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City mayors extended an olive branch. Witnesses spoke uninterrupted. A House Democrat said he appreciated the “frame and tone” set by a GOP chair.

When the Legislature’s priority property tax reform bill was rolled out by a House committee Wednesday, it was met with a tenor and pace that differed markedly from the more contentious proceedings in the Senate.

Absent the quick tempo and heated exchanges that marked the upper chamber’s committee hearings on the legislation, a panel of state representatives deliberated its bill for nearly 12 hours, taking expert and public comments without proposing amendments. The proceedings were the latest sign of the lower chamber’s approach to the priority property tax package — which the chair of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee said they would “fully understand before we get into the debate and discussion.”

That, he said, “is how we have discussions in the Texas House.”

During the Senate committee’s proceedings, public testimony was largely limited to two minutes — a strategy designed to allow everyone who wished to testify the opportunity to do so, according to the office of state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, chair of the committee.

As the Ways and Means Committee meeting wore on Wednesday, some witnesses complained that homeowners hadn’t been called until well into the evening and that many had departed before their turn came.

But the thorough approach was set early in the day by Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, the committee chair who began proceedings on the reform bill by saying he hoped the 11-member panel would hear comments and “talk about ideas that can make the bill better in either direction.”

After, “the committee can collaborate and can work and try to come up with a bill that is right,” he said. “[We’re] not just trying to get something across the finish line as quick as we can.”

The Senate tax committee passed its version of the property tax reform bill, with amendments, earlier this month. It has not yet been debated by the full upper chamber. As drafted, both versions of the legislation would require that cities, counties and special taxing districts receive voter approval before increasing property tax revenues 2.5 percent more than the previous year. Revenue from new developments would not count toward the 2.5 percent threshold.

Burrows seemed open to other rates Wednesday, but he explained why he filed the bill at 2.5 percent. An election trigger could be tied to a price or wage index — or based on “simple math,” Burrows said.

“If property taxes continue to go up year after year at 8 percent, they will double in nine years,” he said. “At 4 percent, it takes now 17 years to double, and 35 years to quadruple. And at 2.5 percent, it takes 28 years for somebody’s property taxes to double, and 56 years for them to quadruple.”

Currently, voters can petition to have an election if revenue growth surpasses 8 percent, a figure supporters of the legislation say was set during a period of high inflation in the 1980s.

The reforms are a big-ticket item for state leaders. Though they are unlikely to reduce individual tax bills — a concern for residents who say their incomes have not kept pace with rising property values — they could tamp down the rate of a jurisdiction’s property tax revenue growth.

The legislation also proposes a battery of modifications to how properties are appraised, with an aim of making the process more transparent and less subjective.

Still, as Burrows noted Wednesday, the 2.5 percent election trigger has “captured most of the headlines,” and several witnesses were asked Wednesday to help identify a more palatable number.

“Do you think 8 percent is where it ought to be, or do you think it should be lower?” Burrows asked Amarillo Mayor Ginger Nelson.

“I think we’re engaging in that conversation with you guys,” she responded, listing a number of factors she thought should be taken into account.

Two dozen big-city mayors proposed using a formula to tailor the trigger to each jurisdiction, in a letter to the committee chair dated Feb. 26. Six mayors testified on behalf of the group, stressing they were remarking “on” the bill — a neutral position — not against it.

Bettencourt noted a new attitude coming from mayors Thursday.

“The Mayors came in with solutions this time because they just said NO last time,” he said. “That’s progress.”

Despite the generally placid tone Wednesday, the hearing exposed some of the party-line fissures that have animated the property tax reform effort so far. Mayors were questioned by GOP lawmakers about why having an election trigger would force them to cut their budgets. Municipal leaders said population growth and unfunded mandates were tying their hands. And many homeowners, who supported a trigger at 2.5 percent, spoke of their difficulty paying rising tax bills on top of other expenses.

Near 11 p.m., the Speaker of the House, Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, walked through the hearing room to greet lawmakers and watch the proceedings.

In 2017, property tax proposals left the House and Senate at an impasse during both the regular and special sessions. The lower chamber proposed that an election be triggered at 6 percent revenue growth, while the upper chamber pushed for 4 percent.

In a move Bettencourt has jokingly called a “compromise,” Gov. Greg Abbott pitched a 2.5 percent rate in advance of the 2019 session. A poll from Quinnipiac University, released this week, found voters largely supported the idea of requiring local governments to get voter approval before “increasing property taxes” more than 2.5 percent.

Still, lawmakers’ public support for the 2.5 percent threshold has appeared to wane. Republicans have cast the figure as a starting point. Prominent Democrats on the committee — state Reps. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, and Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin — have said the figure is a non-starter.

“For the number now to shift downward by a point and a half to 2.5,” Martinez Fischer said, “my natural reaction and response to that is, ‘Well, my 6 becomes 7.5.’”

And a major component of the reform package has yet to be unveiled. The bulk of property taxes statewide are levied by school districts, with state dollars flowing in after local revenue has been accounted for. The property tax reform proposal has inserted placeholder language for schools, as lawmakers’ wait on sprawling public education bills to be filed.

Martinez Fischer, who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, said of the lower chamber’s approach: “we don’t care about getting it done first; we care about getting it done right.”

“Everybody seems to want to live this policy through the lens of 2017,” he said. “I take the mayors at their word that they’re going to work hard, they’re going to come up with a collective solution. I take the chairman at his word that he wants our input and is hoping to make this bill better.”

Author: SHANNON NAJMABADI – The Texas Tribune

On Wednesday, January 23rd, Representative Mary González and Representative Joe Moody received their assignments for the  86th Legislative Session.

Moody was appointed speaker pro tempore, the number two job in the Texas House of Representatives; González has been appointed Vice Chair of the Local & Consent Calendars Committee and to the House Committee on Public Education.

“School finance is, without a doubt, the biggest challenge facing our state,” Representative González said. “With my appointments to both the Public Education and Appropriations Committees, I look forward to driving the discussion of equitably funding our schools, and making sure that all kids, regardless of income, ability, race, or geographic location, receive a high quality education.”

The House Committee on Appropriations presides over and creates the state’s budget for each biennium, and addresses any issues or legislation relating to the allocation of funds, while the House Committee on Local & Consent Calendars supervises the placement of local legislation onto a local and consent calendar, one of the schedules for representatives to discuss bills.

“I’m humbled by Speaker Bonnen’s confidence in me,” said Moody. “He’s left big shoes to fill, but I’m excited for the opportunity to serve El Paso and Texas itself in this new role. My number one priority will be facilitating a productive session built on respectful, bipartisan relationships and a shared commitment to the people of Texas; I know that, working together, we can do amazing work for the communities we serve.”

The speaker pro tempore assumes the duties of speaker in the speaker’s absence and assists in the administration of the House at the speaker’s direction. Traditionally, that includes the duty of presiding over consideration of “local and consent” bills–those thought to be uncontroversial or that have an impact on specific areas of Texas rather than the whole state.

Moody will also serve on an array of committees this session, including the Committee on Calendars (as vice chair), the Committee on Business and Industry, the Committee on Redistricting, and the Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence.

González retains her position on the powerful House Committee on Appropriations.

Leaders of the Texas Senate are proposing giving schools $3.7 billion to provide $5,000 pay raises to all full-time classroom teachers — on the heels of a House budget proposal that includes $7 billion more for public education.

Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, filed Senate Bill 3 Tuesday morning, which would mandate that schools use the billions in additional funding specifically for teacher pay raises. Speaking at his inauguration Tuesday morning, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, lauded the proposal as one of his main priorities this legislative session and said the funding would be permanent.

