Lege Notes
Odds and ends mostly odds from under the pink granite dome
Fri., Aug. 12, 2005
State Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, has been a passionate proponent of shifting regulation of low-level radioactive waste from the Texas Department of Health to the better-equipped Texas Commission on Environmental Quality so much so that he was almost willing to scuttle proposed judicial pay raises by demanding that his regulation bill be attached to the pay-raise legislation in the State Affairs Committee, which he heads. (He has tried this tactic with several other bills previously.) However, his colleagues convinced him to detach rad waste into a stand-alone bill, which was drafted with the TCEQ's help. Every rule was suspended including hearing the newly drafted bill during a recess in the Senate's Tuesday night session to get the bill on the floor and out of the Senate. Andrews County which is near Lubbock but not actually in Duncan's district became a national dumping ground for such waste after the Lege approved it last session. Duncan must now wait on Gov. Rick Perry to add the waste regulation issue to the session's call. K.R.
Arlington Republican Kent Grusendorf's education technology bill, HB 62, made it out of the House with overwhelming support Tuesday, but its future in the Senate looks sketchy. The $700 million bill, which would overhaul the current textbook adoption system and replace it with a grant program for local school districts to buy both textbooks and technology, is in direct conflict with the parameters of Plano Republican Sen. Florence Shapiro's overall education reform bill, SB 8. Until House Speaker Tom Craddick makes a decision on where SB 8 will go, it's unclear exactly what HB 62's future will be. Members of the State Board of Education, which funds the state's textbooks through the Permanent School Fund, are more than a little testy at seeing money shifted away from printed materials, and their role minimized in the textbook adoption process. SBOE Member Pat Hardy of Fort Worth, in an editorial released this week, called Grusendorf's bill "Dollars for Dell" and "Appropriations for Apple." "It's now clear that Grusendorf's only priority in school finance 'reform' is to dedicate hundreds of millions of new dollars to laptops (despite poor evidence from the existing Technology Immersion Pilot Program) and to let superintendents spend textbook funds on hardware (which is a recipe for disaster as the state will no longer guarantee that every student will have the instructional materials they need)," Hardy wrote. "This is just like his HB 4 that failed to pass in the regular session." K.R.
Former Comptroller John Sharp is still mum on his political intentions, but a new Web site, www.draftjohnsharp.com, might help the Democrat decide whether to jump into the governor's race or keep his day job as a tax analyst. The site is an attempt to create a groundswell of support for Sharp to challenge the "flat-out incompetence" of the GOP leadership under Gov. Rick Perry. "They're not getting the job done," it states. "So it's time to throw the bums out and elect someone who will." Democrats aren't the only ones who want to boot Perry out of office. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn is challenging Perry in the 2006 GOP primary. And singer and writer Kinky Friedman is running as an independent. Sharp has twice run unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor, including a narrow loss in 1998 to Perry, who squeaked to victory with a last-minute infusion of GOP cash. Should Sharp decide to mount a gubernatorial campaign, he'll face former U.S. Rep. Chris Bell of Houston in the Democratic primary. Amy Smith
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