This is the season when the Legislature's power wanes and the governor's power waxes.

The lawmakers are within a few days of leaving town until 2011. The governor's veto power is now irreversible, and it continues that way for another 20 days after the end of the session.

The calendar is built to put Rick Perry in an ideal deal-making mode: Bills are piling up on his desk and there's just a little time to fix things the way he wants them. He's got the power to call weary lawmakers back for a special session on any subject he chooses — or not to call them back in the rare instances when they want to return.

Perry has been working the floors in each chamber, and used the calendar, and the threat of a special session, to break legislative gridlock on windstorm insurance. It's not clear yet what'll happen, but the legislation is no longer stuck in committee.

The calendar and the Guv's wishes came into play in the reconciliation of House and Senate budget plans. Lawmakers put more money into transportation and undid some raids on transit funds at Perry's insistence, for instance, and Perry worked to save his discretionary accounts for economic development as the budget was finalized.

When it comes to appointments, the Senate's say in who's running the executive branch for the next two years is ebbing. An appointee named in the first week of June doesn't have to face Senate confirmation until next session; in fact, an appointee could be in place until the end of next session, two years from now. Controversial nominees who haven't already been named won't be named while the Lege is in town — not if the Guv wants them to serve, anyway. Controversial appointees who've already been named — like SBOE Chair Don McLeroy of College Station and Pardons & Paroles nominee Shanda Perkins of Burleson— have to win Senate consent before the Lege is gone or they're effectively busted.

This lasts about a month (barring a special session). After the last bill either has been vetoed, signed, or allowed to slip onto the books without a signature, the governor's power falls to its normal level. The Legislature will be gone. State agencies and lobbyists and business people and citizens will sort out what's been done.

And the 2010 political season will begin in earnest.

Limbo, Limbo

It's not completely weird to stop in the middle of the calendar at this time of a legislative session, but it's definitely weird to stop in the middle of a bill. Or two bills.

That's what the House did Thursday, stopping for the night with two bills open. Major bills, too. They were halfway through legislation revising the Top 10 rule that determines who can — and can't — get into the state's biggest schools. And they were considering that bill after bogging down in the middle of legislation changing the state's unemployment insurance law to bring more people into that system and attract $556 million in federal stimulus money.

That also pushes back consideration of what many think will be the two toughest bills of the month in the House: One that would require photo ID of anyone trying to vote in Texas, the other an omnibus insurance bill that could change how Texas regulates prices and policies in property and casualty insurance. Austin-based Texas Watch is battling the insurance companies on that, pelting voters in swing districts with robo-calls urging them to urge their legislators to "require insurance companies to justify their rates, pay reasonable medical expenses, and offer standardized policies."

The real deadline to keep in mind is Tuesday, May 26. That's the last day the House can consider Senate bills. After midnight Tuesday, most of the action will be in the various conference committees trying to settle differences between the House and Senate versions of legislation. One other rule to watch: To be eligible for House consideration on Tuesday, a bill has to be on the calendar, which has to be set by Sunday night. Anything in committee at that point will require the assistance of Harry Potter, or Captain Kirk, or Bart Simpson: Magic, force, or trickery.

The Only Bill that Must Pass

The next state budget is in the last stage before completion and the tax cut for small businesses is on the bubble.

The House wants to give businesses an exemption on their first $1 million in earnings — an idea that would free about 39,000 businesses from the corporate franchise tax. But it would cost the state $172 million, and some of the folks in leadership see shadows over that money.

Negotiators from the House and Senate settled about $3.8 billion in differences between the bills approved by the two houses (the Senate was higher) and sent their bill to the printer so the Legislature can bless it next week — after the next big deadline on Tuesday. Whether you buy those new numbers or not, they're tamping down expectations about the money available for the next two years, and the talk about the corporate franchise tax cut is part of that.

Several financial objects are still in motion. Comptroller Susan Combs has told the folks in the Pink Building that she won't change the estimates of revenue she made at the beginning of the session. This year's corporate franchise tax returns were due last Friday and are still coming in; her aides say they don't yet have a bead on whether those payments are on, above, or below the mark. But consider the revenue box checked.

The unemployment insurance bill passed earlier this year by the Senate — it would bring in $556 million in federal stimulus money while making changes to UI that would cost the state $70 million to $80 million a year — was in limbo as we hit our deadline — the House had brought it up, started amending it, and then set it aside overnight with plans to take it up on Friday. It's worth noting that that's too late on the calendar for the Legislature to override a gubernatorial veto, if there is one.

The finance folks want to get the budget set before they take up the business tax. The UI bill, opposed by Gov. Rick Perry, might never get to his desk. It might also be trade bait: Perry opposes the UI package but supports the tax cut. Together, the two bills would save business taxpayers $728 million over the next two years.

