House Bill 5, the on-again, off-again effort by Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, to bribe school districts into supporting the abolition of the “Robin Hood” school-finance system, came and went in a flash on the House floor last Thursday. After a brief debate, HB 5 was momentarily derailed by one of its own authors, Rep. Ron Wilson, D-Houston, who raised a point of order that was quickly sustained by Speaker Tom Craddick. Clearly the maneuver was anticipated, and the most likely explanation is that Wilson had spotted the problem and wanted to send the bill directly back to committee rather than have the opposition do so after a protracted debate. Indeed, the bill boomeranged to the House calendar Monday and passed Tuesday night.
In its current condition, however, HB 5 is something of an anticlimax; to ramrod the House’s budget (HB 1), the GOP leadership had to promise wavering Republican members that Robin Hood would persist at least until the Lege comes up with something to replace it. (Also on Tuesday, Craddick announced a 21-member task force to study overhauling the state’s school-finance system.) Originally, HB 5 declared Robin Hood dead by 2005, no matter what. Grusendorf’s current model sweetens the transition by adding $1.2 billion ($300 per student) to the state school budget over the biennium. The only problem is that nobody has $1.2 billion to spare, other than through vague “revenue enhancements” and speculative savings from health and human services “streamlining.”
During the brief House discussion of HB 5, several members raised this question with Grusendorf, calling attention to that morning’s news leak that Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn had decided the House budget doesn’t balance. Grusendorf could do little more than squirm and offer reassurances. He was finally bailed out, clumsily, by Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas, who announced that his deskmate on the House floor, Appropriations Chair Talmadge Heflin, R-Houston, had just assured him that Strayhorn’s estimate had been “anticipated” and the House shouldn’t worry — the money would be there as promised. Luckily, Wilson brought the curtain down a moment later, before Grusendorf (or Heflin) had to pull the rabbit out of the empty hat.
This article appears in May 2 • 2003.