Bills with low numbers in either chamber are reserved for those leaders’ top priorities. Patrick, a Republican, hinted at this proposal last week during a speech at a Texas Realtors event. “I want to give an across the board— I talked about in my campaign—a $10,000 raise on average over time. I think we can make a big step forward this year in doing that,” he said.”We have to lift the boat for all teachers up.”

Patrick’s first attempt at raising teacher pay during the 2017 special session was unsuccessful and unpopular with many teachers, since it included no additional state funding. It would have required school districts to “reprioritize” existing funding to give teachers small bonuses up to $1,000. At the time, he called on districts to be “be better about how they spend the money.”

Nelson’s proposal appears to build a new formula into the school finance system that would distribute state funding to schools based on the number of full-time classroom teachers they employ, and require they use that money for raises over the previous year.

Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen, both Republicans, have also been vocal about the importance of keeping teachers in classrooms, mainly through merit pay programs that would provide stipends to the most effective teachers.

“This session, as the lieutenant governor has already taken a step to do, we must act to pay our best teachers more. We must reward teachers and school districts that achieve results,” Abbott said at Tuesday’s inauguration.

Author: ALIYYA SWABY – The Texas Tribune

Hey, Texas legislators, how about setting an example once in a while?

It could be something simple, like getting rid of — or perhaps, at least, editing — that historically false Confederate war marker in the extension to the Texas Capitol. It might’ve been easier to do it 24 years ago, when the extension opened and the plaque in question was moved to its new location. But there’s always time to correct a mistake.

Or something else that’s well-identified but slippery and harder to achieve, like significant reform to the ethics laws for state officeholders — reforms that have been on the emergency-items-not-addressed lists for Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature for four years now. Self-regulation is always hard, especially when it gets tangled up with the kind of score-settling that starts in political campaigns and takes hold when the winners take office.

Or maybe, legislators could set their sights on one of the oldest and least acknowledged issues in this and many other governments (not to mention the movie and media industries, to name two) — that of sexual predators with official titles preying on staffers, lobbyists and, once in a while, each other.

That cultural cancer — the subject of a cringeworthy story by The Texas Tribune’s Alexa Ura, Morgan Smith, Jolie McCullough and Edgar Walters — is only partly about the sexual harassment that plagues the Legislature and the people around it; it’s also about the failure of the system to give the victims meaningful help or recourse.

Author:  ROSS RAMSEY – The Texas Tribune

Suppose you were the most conservative member of the Texas House — or the most liberal.

You are in real danger of being ignored when it comes to picking the next speaker of the House — the man (probably) or woman (it would be a first) who will replace Joe Straus, R-San Antonio.

Republicans have a strong majority right now, with 95 of the House’s 150 seats. They’re likely to hold a substantial majority next year, given the conservative leanings of Texas voters and the biases built into the political maps from which House members are elected.

And they’re talking about cutting the Democrats out of the election for the next speaker — not a new idea, or an enforceable one, but one that would potentially move the already conservative leadership of the Texas House to the right.

That phrase — “already conservative” — is at the center of the debate. This is the House, after all, that stopped some of the legislation sent over by the decidedly conservative Senate, giving some evidence to those who think the House isn’t conservative enough. It’s also the House that passed one of the most stringent immigration laws in the country — the so-called “show us your papers” bill that would allow police to check the immigration status of anyone they pull over for traffic or other stops. That’s the evidence for those who think the House, while not as far to the right as the Senate, is well to the right of its predecessors.

Now that House, however you’d like to classify it, is deciding what it wants to be after the 2018 elections. Even when the House and Senate are politically in tune, they are institutionally allergic to one another.

Even so, some of the House’s most conservative members would like to move in the Senate’s direction, politically speaking. They think Straus is insufficiently conservative and contend that his support from Democrats in the House is part of the problem.

The Democrats, of course, would love to have a Democrat in the top job or — short of that — the least conservative Republican they can find.

That most conservative member of the House would like to get a speaker from the most conservative part of the membership; one way to get that going is to get the Republicans in the House to agree on a candidate and then to elect that person even if every single Democrat objects.

That most liberal member of the House would rather elect a speaker with all of the Democrats and just enough Republicans to get the required 76 votes; in the current House, that would be 55 Democrats and 21 Republicans.

The House’s Republican Caucus will meet Dec. 1 to talk about the next speaker election and to hear from members hoping the caucus will stick together and vote as a bloc. In a state with at least two oppositional factions within its Republican Party, that’s no easy thing. The conservatives don’t want a moderate; the moderates might have a better chance at electing one of their own by siding with Democrats.

The Democrats are hoping the Republicans will remain split and that the next speaker will have to draw Democratic support.

A GOP working group found that party caucuses in 39 other states choose speaker candidates and vote as blocs. In many of those, as in Texas, it’s up to the full House to finally decide who presides. And here’s the thing: Texas doesn’t have a strong party structure in its Legislature, where majority and minority leaders have real power and where committee chairmanships all go to the majority.

As a practical matter, that leaves state representatives free to vote for the speaker that’s best for them — whether that suits their parties or not. If the caucuses had control over committees or rules, they’d be in a position to enforce caucus preferences for speaker — requiring each of their members to vote with the bloc or else. They don’t.

Still, they’re set to talk about it. Their proposal calls for a “secure vote” in a December meeting of the caucus preceding the January 2019 legislative session. It doesn’t include a recommendation as to whether that would be a secret or an open ballot. And there’s no provision to keep dissenters on board if they don’t like the candidate chosen by their fellow Republicans.

The process, at this point, is more important than the result. Members are testing each other, slowly figuring out who will stand where in a vote 14 months from now that will set the course for House leadership for several sessions to come. Whether the caucus votes together is less important than the direction they take: Right, left or straight ahead.

Read related Tribune coverage:

• In an interview with The Texas Tribune, House Speaker Joe Straus discusses his surprise announcement that he won’t seek re-election to the Texas Legislature. [Full story]
• House Speaker Joe Straus has said he will resign at the end of his term, prompting a scramble for control of the lower chamber. Here’s who is running to replace Straus as speaker and those who have expressed interest in running. [Full story]
• State ethics laws grant elected officials wide latitude on how they use their political contributions while in office — meaning there’s a lot outgoing House Speaker Joe Straus could do with his $10 million campaign war chest. [Full story]

Author:  ROSS RAMSEY – The Texas Tribune

Parts of the Texas House map must be redrawn ahead of the 2018 elections because lawmakers intentionally discriminated against minorities in crafting several legislative districts, federal judges ruled on Thursday.

A three-judge panel in San Antonio unanimously ruled that Texas must address violations that could affect the configuration of House districts in four counties, where lawmakers diluted the strength of voters of color.  In some cases, the court found mapdrawers intentionally undercut minority voting power “to ensure Anglo control” of legislative districts. 

These are the nine districts the court flagged:

Adjusting those boundaries could have a ripple effect on other races.

The 83-page decision was the latest twist in a six-year-legal battle. The judges had already ruled that the Texas Legislature intentionally sought to weaken the strength of Latino and black voters while drawing the House map in 2011. 

But the 2011 map never actually took effect because the court drew temporary maps ahead of the 2012 elections. State lawmakers formally adopted the map in 2013 with few changes. Texas has used that map for the past three election cycles.

In adopting the 2013 map, the court ruled on Thursday that lawmakers “purposefully maintained the intentional discrimination” found in the previous map.

The ruling came the week after the same court invalidated two Texas congressional districts — CD 27, represented by Republican Blake Farenthold of Corpus Christi, and CD 35, represented by Democrat Lloyd Doggett of Austin — and ruled that intentional discrimination against voters of color required those districts to be redrawn.

In both the congressional and state House rulings, the court ordered Attorney General Ken Paxton to signal whether the Legislature would take up redistricting to fix violations in the maps.