Perry, talking to reporters, said his feelings about the UI bill are well known. He stopped short of saying he would veto the measure if the House, like the Senate, approves it. But he didn't offer much comfort to its supporters: "I wouldn't want to be a member voting to let Washington, D.C., tell us how to run our business in Texas. I just think the people of the state of Texas have that one figured out now. Texans know how to run Texas better."

There is still time to fool with the numbers. The appropriations bill — which will come in at around 900 pages — is being printed and is cumbersome to change. But there's a supplemental budget bill that can survive tinkering until the last days of the session, and it's the one to watch. Among the items in play is a pay raise for state employees.

Out of It

A federal investigation of Texas' State Schools for the mentally retarded will end; the U.S. Department of Justice has agreed to a $112 million settlement that includes regular monitoring of the schools by independent experts, enhanced oversight and new guidelines for employees.

The Legislature has to adopt resolutions — being drafted now by Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, and Rep. Patrick Rose, R-Dripping Springs — accepting the terms of the deal. The agreement (see a summary here) follows disclosures of abuses of residents by state employees and others and comes as lawmakers are finishing reforms designed in part to regain control of the institutions.

In legislation moving this week, lawmakers added video surveillance; better background checks, drug testing, and training of employees; and an ombudsman's office to handle complaints. As they often do after a scandal, they've proposed changing the name of the facilities from state schools to "state-supported living centers." It also would house the highest-risk residents in one of the schools rather than scattered throughout the system.

Heavy Traffic

A local option transit tax caught a ride on the Senate's version of a major transportation bill, adding to a legislative traffic jam that separates that version from one passed earlier by the House.

The Senate's Transportation Committee voted out the sunset bill for the Texas Department of Transportation, sending that to the full Senate for a vote — maybe this weekend — and then on to a deadline negotiation with the House.

We'd make it about even odds that no bill passes and that the TXDOT bill is back in two years, when lawmakers will also be busy with other abrasive materials like redistricting and an expected budget shortfall.

At this point, the bills are different from top to bottom. The Senate wants to keep the appointed board at TXDOT; the House wants to do away with it. The Senate would leave the final decisions on funding for road projects with the state; the House would cede that power to local officials. The House creates a legislative oversight committee to babysit the agency; the Senate doesn't. The list goes on, but you get the idea (and the Senate's not through yet).

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, started the game as one of the transportation agency's harshest critics, but now finds himself siding with the agency on governance and financial issues. He'd prefer to have appointed commissioners with the final say over how the state's transportation money is spent. The House bill belongs to Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, but Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, is riding shotgun and is an advocate of letting local officials make the decisions (see the bit about federal transportation folks after this story).

Now they've got something else to fight over. Just before sending the bill to the full Senate, Carona's committee added in another piece of legislation that would allow local boards to ask local voters to approve higher gasoline taxes to pay for local transportation projects. It would be limited to the state's larger metropolitan areas; one supporter referred to that as a "pilot project," though it would apply to Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, and Corpus Christi. House conservatives — including Isett — think that's spinach. He says he'll strip the provision out of the bill if it survives the full Senate.

That gasoline tax legislation is also on the House's calendar for this week, but got delayed until the Senate has had a poke at that sunset bill.

Separately, state finance folks have apparently sorted out a mess in the transportation section of the proposed two-year budget. At one point, their forays into Fund 6 — the main source of transportation funding in the budget — would have left TXDOT without enough money to pay bonds (sold less than a year ago at the urging of the Guv, the Lite Guv, and the Speaker) and left the agency short of funds for new projects, and of the general revenue money that's used to attract federal matching dollars. That SNAFU is one of several that kept the budget negotiations open past midweek.

Speed Bump

Federal highway officials have reservations about local control of highway dollars in Texas — the subject of that sunset legislation pending in the Pink Building. At issue is a section of HB 300 — the Texas Department of Transportation sunset legislation. The feds sent a letter detailing their worries; the main one seems to be that control of federal highway dollars would be in local hands rather than in state hands. And the feds aren't wild about that. "TXDOT has the responsibility to ensure the connectivity and consistency of federal projects from one region to another," they wrote. "If project selection rests with [local boards], it is unclear how projects that cross jurisdictional boundaries will be coordinated and implemented."

Grades, Greenbacks and Guns

Coming this fall to a Texas college near you: Students with less stellar high school grades, with money in their (parents') pockets, and with guns on their hips.

Maybe.

It's not the next Robert Rodriguez movie enabled by new state film incentives, but the result of three higher education bills that have received Senate approval and await nods from the House. One would loosen the rules that require schools to give preference to students in the Top 10 percent of their high school class. Another would reregulate tuition at state schools. And the third would allow licensed students and others to carry handguns on campus.

