April 14, 2014 1:50 PM

HK: How many special sessions to pass the next budget?

Finding a governing coalition after previous budget maneuvers could be tough

Whether true or not, the endorsement of Dan Patrick by both incumbent Senator Bob Deuell and Texans for Lawsuit Reform have been taken by many in the capitol community as the last word on the viability of a Dewhurst re-election. Given the even longer-shot nature of the Democrats’ winning the Lt. Governor’s race, war-gaming for next session has already begun

The only thing the Legislature must do is pass a budget. Call it armchair speculation, but even more than a year away, it is not unreasonable to speculate that it will take multiple special sessions to hammer out a budget. Senator Patrick’s performance on state budgets has been erratic and while Tea Party interests may dominate a mid-term primary election runoff, they are minor players in the state’s trillion dollar economy and twenty-five million residents.

The state’s budget is perhaps the most daunting task facing any Legislature. It requires good faith negotiation and buy-in from myriad constituencies. The appropriators have to negotiate competing interests – those both on camera and off.

In his freshman session, Patrick angered his colleagues by handing out several pages of proposed cuts he claimed the Finance Committee could have made…as the bill was coming to the floor. The anger was generated not because it threatened passage of a session’s worth of work but because it was seen as an effort to capture the narrative. Civilians outside the Capitol would see the proposed cuts and remain clueless that they were introduced too late to be considered or had already been rejected.

By Harvey Kronberg