But so far, state leaders have signaled they have no appetite to call lawmakers back to Austin over mapmaking. Instead, Texas is looking to the U.S. Supreme Court to keep its political boundaries intact.

“The judges held that maps they themselves adopted violate the law,” Paxton said in a Thursday statement. “Needless to say, we will appeal.”

Meanwhile, the state and the parties that sued over the congressional districts are scheduled to return to court on Sept. 5 to begin redrawing the congressional map. In its Thursday ruling, the court indicated they should be prepared to also meet on Sept. 6 to consider changes to the state House map.

“Today’s ruling once again found that Texas racially gerrymandered its voting districts and used Latino voters as pawns in doing so,” said Nina Perales, vice president of litigation for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who is representing plaintiffs in the case. “With the 2018 election cycle fast approaching, it’s time for Texas to stop discriminating against Latino voters and agree to a remedy that will provide equal opportunity to all.”

Thursday’s ruling was largely a win for MALDEF and other minority rights groups that sued the state, and it marks Paxton’s fourth voting rights loss in nine days. That includes the Congressional map ruling, a ruling that tossed out the state’s new voter identification law and another ruling that a state restriction on language interpreters at the polls violates the Voting Rights Act.

An open question is whether judges will approve new boundaries without delaying the March 2018 primaries. A delay could further shake up some races, with echoes of 2012, when Ted Cruz scored an upset victory, thanks in part to primaries delayed by legal wrangling.

Local elections administrators say they need clarity by October to meet deadlines for sending out voter registration cards, and December is the filing deadline for candidates.

Read related Tribune coverage:

• A barrage of court rulings has forced Texas leaders to confront whether they strayed too far in enacting voting laws found to have disproportionately burdened minorities. [Full story]
• Federal judges have invalidated two of Texas’ 36 congressional districts, setting up a scramble to redraw them ahead of the 2018 elections. [Full story]
• The outcome of a voting rights fight over Pasadena Hispanics’ right to choose their city council members could reverberate beyond the city limits of this Houston suburb. [Full story]

Author:  ALEXA URA AND JIM MALEWITZ – The Texas Tribune

Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday put blame on the House — particularly Speaker Joe Straus — for the shortcomings of the special session and left the door open to calling another one.

“I’m disappointed that all 20 items that I put on the agenda did not receive the up-or-down vote that I wanted but more importantly that the constituents of these members deserved,” Abbott said in a KTRH radio interview. “They had plenty of time to consider all of these items, and the voters of the state of Texas deserved to know where their legislators stood on these issues.”

The comments came the morning after lawmakers closed out the special session without taking action on Abbott’s No. 1 issue, property tax reform. Abbott ended up seeing legislation get sent to his desk that addressed half his agenda. 

As the Senate prepared to adjourn Tuesday night, some senators said they wanted Abbott to call them back for another special session on property taxes. Asked about that possibility Wednesday, the governor said “all options are always on the table.”

“There is a deep divide between the House and Senate on these important issues,” Abbott said in the interview. “So I’m going to be making decisions later on about whether we call another special session, but in the meantime, what we must do is we need to all work to get more support for these priorities and to eliminate or try to dissolve the difference between the House and the Senate on these issues so we can get at a minimum an up-or-down vote on these issues or to pass it.”

In the interview, Abbott contrasted the House with the Senate, which moved quickly to pass all but two items on his agenda. The lower chamber started the special session by “dilly-dallying,” Abbott said, and focused on issues that had “nothing to do whatsoever” with his call. 

Asked if he assigned blame to Straus, a San Antonio Republican, Abbott replied, “Well, of course.”

Straus was very open in his opposition to at least one item on Abbott’s call: a “bathroom bill” that would regulate which restrooms transgender Texans can use. Its failure during the regular session was one of the reasons Abbott called an overtime round. Just as during the regular session, the House never took a vote on a “bathroom bill” during the special session.

“The speaker made very clear that he opposed this bill and he would never allow a vote to be taken on it,” Abbott said. “He told me that in the regular session. And he told me during the regular session that if this came up during the special session, he would not allow a vote on it, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that he’s going to change his mind on it, and that’s why elections matter.”

A Straus spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read related Tribune coverage:

• The Texas Legislature closed out the special session Tuesday night amid a stalemate on property tax reform, leaving unfinished Gov. Greg Abbott’s top priority. [Full story]

ibility Wednesday, the governor said “all options are always on the table.”

Author:  PATRICK SVITEK – The Texas Tribune

The Texas Legislature closed out the special session Tuesday night amid a stalemate on property tax reform, leaving unfinished Gov. Greg Abbott‘s top priority.

Hours earlier, the House abruptly adjourned sine die – the formal designation meaning the end of a session – after advancing a school finance compromise to Abbott’s desk but declining to further negotiate on a key property tax proposal. When the Senate returned later in the night, it rejected the only remaining option to get the bill across the finish line, which was to accept the House’s version.

“We are not going to accept the take-it-or-leave it proposal from the House, and we are going to fight another day,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, the Houston Republican who had authored the property tax bill. “I hope the governor calls us back as soon as possible.”

It was a disappointing end for Abbott’s No. 1 issue, but the governor appeared pleased with the results of the special session. There was no immediate indication of whether he was open to calling another special session to keep trying on property tax reform.

“Our office believes this special session has produced a far better Texas than before,” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said in a statement.

Abbott called lawmakers back for for the special session on July 18. Special sessions can last for up to 30 days, which gave both chambers until Wednesday to work.

Abbott ended up getting half his ambitious 20-item agenda to the finish line. The list of achievements included the must-pass “sunset” bills that will keep some state agencies from closing as well as proposals to crack down on mail-in ballot fraud, extend the life of maternal mortality task force, reform the municipal annexation process, limit local ordinance regulating trees and impose new restrictions on abortion.

At a news conference after the Senate adjourned, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also said he was proud of the Legislature’s accomplishments during the special session.

But Patrick’s tone quickly darkened when he turned to what was left undone.

He placed the blame for almost all of Abbott’s failed special session priorities on Speaker of the House Joe Straus.

“Thank goodness Travis didn’t have the speaker at the Alamo,” Patrick said. “He would’ve been the first one over the wall.”

Patrick said the San Antonio Republican had treated the governor’s agenda “like horse manure,” blocking votes on measures like the “bathroom bill,” private school vouchers and defunding Planned Parenthood.

“We missed some major opportunities, but what I’m most upset about is the House quit tonight,” he said. “With 27 hours to go, they walked off the job.”

Straus came out with a statement of his own on Tuesday night, saying, “I’m proud of our House Members who worked diligently i the special session, passing legislation that was in the best interest of all Texans. The House was thoughtful, respectful and decisive in its solution-oriented approach.”

The House’s abrupt adjournment came after days of difficult negotiations with the Senate on school finance and property tax bills.

House Ways and Means Chairman Dennis Bonnen had been expected to appoint members to a conference committee Tuesday so the two chambers could reconcile their versions of the bill.

But instead, shortly before the surprise motion to sine die, the Angleton Republican made an announcement.

“I have been working with members of the Senate for several days on SB 1, we have made our efforts, so I don’t want there to be in any way a suggestion that we have not, will not, would not work with the Senate on such an important issue,” he said.

Then he said he had not appointed a conference committee because he was “trying to keep the bill alive.”

“If we appointed conferees now, it would kill the bill because there is not enough time,” he said, explaining that under House rules, there would not be enough time left in the session to issue a conference committee report and have the chamber vote on it.

Bonnen’s announcement came after a vote on a school finance measure in which House members expressed deep disappointment —and  anger — that the bill they had sent to the Senate had come back largely stripped provisions the chamber had fought to keep, including reducing $1.8 billion in funding for schools to only $352 million.