Senate Bill 175 by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, would let colleges limit the number of students admitted under the Top 10 rule. The House started work on that but quit for the night with the bill still on the operating table.

The rule was passed in 1997, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action in college admissions. In 2003, the court decided that colleges could use race as one factor in admissions. The rule has been credited with removing disparities in admission rates between students from rural and urban areas.

The powers that be at the University of Texas at Austin have been pushing for a rule change for several sessions, saying the growing number of automatically admitted freshmen is squeezing out other students they would like to admit.

About 40 percent of enrolled UT-Austin freshmen from Texas high schools were admitted under the rule when the law first took effect in 1998. Today, that number is about 80 percent. (Although the population of Texas has grown by about 20 percent since 1998, the number of enrolled Texans at UT-Austin has remained relatively steady, from 6110 freshmen in 1998 to 6322 in 2008.)

"Without a change, one of out state's top universities will soon lose discretion over the makeup of its freshman class," says House sponsor Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, chair of the Higher Education committee.

At Texas A&M-College Station, the state's other Tier One public university, about half of fall 2008 incoming freshmen were admitted automatically.

Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, pushed successfully for a floor amendment that allows Top 10 Percent students to keep their "automatic admission tickets" to universities for three years, allowing a student to attend community college before going on to the four-year college of his/her choice. Bonnen says his idea will assist students who cannot afford a four-year college right away, or whose parents want them to stay at home for a while after graduation. "I think it will create significant diversity," he says.

• SB 1443 by Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, limits colleges' ability to set their own tuition rates. The bill prohibits the state's major schools from hiking tuition and fees by more than five percent a year. Some schools would not be able to raise tuition at all, pending approval from a legislative study group.

It also encourages state lawmakers to provide adequate amounts of money to colleges, in recognition that chronic underfunding is what led to tuition deregulation in 2003, and the price increases that followed. As we went to press, that one was pending in the House Calendars Committee.

• So-called "campus carry" legislation, SB 1164 by Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, lets concealed handgun license holders over the age of 21 carry firearms on college campuses. As written, the bill applies to both public and private universities, which then could independently choose to opt out of the law.

Wentworth is worried about time running out on his bill, which cleared the Senate on Wednesday, but he is optimistic about its chances in the House because he made changes to his bill to match it up with companion House Bill 1893 by Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland. Driver's bill passed a House committee and attracted more than 75 coauthors before dying when the deadline for House bills passed last week.

The arithmetic looks good, at least. Driver says he had 79 House coauthors on his campus carry bill, but several dropped off after feeling pressure from outside influences. Driver now claims 75 or 76 coauthors, plus 10 to 15 other representatives who have assured him personally they will vote in favor of the bill.

To have any chance, SB 1164 has to clear two committees — Public Safety and Calendars — by 10 o'clock Sunday night.

"It's totally bipartisan. There's really no rural versus urban, no big city versus small city. Maybe some of the people in cities where there's public universities may not vote for it," Driver says. "I think the majority feel that it's a bill that does what it's designed to do, and that's to give people a chance to protect themselves wherever they go."

— by a Texas Weekly Correspondent

Smoked, Chewed, Armed, and Reloading

The much-hyped Smoke-Free Texas bill was too much for the state Senate to inhale. The sponsors and promoters of that bill declared it dead with two weeks still left in the legislative session.

• A smokeless tobacco bill that would change the way that product is taxed is getting some attention in the Senate. It would raise about $30 million to repay student loans for doctors who agree to practice, initially, in underserved areas of the state. And it would throw another $70 million or so into general revenue. The high-end tobacconists like it. The discount tobacco folks don't like it. Doctors like it. Lawmakers are split between wanting the money and fearing the appearance they're increasing taxes. While that's pending, the Texas Association of Business is running radio ads around the state promoting the medical program in that bill.

• The House shot down — with a rule violation and not a vote — a resolution touting the state's sovereignty. The sponsors will try again in the time left.

• Texas made it into The Onion. The formula: The governor talks about secession — satire ensues. The humor paper's lead: "WICHITA FALLS, TX—Calling it an essential step toward securing the Texas border and protecting his people's way of life, Gov. Rick Perry announced Tuesday the completion of a 1,953-mile wall designed to keep out millions of unwanted Americans." Here's a link.

• In our continuing effort to bolster the work of your high school civics teacher, we bring you the latest candidate making a pitch in Austin. This one's from Houston Mayor and U.S. Senate hopeful Bill White, who spoke to 75-100 Democrats at Austin's Scholz Garten. His stump speech lasted about 20 minutes.

