No More For Schools

The Texas House of Representatives had one chance to add a little bit more money into public education: And, because of the GOP's seemingly eternal and blind adherence to preserving the Rainy Day Fund, yesterday they turned their back on that decision.

On Thursday the House agreed to the Senate's request for conference committees on Senate Bill 1 (the fiscal matters bills) and SB 2 (the enabling legislation that releases the actual school funds.) The House, which has been finding interesting ways to not fix the public school finance system it broke in 2006, had added one notable amendment to SB 2. Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, got bipartisan support to take any excess over the predicted $6.5 billion in the Rainy Day Fund and put it into schools (up to $2.2 billion to cover increased enrollment.)

So Thursday's task was picking conferees and setting the instructions for both bills. SB1 got (surprise, surprise) two abortion amendments noted as priority measures: Amendment 100 by Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center (prohibiting hospitals from using tax dollars for abortions or abortion referrals) and Weatherford Republican Rep. Phil King's amendment 141 (auditing the legal costs for judicial by-passes.)

But the bad news for schools was in what happened in SB2. King asked for the House to exclude the Howard amendment. He had tried to get these struck out at third reading, but failed (curse those pesky rules) so now he just asked the House to throw the Howard language out now.

"You want us to vote not to make our schools a top priority?" Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, calmly asked King. The Republican argued that he was just making sure that the 83rd Legislature would not have its hands tied on the Rainy Day Fund when it comes back in 2013, but that was not winning over Howard. "I don't know how you can get more of a compromise," she told her fellow lawmakers. "The first time this amendment came up, there was no objection," she said, noting that it only became an issue when "narrow special interest groups came to legislators and said, 'Oh, no, no, no, you're reneging on a pledge.'"

Her plea fell on deaf ears: The amended instructions, minus the Howard amendment, passed 87-59.