“I’d tell the Senate to take back this crap and fix it,” said state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, adding that she did not like “being bullied.” The House ultimately approved the changes to the bill, sending it to the governor’s desk.

While House lawmakers didn’t get their way with school finance, by adjourning Tuesday night, they forced the Senate to either accept their version of the property tax bill or let it die.  A key point of contention between the chambers: whether the the threshold requiring voter approval of property tax increases should be at the 6 percent preferred by the House or the 4 percent preferred by the Senate.

Some conservatives, including Patrick, have claimed an automatic election trigger would drive down property taxes. But such elections would only happen when taxes rise.

Bonnen and other House members repeatedly said the automatic elections would not drive down taxes. They also said transparency provisions that existed in at least two bills sitting in the upper chamber Tuesday would have made it more clear to homeowners which local government entities were behind rising tax bills.

And while the Senate focused on what increase should require voter approval, the House debated and passed far more bills during the special. That included legislation that would have lowered property tax payments for some Texans, including the elderly, disabled and military members.

So far at least two other Senate Republicans, Don Huffines of Dallas and Brandon Creighton of Conroe, have joined Bettencourt in calling for a second special session on property taxes. Patrick, at the post-adjournment news conference, said he would leave it up to the governor to decide.

Both Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Abbott have said property tax reform is their top priority for the session. At the time the House adjourned sine die, Abbott was on track to claim victory on nine of the 20 items he had put on the special session call. As of Tuesday afternoon, he had signed five of them into law, and four more were on their way to his desk.

Patrick forced the special session by holding hostage a bill needed to prevent the shuttering of some state agencies during the regular session in May. At the time, he said he was doing so in order to push the House to move on two pieces of legislation: one that would regulate bathroom use for transgender Texans and another that would set new thresholds for when cities and counties must get voter approval for their property tax rates.

Just as during the regular session, the House never took a vote on a “bathroom bill” during the special session.

Brandon Formby, Emma Platoff and Shannon Najmabadi contributed reporting to this story.

Read related Tribune coverage:

• The Texas House voted Tuesday to swallow a bitter pill and accept a version of a school finance bill that had $1.5 billion less in funding for schools than the lower chamber initially approved. [Full story]
• Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar on Tuesday delivered some welcome news to weary state lawmakers: Their coffers should be richer than he previously anticipated. [Full story]
• House and Senate negotiators will have the next two days remaining in the current special legislative session to hammer out their differences on legislation tackling property taxes, school finance and other items still in play. [Full story]

Author:  MORGAN SMITH AND PATRICK SVITEK

The Texas House tentatively approved two bills Thursday that will keep several state agencies from closing, including the Texas Medical Board. If the chamber gives the measures final approval on Friday, they could be the first bills of the special session sent to Gov. Greg Abbott‘s desk.

The “sunset” bills lawmakers debated Monday were what forced Abbott to call the Legislature back for a summer special session, after the Legislature failed to pass legislation that would keep the agencies open during the regular legislative session that ended in May.

“With this, everything sunset is to the governor,” state Rep. Larry Gonzales, R-Round Rock, said as he laid out the legislation.

More than 150 state agencies are subject to a review by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission every dozen years. The Commission sends its reports to the Legislature. If the Legislature fails to extend the life of an agency — as it did during the regular session with the Texas Medical Board, Texas State Board of Social Worker Examiners, Texas State Board of Examiners of Marriage and Family Therapists, Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists and the Texas State Board of Examiners of Professional Counselors — the agency could be forced to shut down.

Legislators in both the House and Senate agreed during the regular session that the agencies needed to be extended but disagreed on how and when to do so.

Senate Bill 20, which passed the House Thursday on a voice vote after no debate, keeps those five Texas agencies open for another two years. Senate Bill 60, which also quickly cleared the lower chamber by a voice vote, repeals a rider in the budget passed during the regular session that would have prohibited funding for the agencies because lawmakers didn’t pass the related “sunset” bills as expected.

During a special session, the Legislature can only tackle issues related to the items the governor puts on the special session agenda. Along with passing the “sunset” bills, Abbott ultimately added 19 other items to his special session agenda, including property tax legislation, school finance measures and a “bathroom bill” that would restrict the bathrooms some transgender people could use.

The special session began on July 18 and must end by Aug. 16, 30 days after it began.

Alex Samuels contributed to this report.

Read related Tribune coverage:

• Several must-pass sunset bills didn’t make it to the governor’s desk. We’ve compiled an overview of what it could mean for the state if these agencies are not reauthorized. [Full story]
• Here’s where lawmakers are on the 20 issues Gov. Greg Abbott asked them to tackle. [Full story]
• A bipartisan group of lawmakers have called on Gov. Greg Abbott to add ethics reform to the agenda of the special session. The governor’s office attacked the effort as “showboating.” [Full story]

Author:  Kirby Wilson – The Texas Tribune

Think Gov. Greg Abbott is still glad he called them back?

The Texas Legislature’s special “20 for 20” session has predictably bogged down. Abbott put together a to-do list tailored to please Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s Senate and, conveniently, to erase any argument that he’s not as conservative as Patrick.

By that scorecard, the governor is going to be fine. If, however, you are the person in your office pool who bet that all 20 items on Abbott’s agenda would find their way into the law books, your cookie has crumbled.

Go shake hands with whoever predicted trouble.

The House and Senate ended this year’s regular session at odds. If anyone attempted to make peace, they did it privately and they failed. The Senate started the July-August special session at full speed. The House has slow-played. Patrick expressed his frustration last week, saying he hadn’t had a serious parlay with House Speaker Joe Straus in months.

That explains the progress they’re making, why the lieutenant governor’s pet project is stalled and why a number of the governor’s other requests are languishing.

Abbott’s troops are getting snippy, too, barking at would-be House ethics reformers via both mainstream and social media. Ethics isn’t on the special session agenda, but a group of Republicans and Democrats asked the governor to add it. One of them, state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, got Abbott’s goat earlier this year with a proposed ban on pay-for-play appointments, where a governor rewards big political donors with choice spots on state boards and commissions.

An Abbott spokesman called that “showboating.” Straus weighed in, saying the governor ought to add ethics reform to his list. A House committee opened hearings on Larson legislation that had been vetoed by Abbott earlier in the year.

Abbott’s chief campaign adviser, Dave Carney, tweeted that one of the leaders of the ethics effort, Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, was a “hypocrite” for asking for reforms now, after killing a bill this year that would have blocked lawmakers from leaving public service and immediately becoming lobbyists.

It’s not the kind of thing that deserves much attention, except as an illustration of how the Texas legislative machine’s gears are grinding.

Addition is harder than subtraction in legislative arithmetic. That’s why Straus is whomping Patrick on the bathroom bill. It’s easier to kill legislation than to pass it — especially when the public is divided.

Advocates of the “bathroom bill” seemed to have the upper hand during the regular session. Business leaders were slow to rally against it, though they were implored to get involved by Straus and others. The governor didn’t weigh in until late and then backed a version of the bathroom bill that couldn’t clear the opposition in the House. The version that did was too weak for the Senate’s taste.

In the special session, the outside tide appears to have turned. Businesses and other opponents that were quiet earlier in the year have piped up, offering what one called “cover to the weak” in the Legislature. There’s some evidence of that — and of pressure from House leaders — in the number of members who’ve signed on as sponsors of the bathroom bill. In the regular session, 80 of the House’s 150 members were on board. As of last Friday, with a dozen days left in the special session, there were only 49.

That bill hasn’t passed, but neither have bills that probably will pass before the special session is over. Give limits on future local property tax increases — a controversial issue that failed in the regular session — a reasonable chance of success.