McLeroy Moves Up

The Senate Nominations committee voted 4-2 to let the full Senate decide whether Republican Don McLeroy should chair the State Board of Education. That panel had withheld its approval after his confirmation hearing.

Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, said he put the governor's nomination of McLeroy to a vote after "the situation changed." Jackson, who chairs the Nominations panel, wouldn't say just what changed, and said he has "no idea" whether McLeroy will have to votes to win confirmation when his name is put to a vote, probably next week.

McLeroy has been chairman of the board for almost two years — Gov. Rick Perry installed him in that post shortly after the 2007 session of the Lege. If he's voted down by the full Senate — or if they don't vote at all before ending the session in a couple of weeks — Perry will have to choose a new chair from among the other members of the SBOE. In committee, four Republicans out-voted two Democrats (with one Republican absent).

Political People and Their Moves

Rep. Edmund Kuempel, R-Seguin, is ready to roll even if his doctors aren't. Kuempel, who had a heart attack in a Capitol elevator last week, appears to be on his way to a full recovery, according to Rep. Charlie Geren, who's been reporting his progress to the House. He's not likely to come back to work during the session, but all is well.

Three Senate Democrats stepped out of their government shoes for a minute to endorse Gene Locke, who's running for mayor of Houston. He'll do it with Rodney Ellis, Mario Gallegos, and John Whitmire in his corner.

Robert Jones, political director of Annie's List, made the Rising Stars list at Politics Magazine.

Sentenced: Mauricio Celis, the Corpus businessman who's illegal posing as a lawyer helped derail Michael Watts' political aspirations. Celis will be on probation for ten years and has to pay restitution estimated at more than $1 million.

Gov. Rick Perry's appointment office has been busy, naming:

• Todd Novosad of Austin, Catherine Benavidez of Carrollton, and Angela Sieffert of Dallas to the Texas Board of Occupational Therapy Examiners. Novosad is a rehabilitation specialist at Hallmark Rehabilitation. Benavidez is president of Injury Management Organizations. Sieffert is an occupational therapy assistant at Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation.

• Nils Mauritz, managing partner of Mauritz & Mauritz Cattle Co. of Ganado, to the Lavaca-Navidad River Authority's board. He also reappointed John Cotten Jr. of Ganado and Ronald Kubecka of Palacios to that board.

• Lester Ferguson, a retired Air Force colonel from Kerrville, and Lucy Wilke, an assistant district attorney there, to the board of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority. Perry also reappointed Stan Kubenka of Kerrville to that board.

• Edward Zwanziger, a physician assistant from Eustace, to the Texas Physician Assistant board of directors. The Guv also reappointed Ron Bryce of Red Oak to that board.

• Joanne Justice of Arlington, Jaime Blevins Hensley of Lufkin, and Dona Scurry of El Paso to the Texas Real Estate Commission. Justice and Hensley are Realtors; Scurry is a CPA.

Quotes of the Week

Dave Carney, campaign manager for Rick Perry, telling The Dallas Morning News that new voters are welcome in the GOP: "But that doesn't mean you take your principles and throw them out the door and become a whorehouse and let anybody in who wants to come in, regardless."

Former Land Commissioner Garry Mauro, a Democrat, talking about Gov. Rick Perry in the Los Angeles Times: "The simple thing to say is this guy is a right-wing nut who shouldn't be taken seriously. Anybody who's doing that is making a horrible mistake."

Political analyst Charlie Cook, quoted by The Dallas Morning News: "Kay Bailey Hutchison is a very rational, normal, well-adjusted person. I'm just not sure any degree of moderation substantively or stylistically is necessarily a good thing in a Republican primary in Texas."

Houston Mayor and U.S. Senate candidate Bill White, joking about suspending his last campaign to deal with hurricanes and how it underscored his legendary speaking prowess: "When I don't go around campaigning, people vote for me."

Lucy Dalglish with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, talking to the Austin American-Statesman about a court ruling involving conversations between members of the Alpine City Council: "The 5th Circuit said public officials' rights to meet secretly may trump your right to know what they are up to. I just think this decision is cracked and stupid and offensive. We don't allow secret meetings in this country except under very special circumstances."

Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, quoted in the Houston Chronicle on her vote against a windstorm insurance bill being fast-tracked on deadline: "I'm not trying to slow the process down, but don't I have a right to read this stuff?"

Former First Lady Laura Bush, quoted by The Dallas Morning News telling SMU graduates that she had to go back and look up the name of the person who spoke at her own graduation ceremony: "You can imagine my surprise when I discovered it was George Bush."

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Texas Weekly: Volume 26, Issue 20, 25 May 2009. Ross Ramsey, Editor. Copyright 2009 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.

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.