|
March 22, 2019 3:44 PM
In school finance debates, impacts to individual districts often create winners and losers under major system shifts. Chairman Huberty has urged members to trust the process and principles behind the bill
Texas House leaders are decidedly tight-lipped
on the actual impact their school finance plan will make on individual school
budgets, a departure from past sessions. The House has a school finance bill
with many moving parts, the most complicated school finance bill since the
passage of then-Rep. Scott Hochberg’s
HB
3646 in 2009.
At this point in the passage of a school finance bill,
the first runs – a spreadsheet of the impact of the bill on school district
budgets – would be circulating among House members. Both the Texas
Education Agency and the Legislative Budget Board produce
these runs, although it will be the work of the LBB that will ultimately guides
final numbers.
To be clear, school finance runs currently do exist. The
point of contention is over who has seen them.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 22, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 22, 2019 2:41 PM
Appointments, key hires, and staffing up for 2020
Folks
are working through the weekend on budget amendments, reading bills that are
set for hearings, and Sen. Bob Hall’s
being accused of carrying a RINO version of the red light
camera ban.
This
session just keeps getting better.
Meantime,
folks are already gearing up for reelection efforts since there’s absolutely no
separation between campaigns and governance anymore. There are also more
appointments to tell you about as well as key hires at big firms.
Share
your career news anytime at ksbraddock@gmail.com
and put POTM in the subject line. Nothing is too big or too small and yes, you
can share the news of others. That’s why it’s called a gossip rag. Thank you.
Here’s
this week’s edition of People on the Move:
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 22, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 21, 2019 4:29 PM
TMA argues the root of the problem is “the networks that the insurance companies have set up which are inadequate”
Doctors
and patients squared off before the Texas Senate Business and Commerce Committee
on Thursday over the issue of "surprise billing."
The
Texas
Association of Health Plans supports the bill by Chairman Kelly Hancock
but the group stayed in the background during the hearing as Hancock confronted
the Texas
Medical Association in an often testy exchange.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Andrew Turner
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 21, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 21, 2019 4:25 PM
As Hall's bill stalls out in the Senate after compromise language was offered, Rep. Stickland's bill with supermajority support starts moving
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 21, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 20, 2019 4:22 PM
“One thing that people say is ‘I’m not here to make friends I’m here to get stuff done.’ Well, if you want to get stuff done you better make friends”
There’s
a whole new crop of freshmen members of the Texas House this session,
including a number of younger leaders and an increase
in the number of Democrats who made incursions into Republican territory last November.
Erin Zwiener D-Driftwood is one the roughly
30 new members of the House and one of the 12 Democrats that flipped formerly
Republican seats. In an interview with Quorum Report, the freshman and new
mother told us about the realities of the new job from her perspective.
“We,
like any other freshman office, have to take this one day at a time,” she said.
“There are a lot of unknowns for us freshmen.”
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Andrew Turner
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 20, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 20, 2019 4:20 PM
Meeting will be "an overview of policies and procedures as they relate to inappropriate workplace conduct."
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 20, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 20, 2019 4:18 PM
Per the fiscal note, if the bill was effective immediately, the state’s trauma center fund, which the cameras benefit, would lose $28 million. If implemented in September, the fund would lose $21 million
Edgewood
Republican Senator Bob Hall’s ban on
real light cameras hit a bump in the road in Senate Transportation Committee
today after he rolled out substitute language allowing cities to honor current
contracts.
That
change drew opposition from some of those who had been the bill’s most ardent
supporters.
Red
light cameras, Hall said, deny due process and are not proven to improve public
safety. One of his issues is what he says is an unconstitutional
appeals process automatically painting the driver as guilty.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By James Russell
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 20, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 20, 2019 4:00 PM
Lt. Gov. Patrick says SBs 6, 7, and 8, "are key to our rebuilding effort following Hurricane Harvey and mitigating future flood disasters across the state."
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 20, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 20, 2019 9:18 AM
128,000 donors contributed in the first 24 hours of O'Rourke's bid, his campaign announced this morning
Via
Todd
Gillman at
the DMN:
Beto O'Rourke announced Wednesday that more than 128,000 donors contributed to his
record breaking first day haul of $6.1 million, for an average of $47 per
donation.
The
former three term El Paso congressman jumped into the presidential race last
Thursday and detractors had alleged that high dollar donors rather than a
grassroots outpouring may have padded his tally.
Sen.
Bernie Sanders' brought in $5.9
million during his first 24 hours last month, from 223,047 donors, with an
average of $27.
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 20, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 19, 2019 5:47 PM
Veterans calling HB3 the most significant school finance legislation in nearly 40 years
The House view of the school finance system in House
Bill 3 is a subtle, yet significant shift away from the current
rationale that has pitted poor against rich school districts.
The House school finance bill passed the House
Public Education Committee on a 13-0 vote today, with lawmakers of both
parties lavishing praise on the bill. Rep. Harold
Dutton, D-Houston, lamented the absence of Houston ISD at the
hearing last week, but called HB 3 the most significant school finance
legislation passed in his 18 terms in the House.