What Patrick calls the privacy bill, others call the bathroom bill. An initial slogan for proponents — “no men in women’s bathrooms” — is largely responsible for that. It stuck, like toilet paper to your shoe. It quickly became apparent that this issue splits Republicans in a way that makes it difficult to guide through the Legislature and also useful as a wedge issue in Republican primary elections where social conservatives face social moderates.

Patrick tried to play bully rather than salesman this time, touting his polls on the subject and trying to force the House to do something it was initially reluctant to do. He pushed hard enough to move them from reluctant to resistant to oppositional.

Also, he’s losing: The Senate sped its bill to the House, where it has remained, waiting to be sent to a committee for consideration, for more than a week.

Come election time, each of the three leaders will have a way to brag about the results and rally voters, but only one of them is getting the policy result he really wants. That’s Straus.

That can’t be the result the governor had in mind when he called lawmakers back to Austin.

Read related Tribune coverage:

• Texas legislators would love to lower your property taxes, but none of the proposals they’re considering in the special session would do that. [link]
• Measuring the progress of legislation is easy: This one passed, that one didn’t. Political success in a legislative session is different: A mediocre legislative record can be a victory for all sides. [link]

Author:  ROSS RAMSEY – The Texas Tribune

The Texas House on Friday passed a package of bills that would put $1.8 billion into public schools and help out struggling small, rural school districts.

House members voted 130-12 to approve the lower chamber’s main piece of school finance legislation, House Bill 21, just as they did during the regular session.

The House also voted 131-11 to pass House Bill 30, which would fund the school finance bill by putting $1.8 billion into public schools. Once the House gives the measures final approval, they will head to the Senate.

The funds cited in the legislation would come from deferring a payment to public schools from fiscal year 2019 to 2020, and would allow an increase in the base funding per student from $5,140 to $5,350 statewide.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has called this payment deferral mechanism a “Ponzi scheme.”

House Speaker Joe Straus lauded the House’s vote.

“The Texas House voted Friday to support our schools, relieve the burden on local property taxes and begin fixing our broken education finance system,” he said in a statement. “With House Bill 21, we have a great opportunity to help schools and address the biggest cause of higher property-tax bills.”

The Texas Supreme Court ruled last year that the school finance system was in need of serious reform, but ultimately constitutional. Gov. Greg Abbott added school finance reform to the agenda a few days into the special session in July.

The House Public Education Committee’s chairman, state Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, the author of HB 21, has pushed his bill as a preliminary step to fixing a beleaguered system for allocating money to public schools.

“You cannot have property tax reform unless you have school finance reform. That is just a fact,” he said Friday. “We have the time to get this done. We just have to have the will to get this done.”

HB 21 would increase the base per-student funding the state gives to school districts, in part by increasing funding for students who are dyslexic and bilingual. It would also gradually remove an existing financial penalty for school districts smaller than 300 square miles, which was originally intended to encourage them to consolidate.

When Huberty brought HB 21 back in the special session, he added a controversial provision: funding to help charter schools build new facilities. Leaders of education associations opposed that decision, arguing legislators should look to fund traditional public schools before charter schools. Huberty removed that provision before bringing it to the House for Friday’s vote.

Huberty’s bill would also create a transitional $200 million grant program over the next two years to help school districts that lose money under his bill. Many of those districts rely on a state aid program designed to offset a decade-old tax cut. Additional State Aid for Tax Reduction, or ASATR, is set to expire in September; about 250 small, rural school districts depend on it to keep their doors open.

The House voted 67-61 Friday against approving House Bill 22, a separate measure that would have continued ASATR for two years before letting it expire in September 2019. Some school districts have warned they might have to close without the program, which totaled about $400 million this year.

Meanwhile, the Senate has tucked a few provisions to increase funding for public schools into a larger “private school choice” bill, funded by deferring payments to health care companies that provide Medicaid. The House has repeatedly voted against subsidizing private school tuition with state funding.

Read related Tribune coverage:

• The Texas Senate passed a bill that would provide funding for teacher bonuses and retirement benefits, slashing a controversial provision that would require school districts to increase teacher salaries without additional state money. [link]
• In what seems to be an overture to the House, Gov. Greg Abbott added two new education-related issues to his special session call Thursday: school finance reform and increased benefits for retired teachers. [link]
• Senate Education Chairman Larry Taylor on Wednesday afternoon said that he would not appoint conferees to negotiate with the House on a proposed school finance overhaul. “That deal is dead,” he said. [link]

Author:  ALIYYA SWABY – The Texas Tribune

Last week, amid a flurry of votes on more than a dozen other issues, the Texas Senate passed its main measure addressing Gov. Greg Abbott‘s call to reform the laws related to property taxes.

On Wednesday, members of the House took a far more expansive approach, considering proposals ranging from the narrow (carving out a new exemption for Purple Heart recipients) to the explosive (abolishing school property taxes altogether).

And with only two weeks left in the special session, challenges remain in getting many of these proposals to Abbott’s desk.

Take House Bill 72. There was pushback Wednesday on the legislation, which would let voters decide whether Purple Heart recipients should get property tax exemptions. State Rep. Scott Sanford successfully amended the bill to only allow spouses married to Purple Heart recipients at the time of the soldier’s injury to receive the tax benefits.

“Because we have so many gold diggers looking for Purple Heart recipients?” state Rep. Nicole Collier, D-Fort Worth, cracked.

“We don’t want people to go shopping for tax exemptions,” answered Sanford, R-McKinney.

State Rep. Matt Schaefer had broader concerns with the bill, which he argued “gets into making value judgments about people’s service. And that’s an impossible task for this body.” The Tyler Republican also questioned what the cost would be to the cities who would lose property tax revenues from Purple Heart recipients’ properties. He then tried to amend the bill to extend the exemptions to the children of Purple Heart recipients.

State Rep. Dennis Bonnen, chair of the House Ways & Means Committee which deals with property tax proposals, ultimately withdrew the bill and a related resolution. He said he would bring them back to the floor on Friday.

“We don’t want to make a mockery of this bill,” the Angleton Republican said.

Bonnen fared better with his House Bill 32, which would overhaul several aspects of the property appraisal and notice processes in an attempt to help Texans better understand how property values and tax rates each contribute to their tax bills.

One of the key provisions would require local governments to announce a “no-new-revenue” tax rate each year and compare it to the rate they’re actually proposing. Taxpayers would get that information ahead of time so that they could intervene with local governments before the rates were finally set. The lower chamber gave initial approval to that bill Wednesday.

“This will be the most clear and simple process we’ve ever had in the area of property taxes,” Bonnen said.

That legislation is among dozens of property tax and appraisal bills the lower chamber is still working on as the special session heads into its second half.  On Tuesday, Bonnen’s Ways and Means Committee dramatically reworked Senate Bill 1, the Senate’s leading property tax bill, which could set up another battle between the chambers akin to the one that helped prompt this summer’s special session in the first place.

In the House version, SB 1 would require cities and counties to hold an election if they plan to increase their property tax revenues 6 percent, regardless of whether they are increasing the actual tax rate or just taking advantage of rising property values. The Senate had set that trigger at 4 percent. Patrick portrayed that version of the bill as something that would provide Texans with “dramatic reductions” in their property taxes.

“It will be the strongest tax reform and tax relief bill ever passed out,” Patrick said in an online video this week.

But the legislation is only poised to slow future tax increases by focusing on the amount of revenues local governments bring in from all existing land and buildings in their jurisdictions. Revenues – and individual tax bills – can rise with property values even if actual tax rates stay flat or are lowered.

During the regular session, Patrick said similar legislation would save the average Texas homeowner $20,000, a claim that fell apart under scrutiny.

Bonnen expressed concern that voters will mistakenly expect to see lower property tax bills if any version of SB 1 that becomes law.

