Money's Not the Only Thing
Coming soon to a House near you: The first real look at how this bunch votes on tough issues. Full Story
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Spending Theirs, Saving Ours
The Texas Senate approved a $182.2 billion budget that includes over $10 billion in federal stimulus money, avoids across-the-board cuts in state agencies, and leaves the state's $9.1 billion Rainy Day Fund untouched. Full Story
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Cutting the Strings
Texas can get $556 million in federal stimulus money without any permanent changes in its unemployment insurance program, according to an advisory letter from the U.S. Department of Labor. Full Story
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March Madness
Our bracket says Pitt will win the NCAA men's basketball championship. That doesn't mean it'll happen. And if it does happen, we won't be able to claim (honestly, anyway) that we knew it was gonna happen. We'll just have guessed right. [eds. note: After this was written, Pitt lost to Villanova, failed to make the Final Four, ruined our bracket, and painfully proved our point about predicting the future.] Full Story
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Perry: We're Not Gonna Take It
Gov. Rick Perry says the state should turn down $555 million in federal stimulus money tied to unemployment insurance, because the requirements are too strict, prompting some lawmakers to say they'll push to get enough support for the program to go around him. Full Story
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Up Next: The Ides of March
The "county fair" section of the legislative session — the part at the beginning that's taken up with glad-handing and rattlesnake roundup demonstrations and mariachis and pre-schoolers and city and county and association "days" at the Capitol — is coming to a close. Full Story
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Brother, Can You Spare $556 Million?
You're really out in the weeds when you find yourself listening to arguments about reform provisions for unemployment insurance, but that's the first of what might be a series of firefights over the federal stimulus money available to the state. Full Story
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One Decade at a Time
That noise you hear in the Senate and the House isn't just partisan barking — it's the early signal that, in two years, those lawmakers will be drawing political maps and spilling political blood. Full Story
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Now It Starts
The new speaker's first bit of danger is out of the way, with House members on their way home for a long weekend to mull their committee assignments and to consider the difference between what they hoped for and what they got. Full Story
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The Order of Things
The conversation in the halls is mostly about House committee assignments and who'll get what. The underlying political tension is between Democrats who think Speaker Joe Straus should reward them for making up 80 percent of the vote that put him in the corner office, and Republicans who think he needs to consolidate power within his own party in the closely divided chamber to have any chance of hanging on to the controls. Full Story
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Waiting
The House has its rules in place after a long day of warbling and negotiating, and the one that sticks out is the rule that lets the House depose a speaker with only 76 votes — a simple majority. The speaker no longer has the power to ignore privileged motions, including motions to "vacate the chair." And an effort to raise the bar — to require 90 votes, or 100, to unseat a speaker fell short. It's 76: If it were a rear-view mirror on the Speaker's dais, it'd have words on it: "Warning! Hostile representatives in mirror are closer than they appear." Full Story
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Starting to Start
Week three. Speaker race, over. House, kumbayahed. Two-thirds rule, guarded condition. Senate, patching things up. Revenue estimate, ouch. Base budget, tight. President, sworn in, twice. Full Story
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And They're Off!
The House elected a new speaker. The Senate started with a partisan dogfight. The comptroller filed a gloomy forecast on the state's revenue for the next two years. The Republican candidates for governor — that's an election more than a year away — revealed multi-million-dollar bank balances. Once all that had rolled out, lawmakers left for a week. The House will return next week for a day, then do rules the week after that. And the Senate is gone until January 26. Soon enough, it'll seem like they never left. Full Story
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Gloomy, but Still in the Black
You remember when Speaker Tom Craddick said the state was sitting on a $15 billion budget surplus? Full Story
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Senate, Anyone?
Kay Bailey Hutchison's term in the U.S. Senate runs through 2012 and she now says she won't resign earlier than the end of next year if she runs for governor. She has formed an exploratory committee. Full Story
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Nobody Has the Votes Yet (Week 6)
Add two more official candidates for Speaker of the House, calls for the head of House Parliamentarian and former Rep. Terry Keel, a constitutional amendment that would allow future coups in the House, and a "Solve for X" strategy and you'll be up to date on the contest for control of the Legislature's lower chamber. Full Story
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She Does
Kay Bailey Hutchison answered the "Does She or Doesn't She?" question about whether she wants to run for governor, filing the papers required to run a campaign for state office. Full Story
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Nobody Has the Votes Yet (Week 4)
Blame Irving. The combination of a slow count in Dallas County and an impending excuse to back off (that'd be Thanksgiving), there's not much happening at the moment in the race for Speaker of the Texas House. Full Story
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Nobody Has the Votes Yet (Week 3)
The balance has shifted. Full Story
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Nobody Has the Votes Yet (Week 2)
A lobbyist who doesn't want his name in this newsletter or anywhere else offered up a new phrase for this phase of the race for speaker: Legislative Osteoporosis. He's referring to bone loss in the spines of some lawmakers. Full Story