districts that are unfunded, and that this legislation will do little to address.

Fifth, I will return to the reason LOTA is so important, the state of transportation funding today. There are many resources that detail the funding crisis, such as the 2030 Report and the Governor's Business Council report, and I look forward to disseminating that information.

Of course, Texas is not alone in these needs, and there are voluminous reports from at least two national select committees that shed light on our failing infrastructure finance systems.

I hope at that point I have not run out of time in the session because I have some other items to discuss, but I am inspired by the memory of Bill Meier, who from the desk right behind where I sit today, talked for 43 hours. Let's see how I do.

John Carona, a Dallas Republican, represents Senate District 16. He's the chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation & Homeland Security.

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Texas Weekly's Soapbox is a venue for opinions, spins, alternate takes, and other interesting stuff sent in by readers and others. We moderate submissions to keep crazy people out, and anonymous commentary is ineligible. Readers can respond (through the moderator) to things posted here. Got something to submit? We're interested in everything from full-blown opinion pieces to short bits to observations or tidbits that have escaped us and the mass media. One rule: Your name goes on your words. Call or send an email: Ross Ramsey, Editor, Texas Weekly, 512/288-6598, ramsey@texasweekly.com.

Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, sponsor of a controversial overhaul of the state's transportation agency, said lawmakers are deciding whether "it's better to have a sunset bill than to play Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun."

He responded to an angry statement from Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, by saying he spent several days trying to work things out.

Hegar went through a timeline of the negotiations on the bill, and said it finally came down to differences over red light cameras, billboard regulation, and the local option tax pushed, primarily, by leaders in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

In his statement, Carona implies he didn't know the tax provision was being stripped from the negotiated bill; Hegar says that became clear in early conversations with House negotiators.

He said he had conversations with everyone on the conference committee and got to Carona at the end. But he denied misleading Carona and remains hopeful about the legislation. "We're not at the end of the session yet."

The session can't go on past midnight Monday, and Sunday is the last day to pass bills without bending major procedural rules in the House.

As a safeguard, TXDOT was added to a list of agency's in a "safety net" bill meant to keep agencies from going out of business if their reviews aren't passed. If nothing's worked out on TXDOT, it'll be up for review again in four years.

The twice-killed expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program has resurfaced as part of a child abuse bill. SB 841 — the CHIP bill — has been grafted onto SB 2080. The legislation died in a Senate committee several days ago. It was then attached to another Senate bill and sent the House, where it was stripped off by officials who said it wasn't related to the host legislation. And now it's back. Gov. Rick Perry said earlier this week that he's not a fan; even if it gets out, it might be veto material. But advocates of the program have mounted a rescue effort to encourage lawmakers to keep the expansion of CHIP alive.

I am extremely proud of the work of the conference committee on HB 300—the Texas Department of Transportation Sunset legislation—and I am very disappointed by the unfair attacks made by Senator Carona against the committee, the process that we employed to seek a committee report that would pass both the Texas House and Senate and his extremely unfair and harsh attacks against me personally. Senator Carona's distortions sadden me because not only are they patently false, but because he is also attempting to reinvent history. Throughout the entire sunset process, I have strived to make the process open and fully transparent and I am proud of the comments that have been made by my colleagues when I presented a new committee substitute to HB 300 on Monday, May 18 before the Senate Transportation Committee and then again on Monday, May 25 when the bill was presented on the Senate floor. I was specifically proud that Senators Nichols, Watson, Shapleigh, and Carona all played a very large role in crafted a strong senate version of the bill. My proudest moment in four sessions as a State legislator was during this hearing when Senators Carona, Nichols, Watson and Shapleigh all took turns complementing my efforts to have a very transparent, open, and deliberative process among the Senate members. One Senator even noted that the process was the most impressive in all of his years of the legislature. In regards to the work of the conference committee, I have attempted to include my Senate colleagues and conferees in the process, most especially Senator Carona and his staff. Unfortunately, after many days of hard work by many individuals, it became very clear to the conference committee that the votes simply did not exist in the Texas House to pass the local option tax or to get the requisite three House signatures on that conference report. I greatly respect and admire Senator Carona’s work on Transportation issues and for his leadership of the Senate Transportation Committee. It is certainly his prerogative to criticize the bill, vote against it, or even filibuster it. It is, however, not his privilege to hold the bill hostage because a single provision that he wanted was not included and I take exception to his efforts to change the narrative of the hard work, serious deliberations, and the long hours that went into producing a TxDOT Sunset bill. Ultimately, a conference committee report was produced that reflected the wishes of a majority of legislators, a majority of conferees, and most importantly a majority of Texans. I have learned much during this process. I know this, HB 300 is good legislation that moves Texas forward and will make the Texas Department of Transportation more efficient and responsive to the people of Texas. I also know that the Texas House and Senate must take action next session to prevent important Sunset bills from being used as catch all omnibus bills that don’t achieve the reform purpose of the sunset process. Hegar's Timeline of the TXDOT conference. Glenn Hegar, a Katy Republican, represents Senate District 18. He's the sponsor of the Texas Department of Transportation sunset bill.

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Texas Weekly's Soapbox is a venue for opinions, spins, alternate takes, and other interesting stuff sent in by readers and others. We moderate submissions to keep crazy people out, and anonymous commentary is ineligible. Readers can respond (through the moderator) to things posted here. Got something to submit? We're interested in everything from full-blown opinion pieces to short bits to observations or tidbits that have escaped us and the mass media. One rule: Your name goes on your words. Call or send an email: Ross Ramsey, Editor, Texas Weekly, 512/288-6598, ramsey@texasweekly.com.

The Texas Senate voted against Gov. Rick Perry's choice to head the State Board of Education.McLeroy, of Bryan, will remain on the board in an elected term that lasts until January 2011. But the governor will have to name someone else to chair that board. His home senator, Republican Steve Ogden of Bryan, took up for him: "When we stand up here and ridicule a man who says he doesn't accept the current Darwinian theory of evolution, or that he says in an impolitic way that global warming is a bunch of hooey, he is not necessarily on the fringes of historical and scientific thought." But it wasn't enough. The Senate voted 19-11 along party lines in McLeroy's favor, but since his confirmation would have required a two-thirds majority, that was two Nays too many.