“What’s frustrating is that SB1 doesn’t provide relief, it provides protection, and the last thing I want is property tax payers to believe that we are doing something to reduce or lower their tax burden. We’re not,” Bonnen said. “We don’t have the ability to do that, but what we do have is the ability to give it protections and transparency.”

But Bonnen’s Ways and Means Committee could face an impossible battle addressing education funding, which makes up the bulk of property tax bills in Texas. House education leaders have argued the Legislature cannot provide tax relief without addressing school funding. As the state pays a progressively smaller percentage of operating costs for public schools, school districts have had to raise their local property taxes to make up the funding.

The committee Wednesday afternoon considered legislation proposing ways to ultimately get rid of the local property tax altogether, in most cases replacing it with revenue from a higher sales tax. State Rep. Andrew Murr‘s House Bill 285 would increase state and local sales taxes enough to garner about $22 billion, enough to completely replace property tax revenue school districts collect to operate.

“It won’t happen in the special session,” the Junction Republican acknowledged.

State Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, went further: he proposed legislation recommending the complete elimination of the property taxes by school districts as a way, to pressure legislators into coming up with an alternative system.

“I don’t have the answers, but I know this Legislature relies too heavily on local property taxes to fund our schools, and we need more direction to go forward,” he said.

What would replace that funding in the meantime?

“This bill does not give us a plan,” Darby said.

By the end of the day, that committee was slated to have held hearings on 25 property tax bills in addition to the 18 it has already sent on to the House. More than 50 other bills have been referred to the committee.

SB 1 is the only property tax legislation passed from a Senate committee. Two others are pending in the upper chamber’s Select Committee on Government Reform. But Bonnen isn’t worried that the House is going to leave the Senate little time to consider what could become a bevy of bills headed its way as the special session nears its 30-day end. He pointed to how the Senate quickly passed measures addressing nearly all of of Abbott’s 20-item agenda in the first part of the session.

“The Senate has proven that it can move anything at lightning speed,” Bonnen said. “So they have more than enough time to do that.”

Read related Tribune coverage:

• The Texas Tribune wants to hear from Texans about how rising property tax rates are affecting them — and who should have the final say. [link]
• When state senators revive legislation on Saturday that could require voter approval of city and county property tax rates, lawmakers will also consider something new: limiting how much money local governments spend. [link]

Author:  BRANDON FORMBY, KIRBY WILSON AND ALIYYA SWABY

Gov. Greg Abbott kicked off his first special session two weeks ago. That puts the Legislature at the halfway point if they choose to take the maximum 30 days they are permitted to meet — and given Abbott’s ambitious agenda, it’s looking like they may need all the time they can get.

So far, the special session hasn’t been too different from the 140-day regular session that ended in May. The Senate has rushed to pass nearly all of Abbott’s priorities. The lower chamber has taken its time and even taken some pride in its slower approach.

And the governor has maintained an optimistic tone through it all, even as significant hurdles for his agenda have only become clearer.

Both chambers have addressed the first order of business: passing “sunset” bills that would prevent some state agencies from closing, including the Texas Medical Board. Their failure to agree on such legislation during the regular session was one of the reasons that Abbott called the special session in the first place, and he had specifically asked the Senate to approve the measures before officially expanding his call to include 19 other items.

Here are five things to know about how the first half of the special session has developed:

1. The two chambers are operating at different speeds.

By the eighth day of the special session, the Senate had passed legislation related to all but two of the 20 items on Abbott’s call — a milestone Patrick hailed as unprecedented.

“No one in the Capitol can find anywhere in history that the Senate or the House” has moved that quickly, Patrick said. “It’s quite extraordinary, and I give credit to our Texas senators.”

The House, by contrast, has been taking a much slower approach. While the Senate was celebrating its workload last week, the lower chamber was still working through its first order of business: the “sunset” legislation.

“This is not a race,” Straus has told multiple media outlets, promising the lower chamber would be deliberate in its consideration of each item on the call.

As of Monday evening, the Senate had passed 20 pieces of legislation related to 18 items on Abbott’s call. The House had approved eight bills related to four items.

The Senate still has work to do if it wants to go “20 for 20,” a slogan promoted by Abbott’s office that Patrick and his senators have embraced. The upper chamber has not yet passed legislation to cap local spending or to prevent local governments from changing rules in the middle of construction projects. The bill to address the former, Senate Bill 18, was set to come up on the Senate floor Monday but did not, while the legislation dealing with the latter, Senate Bill 12, remains in the Senate Business & Commerce Committee.

2. The House is charting its own course.

Chafing at the governor’s narrowly proscribed special session agenda on the west side of the Capitol goes beyond House leadership’s vocal opposition to the high-profile “bathroom bill.” Lawmakers there have held hearings on topics not included on the governor’s call, stretched the boundaries of those that are and, in at least one case, directly flouted the governor’s wishes.

During a hearing last week, state Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, put her reasons for pushing for a bill that would reverse millions of dollars in therapy cuts for children with disabilities this way: “If the governor is going to bring us back here to talk about what bathrooms people can use or what we can do with our trees, then surely the disabled kids should take priority, and hopefully we add this to the call.”

Though the proposal is not on the governor’s list of priorities, lawmakers on the appropriations committee approved it 21-0. Since then, state Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, has officially asked Abbott to include restoring the funding on the special session call.

Davis, who leads the House committee responsible for investigating wrongdoing in state government, also said last week that she would formally request that Abbott put ethics reform on the special session agenda. She said she plans to hold hearings and vote on all of the ethics bills referred to her committee.

Over at the House Natural Resources Committee, Chairman Lyle Larson, a San Antonio Republican, heard eight bills on water regulation last week, despite Abbott’s veto of five bills containing similar provisions during the regular session.

When they have considered Abbott’s priorities, House lawmakers have tended to put their own stamp on them. On Monday, the chamber approved House Bill 9, the Abbott-endorsed measure continuing the state’s maternal mortality task force — along with three other items giving the task force more guidance on what to study, including the rates of pregnancy-related deaths and postpartum depression among women of varying socioeconomic status, and adding a labor and delivery nurse to the task force’s membership.

Abbott is also unlikely to welcome a bill the chamber passed regulating city ordinances on tree removal last week, which while technically within the bounds of his special session agenda, replicates legislation he vetoed in June for not going far enough. The version of the legislation championed by Abbott, authored by state Rep. Paul Workman, R-Austin, is stuck in the House Urban Affairs Committee.

The House’s unhurried approach has been met with near daily grumbling on the floor from the 12 lawmakers in the Freedom Caucus, whose conservative members say Straus is deliberately impeding legislation.

“Straus needs to learn you can’t govern by just saying ‘no’ all the time,” said state Rep. Matt Rinaldi, R- Irving. “I’m frustrated that the speaker has chosen to be the sole obstruction to a number of positive reforms supported by our governor and a clear majority of our legislators.”

3. All signs point to another standoff on “bathroom” legislation.

When it comes to divisive legislation regulating the bathroom use of transgender Texans, the House and Senate are veering close to the same spot they were in at the end of the regular legislative session.

The two chambers ended their 140 days at the Capitol at loggerheads over the issue, with House leaders unwilling to back legislation they said would hurt the state economically and target vulnerable children. After unsuccessfully trying to break the stalemate by taking hostage bills needed to prevent the shutdown of a handful of state agencies, Patrick forced the special session.

Halfway toward the deadline to make an agreement on the bill, the differences between the chambers only appear more prominent.

After plowing through an 11-hour committee hearing and an eight hour-floor debate, the Senate gave final approval to its “bathroom” measure just after midnight last Wednesday. The bill would require transgender people to use bathrooms corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificate or state IDs in schools and buildings overseen by local governments. It would also nix parts of local nondiscrimination ordinances meant to allow transgender residents to use public bathrooms of their choice.

