House passes state budget at end of marathon session

March 28-- Mar. 28--After a marathon session, lawmakers in the Texas House on Wednesday night approved a funding plan for state government for the next two years.

The lawmakers had sifted through more than 300 amendments on matters large and small related to House Bill 1, the massive budget bill that carries a price tag of $116.5 billion in state general revenue.

The bill as a whole focuses largely on health and human services and on education, but Wednesday was a chance for lawmakers to add matters dear to them or their constituents.

They approved, for example, $2.5 million to pay for wigs for cancer patients -- contingent on the passage of a separate House bill -- as well as an amendment calling for the state to fund a study to assess vaccination coverage levels at child care facilities.

Many of the amendments mixed politics and policy.

Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, for example, proposed taking $18 million from the state's film marketing program, which provides incentives for movie and TV production in Texas, and diverting it to women's health services, chiefly toward postpartum care.

"I don't believe the movie industry needs the money," Leach said on the House floor.

Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, called the proposal "punitive."

Amendment action

In an interview, Leach said the budget is a "question of priorities."

"When it comes to taxpayer funds, I've got to find the best way to spend them," he said. "I love the movies -- when Matthew McConaughey visited, I waited in line to meet him. There's nothing punitive here."

But Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, said the amendment was set up as a "gotcha vote on Dems."

"If they vote no, it looks like they're not for women's services," Coleman said. "And it makes them look like the care about women's health. They cratered in their vote by women in the suburbs and ex-urbs (in the 2018 midterm elections), so this gives them some cover -- even though they don't care about women's health."

Leach, he said, is a former member of the Texas Freedom Caucus, the conservative group that has led the charge in narrowing abortion rights.

Finally, Coleman said, the Leach amendment was a bit of Austin-bashing, a popular pastime among lawmakers convening at the Capitol.

The Leach amendment passed by a vote of 83-62, with one member present not voting and four people absent.

Another proposal called for diverting $52 million from information technology and program support at the Health and Human Services Commission to the Alternatives to Abortion program, which promotes childbirth and provides support services to pregnant women and adoptive parents.

"Any time we can increase the funding for these women, it's a blessing for everyone involved," said Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth.

His amendment passed 83-64, with one person present not voting and two members absent.

Democrats had their own versions of amendments that forwarded a policy goal -- and could be used as a political cudgel at election time.

Rep. John Bucy, D-Austin, filed an amendment to accept federal Medicaid expansion funding to cover janitors, cooks, child care teachers, and other low-wage Texans who don't get insurance from their jobs.

The amendment failed in a party-line vote, with 66 in favor, 80 against, with two people present not voting and two members absent.

Democrats could try to use that vote against Republicans in the next election in contested districts.

Ultimately, after the House and Senate pass their versions of the budget, selected members will broker compromise on points of contention.

The state budget is the only bill lawmakers are constitutionally required to adopt.

School spending

The House bill differs from its Senate counterpart in some key ways. The House version calls for $9 billion in spending on schools, with about one-third devoted to property tax reduction and two-thirds for Texas classrooms.

Senate proposals include $3.7 billion earmarked for teacher pay -- a $5,000 increase for every full-time teacher and librarian -- and $2.3 billion for property tax relief. The Senate budget proposal will get a hearing Thursday in the Finance Committee.

House members have proposed increasing spending for kindergarten through 12th grade public education by 15.6 percent over the next two years; their Senate counterparts proposed a 10.3 percent increase.

But both proposals hinge on capping property tax increases.

With Texas in recent years cutting education spending -- a decade ago, the state provided up to 48.5 percent of education funding, compared with 38 percent now -- school districts increasingly rely on property tax dollars.

State budget officials say the state needs to spend an additional $2.4 billion on schools just to keep up with enrollment growth.

On Wednesday, Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said his budget bill would get the state's share up to 42 percent.

A full 50 percent "is not achievable, even in the prosperous times we're in," Zerwas said. He said this would be a "transformative investment" that "moves the needle significantly in the right direction."

At the start of the 140-day legislative session, Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (who presides over the Senate) and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, signaled that property tax relief and school finance reform were their biggest priorities.

But how to slow property tax collection -- or cut tax bills altogether -- remains a vexing question. Lawmakers are weighing a slew of measures on this front, from constraining the rate of revenue collection by local taxing districts to dropping property tax levies in exchange for new sales taxes.

Despite lower oil and gas prices cutting into state tax revenue, Comptroller Glenn Hegar in January said lawmakers can appropriate $119.1 billion in discretionary spending in 2020-21, an 8.1 percent increase above the amount of revenue available in the current two-year budget.

The conservative-minded Texas Public Policy Foundation on Wednesday urged lawmakers to vote against the House budget, arguing it "unnecessarily grows government at the expense of taxpayers and Texas' prosperity."

In the end, at midnight, 14 hours after the chamber had been gaveled in, the House passed the bill by a vote of 149-0.

On Wednesday the House also passed a stopgap spending measure to pay for Hurricane Harvey aid and to boost state pensions.

"We were pleased to see that the approved House budget still proposes important, new state funding for public schools," Ann Beeson, the chief executive of the progressive-minded Center for Public Policy Priorities, said.

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