That current Robin Hood rationale behind school finance has
been challenged on a number of fronts: School
districts with high-dollar property often have low-wealth schoolchildren. Quirks
in the code would show preference to property-wealthy districts, such as
reducing recapture during disasters but leaving property-poor districts waiting
for the state to dedicate dollars.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 19, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 19, 2019 2:32 PM
Texas Aspires laments the fact merit pay provisions were removed by Texas AFT says it "sends an important signal that educator salaries should not be tied to standardized tests..."
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 19, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 18, 2019 5:14 PM
Chair Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, guided House Appropriations to
approval of substitutes of a House budget bill and the Senate
supplemental budget bill this morning.
The approval process was fairly smooth,
although multiple members of the Texas State Employees Union reminded
the panel about low pay and insufficient pensions for state employees, pensions
even smaller than those currently offered to retired teachers.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 18, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 18, 2019 4:18 PM
Those close to the drafting process say most sections around teacher pay have been struck from HB 3, replaced with a simple pay raise tied to increases in the basic allotment offered in the bill
The most ambitious language around
teacher pay appears to be scrubbed from the substitute of the Texas
House’s school finance bill to be discussed in House Public Education on
Tuesday.
The model for teacher pay
in the original House Bill 3 was an ambitious, but somewhat problematic, model.
But it was, for all intents and purposes,
the preferred model for both lawmakers and teacher groups in the early weeks of
session because of two claims: the bill would not rely on test scores to reward
teacher performance and would not be a “merit pay” bill.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 18, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 18, 2019 4:09 PM
After Appropriations today voted out the budget and supplemental, pre-filing of amendments for HB1 will end at 10am this coming Sunday
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 18, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 16, 2019 12:49 PM
After the bathroom war with business, Senate leadership is content to dismiss major business concerns not only on the paid sick leave bill but oil and gas along with transportation interests were given the brush off over eminent domain
It
is fair to say that in Lt. Gov. Dan
Patrick’s first two sessions as presiding officer of the Texas
Senate, he had a legislative chamber built for speed. This was on full display
in 2017 as the Republican supermajority almost effortlessly passed
“conservative” bill after “conservative” bill, leaving the Texas House with the
leverage – and time – to kill those deemed overreaching.
After
two Republicans lost their races in DFW last year, though, Patrick has
struggled to move even emergency items and only this past week did he unveil
his 30 priority bills of the session. Last session, he started out with a
similar list that all easily won approval in the upper chamber.
This
year the list includes a $5,000 teacher pay raise – the Senate’s centerpiece of
school finance reform which falls short of Patrick’s $10,000 goal. Right-wing
enforcement groups have been calling the expenditure, committing future
Legislatures to those spending levels, irresponsible. The raises represent 44%
of the budget surplus. What happens when there is not a $9 billion surplus?
And just this week, every Republican senator defied the Texas Public Policy Foundation
and Chairman Tim Dunn’s Empower
Texans in passing a supplemental budget that would make a $4.3 billion
withdrawal from the Economic Stabilization Fund.
Let’s
review the State of the Senate.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 16, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 15, 2019 4:55 PM
lobby moves, staffing changes, and more
Bill filing is done and the best caption nominees have been named. Among
them:
Relating to the regulation of raising or keeping six
or fewer chickens by a political subdivision
Relating to the random drug testing of members of the
legislature during a legislative session
Relating to egg grading
Relating to the personal use exemption for domestic
rabbit meat.
Relating to an annual football game between The
University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University
Thanks to former Rep. Corbin Van Arsdale
for always compiling the list. Here’s one I thought he missed: "Relating to a prohibition on the sale
of prophylactics containing nitrosamines.” Turns out that one was included
in the original list but it has to be whittled down to
50 entries. May the funniest caption win, but as Parliamentarian Sharon Carter said during a recent
event, don’t rely too heavily on the caption when trying to revive your dead
bill. The body of the legislation is going to guide decisions on germaneness, Carter
said. Good luck.
Meantime, there are lobby
moves, staffing changes, and more to tell you about. To share your career news –
or move of a friend or adversary – email it to ksbraddock@gmail.com
and use POTM in the subject line.
Thank ya.
Here’s this week’s edition
of People on the Move:
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 15, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 15, 2019 4:07 PM
Unlike the House Freedom Caucus-supported “ban on taxpayer funded lobbyists,” Bettencourt says he is focused on transparency through additional reporting requirements
Sen. Paul
Bettencourt, R-Houston, offered up his kinder, gentler version of “taxpayer-funded
lobbying” legislation this week – increased transparency rather than an
outright ban – during a Senate State Affairs Committee
hearing that also covered lawmaker ethics, human trafficking and an actuarial
fix to the teacher’s pension fund.
Freshman Rep. Mayes
Middleton, R-Wallisville, filed the perennial ban
of “taxpayer-funded lobbyists,” House
Bill 281, that amended a section of code that applied to county representation.
The language is broadened to include all local
jurisdictions, including mobility authorities and transit systems.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 15, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
March 15, 2019 3:29 PM
Committee staff says there were scheduling conflicts for some of the experts that had been lined up to speak at the information session schedule for Monday in the auditorium. It's postponed for now and will be rescheduled ASAP, we are told.
|
|
Top of Page
Copyright March 15, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