Meanwhile, the House has yet to schedule a committee hearing for similar legislation, and Straus has also held off on referring the Senate’s proposal to a committee for consideration.

State Rep. Byron Cook, the chairman of the committee that the bill must clear to get to the floor, has said he’s disappointed the debate over the bill has wasted so much time — and that it is “smoke-screening” more important issues. But Cook did say the bill will receive a hearing. State Rep. Ron Simmons, the Carrolton Republican carrying the bill, said he believes it will pass the full House if allowed to the floor for a vote. But neither of those statements necessarily adds up to a favorable outcome for the measure in the lower chamber.

Ahead of the special session, Straus said he was “disgusted by all of this” and expressed anxiety about the negative impact such a law could have on transgender children, including possibly an increase in suicides among an already vulnerable population.

Since then, opposition to the bathroom bill has only grown louder in echoing Straus’ concerns. After months of acting through business coalitions, CEOs and top executives for major businesses are attaching their own names to letters expressing hostility toward the legislation, including, on Monday, energy titans Shell and Exxon. Individual school districts have also begun voicing their disapproval of the proposals. Police chiefs from major cities have come out against it and warned they say won’t keep the public safe. And the National Episcopal Church re-emerged in the debate, asking Straus to remain “steadfast” in his opposition to any bathroom bill.

4. Property taxes are at the center of a debate over local control.

In interview after interview, Abbott has made clear he views property tax legislation one of the most important issues — if not the most important issue — lawmakers are taking up during the special session. It may be the only item where Abbott is willing to call lawmakers back to Austin again if they do not show progress on it.

The House and Senate are already closer than they were in the regular session when it comes to coming to an agreement on a proposal to require local governments get voter approval for some increased property tax collections.

But that doesn’t mean the two chambers are completely on the same page. And legislation in the House suggests that its members could be open to giving local officials more breathing room when it comes to how much money they can raise – and how much the state requires them to spend.

Senate Bill 1, which the Senate has already approved, could require cities, counties and some special taxing districts to get voter approval if they want to increase tax collections on existing land and buildings 4 percent compared to the previous year.

House Bill 4 sets the required election threshold at 6 percent. If the full House passes the current version of HB 4, that threshold would be one of many differences the two chambers will have to work out in a conference committee.

Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee has already sent 17 other bills related to property taxes on to the full chamber. The committee has considered 18 others, which are still pending.

Many of those bills show the lower chamber’s members are trying different ways to cut property tax payments for specific groups of property owners including the elderly, Purple Heart recipients, partially disabled military veterans, Texans serving in the armed forces and disabled first responders.

And while many of Abbott’s agenda items for the special session are aimed at limiting local governments’ powers on everything from spending to regulating trees on private property, one House resolution aims to make the state constitutionally responsible for covering a local government’s cost to comply with new laws.

“If the state requires you to provide some service, then the state needs to have the ability to send the resources to accomplish that goal,” said state Rep. Drew Darby, a San Angelo Republican who co-authored House Joint Resolution 31. “The same way the state complains of the federal government requiring unfunded mandates, I think the same principle should apply to the state also.”

The House passed a similar resolution during the regular session, but it went nowhere in the Senate. Still, Rick Thompson with the Texas Association of Counties is hopeful that the measure could end up on a ballot in November.

Thompson is that group’s legislative liaison. He said HJR 31 is a welcome contradiction to other legislation being discussed this summer since many of the bills collectively tell cities and counties what they can and can’t do while they also limit how much money they can raise and spend without voter approval.

“It’s a tough bill to pass because the state obviously counts on being able to balance their budgets on the backs of unfunded mandates,” Thompson said.

5. The governor isn’t sweating his agenda’s fate — yet.

While Abbott started the special session vowing to publish daily lists of lawmakers who oppose his agenda, he has since dialed back the tough talk and sought to play nice with lawmakers, particularly in the House. He finally released his first batch of lists Friday — but only those of legislators who are supporting bills related to each item on the call.

Abbott also has not expressed any concern about the House’s sluggish pace compared to that of the Senate, saying he is pleased with the lower chamber’s speed and believes its members are taking his agenda seriously. In multiple media appearances, Abbott has voiced confidence in his agenda’s chances in the House, predicting the lower chamber will “outperform.”

At the same time, though, Abbott has resisted calls by House members to expand the call.

“The most important thing is we pass the 20 items that I put on the special session agenda,” Abbott told an Austin TV station Wednesday. “Once we get that done, we can consider other matters.”

“We must go 20 for 20 before we address anything else,” he added.

Abbott has also waved off questions about whether he is willing to call a second special session under any circumstances, saying it is too early to speculate. That could change soon, though, as lawmakers have about two weeks left to send measures to Abbott’s desk.

Alexa Ura, Kirby Wilson and Andy Duehren contributed to this report.

Disclosure: Exxon Mobil Corporation and the Texas Association of Counties have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here. 

Read related Tribune coverage:

• State Rep. Sarah Davis will ask Gov. Greg Abbott to put ethics reform on the agenda of the ongoing special session and said focusing on ethics would restore trust in the Legislature at time when it’s diminishing. [link]
• We’re tracking how lawmakers are progressing on each of the 20 issues Abbott has asked lawmakers to tackle over the special session. [link]

Authors:  PATRICK SVITEK, MORGAN SMITH AND BRANDON FORMBY – The Texas Tribune

No filibuster was going to kill annexation reform in the Texas Senate this time around.

Among several bills that seek to curb the power of local regulations, the Senate on Wednesday tentatively passed Senate Bill 6, which would allow residents of areas up for possible annexation by cities to hold a referendum on whether the annexation can go through. The bill passed on a vote of 19-12. If it gets final approval from the Senate, it will head to the House. (Update, July 26: The bill received final approval from the Senate Wednesday evening and will advance to the House.)

“Today’s vote is a victory for the property rights of all citizens and I applaud my colleagues in the Senate for giving Texans a voice in the annexation process,” SB 6 author Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, said in a Wednesday release.

Under current law, a city can annex a territory within its extraterritorial jurisdiction without the support of the people who would be annexed. Backers of annexation reform say allowing people to vote on where they live is a fundamental American right. Detractors say allowing citizens to vote on annexation hurts a city’s ability to plan for expansion in a rapidly growing Texas.

The special session legislation is similar to a regular-session bill that died on the Senate floor in an 11th-hour filibuster by Democratic Sen. José Menéndez over concerns that the bill had no protections for land use around military bases.

As the Senate debated SB 6 Wednesday, it was clear neither Menéndez nor Campbell had forgotten the filibuster.

“The last time I yielded to you it did not go quite as I expected,” Campbell said before she gave the floor to Menéndez to ask questions about the legislation.

Just before the vote, Menéndez all but threatened another filibuster.

“We still have plenty of time in the special session,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get down to the last few days, and we’ll get to have a little longer conversation.”

Menéndez’s home city of San Antonio, which in June officially branded itself Military City USA, is home to numerous military bases, and local officials say that without annexation or some similar tool, developers can build within a city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction in a way that might compromise a base’s mission. It’s hard to effectively train sharpshooters with residential apartments next door, they argue.

“Annexation is the only tool that we have to protect those bases,” Menéndez said Wednesday.

But in a fiery floor speech, Campbell said she doesn’t buy the military base argument. She argued that cities have other regulatory tools that allow them to manage development around military bases.

SB 6 made it through the floor vote with just one major change: an amendment by Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, which lowered the population requirement for a county to have its cities be subject to a citizen vote on annexation from 500,000 or more to 125,000 or more.

On Tuesday, the House Urban Affairs Committee heard testimony from city officials on a broad swath of local control issues, including annexation. The mayors of San Antonio, San Marcos, and Plano each denounced proposals similar to SB 6.

John Thomaides, the mayor of San Marcos, said the city was able to successfully lure Amazon to open a facility in the city after it annexed the lot and built infrastructure there.

“This project created more than 3,000 permanent full-time jobs for our residents,” he said. “Without the power to annex we would not have the ability to compete for Amazon.com.”

At the State Affairs Committee hearing Sunday on SB 6, dozens of annexation reform backers lined up to weigh in on why they support the bill. One man compared municipal annexation to the Nazi invasion of France; another compared it to Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. One woman was visibly emotional as she spoke of how new city taxes might stretch her family’s budget too thin.

A few detractors weighed in as well — including city officials from Corpus Christi, Fort Worth, Sugar Land, San Antonio and Austin — who said annexation can be beneficial to cities and citizens alike when done properly.

“We are not the evil empire,” said Joe Zimmerman, the mayor of Sugar Land.

Later Wednesday, the Senate gave final approval to two other local control-related bills. Senate Bill 13 aims to accelerate local building permitting processes in place across the state. It would automatically approve building permits if a city did not approve the permit quickly enough and eliminate a workers’ protection program in Austin. Before it passed, lawmakers made some technical changes to the language of bill on the floor.

The Senate also passed Senate Bill 14, which bars cities and towns from regulating tree removal on private property. State Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, accepted an amendment to limit the scope of the bill to only exempt small, residential properties from local tree ordinances. He also exempted local regulations on weed and grass length from the bill. More than 50 cities and towns in Texas have local tree ordinances, requiring property owners to either pay fees or replant trees if they cut trees down on their property.

Emma Platoff and Andy Duehren contributed to this story.

Author:  KIRBY WILSON – The Texas Tribune

Texans could soon have more direct control over the property tax rates that cities, counties and special purpose districts set as legislation that stalled during the state Legislature’s regular session is taken up by both chambers this week.

The Senate in a 19-12 vote on Monday gave preliminary approval to a bill requiring larger cities, counties and taxing districts to have an election if the amount of property tax revenues they collect on existing property and buildings exceeds 4 percent of the amount they took in the year before. Smaller government entities — those that collect less than $20 million in property and sales tax a year — will have to hold an election if revenue collections exceed an 8 percent increase.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt said his controversial Senate Bill 1 is key to “slowing down” rising property tax bills.

“The public knows if there’s a case that’s made from elected officials that they should spend more of their hard-earned money, they will vote for it,” the Houston Republican said Monday night.

Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Lakeway, successfully amended the bill to allow residents in smaller taxing units that collect less than $20 million in revenues — such as tiny towns or special purpose districts — to lower the property tax collection increase that triggers an automatic election from 8 percent to 4 percent. Texans in such small taxing units would vote to lower that threshold in May.

Bettencourt is optimistic that the Senate and House will agree on how to handle property tax rate elections during the special session. Their inability to do so during the regular session partially prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to call lawmakers back to work this summer.

“What I hope to have happen is a real negotiation,” Bettencourt told The Texas Tribune last week.

During the regular session, a proposed automatic tax rate election provision never made it out of the House Ways and Means Committee that State Rep. Dennis Bonnen chairs. Things could play out differently during the special session. Bonnen, R-Angleton, included an automatic election provision in his companion legislation, House Bill 4. He said a heightened focus on property taxes during the special session could prompt more of his colleagues to back such an election requirement.

“I think it’s going to be a little harder to sit back and not support something,” Bonnen said.

But not everyone shares his optimism. State Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, said Monday that he doesn’t think Texas House Speaker Joe Strauswants an automatic election provision to pass even though such a measure is in the House companion bill. HB 4 is among nearly three dozen property tax and appraisal bills that will be considered in that chamber’s Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday.

“I don’t think Straus wants to pass any of them,” Stickland said Monday. “My plan is to keep pushing so we know who is responsible for their death.”

Tea Party-aligned lawmakers and officials, including Stickland, have repeatedly criticized the Republican speaker for how he runs the lower chamber. But Straus spokesman Jason Embry said property tax legislation is a priority for the speaker.

Embry also said the House attempted to lower property taxes in the regular session by putting less of a financial burden on school districts. The lower chamber passed House Bill 21, which sought to increase state education funding by $1.5 billion. The bill died after the Senate lowered that amount and tacked on an amendment that would have would subsidized private school tuition and homeschooling for kids with disabilities.

“School districts collect more than half of the property taxes paid in Texas, and the House is the only body that has acted to address the most significant driver of higher property taxes,” Embry said.

Meanwhile, critics of Bettencourt’s election requirement say it will hamstring local governments’ ability to respond to residents’ demands for services like police and fire personnel, street repairs and timely trash collection. They also point to it as another example of state officials trying to micromanage local governments.

Bill Longley, legislative counsel for the Texas Municipal League, said this weekend at a Senate committee hearing that the legislation would harm local governments’ bottom line while failing to offer Texans substantial savings.

“Taxpayers will not see meaningful relief,” he said. “We’re talking about a very small portion of the city tax bill.”

He also said the biggest driver of property tax increases are from school districts and not cities or counties. Several city and county officials say that lawmakers are using the city and county property tax issue as a way to distract from their practice of spending fewer state dollars on education, which prompts school districts to raise their property tax rates to make up the difference.

“The state’s own budget is based on the largest portion of property taxes — school property taxes — increasing,” Longley said.

Bonnen’s version triggers a vote when increased revenues exceed 5 percent. But Bettencourt isn’t sweating that slight 1-point difference between the two versions. Both lawmakers also opted to separate property tax rate elections and overhauling the property appraisal process in legislation during the special session. They said having more bills to address property taxes increases the chances of legislation passing during the special session.

“It’s just important to have a few vehicles that can be used as necessary because you don’t have time to start the whole process again,” Bettencourt said.

Bonnen said his proposed overhaul of the appraisal and assessment process will make it clear to Texans which government entities are causing tax bills to increase. Bonnen said some local officials don’t lower tax rates to offset property value increases and then blame higher individual tax bills on those rising property values.

“You still have a local elected official making a choice that makes you pay more,” he said.

Bettencourt’s Senate Bills 93 and 96 have provisions that also seek to make it more clear to landowners what tax rates different entities charge and what could trigger an automatic election. Those have yet to make it out of the Senate Select Committee on Government Reform.

That committee, which Bettencourt chairs, heard hours of testimony on property tax legislation Saturday. Bettencourt kicked off the hearing by rolling through a PowerPoint presentation purporting to show soaring property taxes across Texas, citing statistics that some experts have called fuzzy math that takes statistical comparisons out of context.

Sen. Van Taylor, R-Plano, said his office had received 434 pages of letters from constituents complaining about property taxes, with some saying they were in danger of losing their homes due to rising taxes. Taylor grew emotional as he read excerpts from the letters.

“The purpose of government is to protect our God-given rights, it’s not to tax us out of our homes,” Taylor said.

Some current and former local officials said they supported Bettencourt’s property tax legislation, SB 1. Ron Wright, tax assessor-collector in Tarrant County, said it would offer relief and more transparency to taxpayers. And he dismissed criticism from those who call the bill an assault on local control, citing the ability of citizens to vote on tax increases.

“When they talk about local control, they’re talking about government control,” Wright said of the bill’s critics.

Andy Duehren, Emma Platoff and Shannon Najmabadi contributed to this report.

Disclosure: The Texas Municipal League has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here.

Read related Tribune coverage:

• The lower chamber responded to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s threats of a special session by moving key legislation — but omitting provisions that he wanted included. [link]
• There’s a simple test to tell you whether the promise of a tax cut is really a tax cut: Is there money in your hand? [link]
• The Senate voted 18-12 in favor of bill that would require an election if a local government entity wanted to increase some of its tax collections by 5 percent or more. [link]

Author:  BRANDON FORMBY AND JIM MALEWITZ