Voter ID back on the House floor
Expect lengthy debate on bill that is likely to pass, Finance hears appraisal bills and another article compares Texas and California economies.
House is in at 11. Senate is in at 1:30.
It’s voter ID day in the Texas House, and with the numbers being what the numbers are, Democrats appear to be out of ways to stop it. Tim Eaton sets things up in this morning’s Statesman: “The measure being considered now would require Texans to show a valid photo ID — such as a driver’s license or state-issued ID card, a military ID or a passport — to vote. The House’s measure is slightly more stringent than the Senate version, which passed in January. Both bills are stricter than a 2009 piece of legislation that would have allowed either a photo ID or two forms of nonphoto identification. Current law requires voters to register and to present various forms of identification when doing so. Rep. Patricia Harless, R-Spring, is the lead sponsor of the House bill. … Harless said that she expects to get the bill through intact and that it meets constitutional guidelines. … With 101 Republicans in the 150-member chamber, Democrats are faced with seemingly unbeatable odds. “The numbers don’t look good,” said Rep. Armando L. Walle, D-Houston, who will lead the Democrats’ effort. But he added that Democrats will not go quietly. … Walle didn’t want to give away too many of the points that his party was going to make, but he said Democrats probably would offer amendments to create stiffer penalties for voting illegally and would address the topic of paper ballots, which he said are the ones most likely to be tampered with. He predicted a long day of debate.”
• It’s sin day in House Ways and Means, which will consider a series of bills related to taxes and fees on tobacco and alcoholic products. See more here.
• Senate Finance meets at 10 today and will hear a series of bills related to property taxes and appraisals, including appraisal-cap legislation.
• Today is the first meeting of the Texas EPA Task Force, a group of Republican state legislators and members of Congress. They will also hold a press conference at noon in the Lt. Governor’s Press Room. From their advisory: “The goal of the task force, which is made up of state and federal officials, is to bring together those who are on the front lines of protecting Texas from the job-destroying over-regulation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The group plans on discussing what has been going on legally and legislatively in Washington and Austin. The task force will also outline strategies moving forward that will protect Texas’ environment while at the same time promote economic growth.”
• Interesting article recently in the San Diego Union-Tribune about the Texas and California economies: “Throughout the Great Recession, Texans have been crowing about the strength of their economy in comparison to California’s weakness. Even though California has been adding jobs lately, its 12.4 percent unemployment rate is sharply higher than Texas’ 8 percent rate. The Texas economy slid just 1.5 percent in 2009 - the depth of the recession - while California’s dropped 2.2 percent. And Texans say California’s ‘anti-business’ attitude is to blame… But a closer look at the two economies shows that in a number of ways, California has been performing better than Texas, ranging from long-term economic growth to venture capital investments. And a study last week by UCLA’s Anderson Forecast said that what separated the two states during the Great Recession was not their business climates but their mix of businesses. … If you take the oil firms out of Texas or the real estate speculators out of California, the California economy would come out much better. Even with those handicaps, California’s gross domestic product grew five times as fast as Texas’ during the last business cycle, between 2002 and 2009. On a per capita basis, California had the eighth-highest GDP in the nation, $46,992, while Texas ranked 18th at $43,032 in 2009, the last date for comparative information. So why have the job markets in the two states diverged so sharply? Between 2000 and 2006, California and Texas — the two largest economies in the nation — had virtually the same unemployment rates, tracking within tenths of a percentage of each other. But when the housing bubble popped, the states dramatically diverged.”
• From the Statesman’s Andrew Kaspar: “An estimated 56,000 Texas students are on waiting lists for charter schools — the kind of demand that prompts discussion and legislative proposals. State lawmakers will soon begin considering bills that would chip away at those lists by authorizing more charter schools. But given the need for stringent oversight of these occasionally failed education enterprises, some question whether expansion is appropriate at a time when the Texas Education Agency — public education’s chief regulatory body — has laid off about 10 percent of its staff.”
• Dallas Morning News: “As the national tea party movement focuses on cutting the reach of government, the mix in Texas is a different brew — laced with social agendas and served with a twist of old-fashioned religion. ‘Texas is a little unique on that,’ said Rep. Phil King , a Weatherford Republican who is a co-chairman of the Tea Party Caucus in the Legislature. ‘Tea parties arose out of concerns for liberty and fiscal issues. However, you have a lot of people in the tea party groups in Texas that are focused on abortion, defense of marriage.’”
• Dallas Morning News: “The Dallas area’s legislative clout has slipped slightly since the last session two years ago, a Dallas Morning News analysis has found, driven by key retirements and an infusion of tea party-supported House members who unsuccessfully pushed for a new speaker. Seniority and the pivotal committee assignments of eight local lawmakers, five of them senators, helped offset some of the lost influence.”
• Texas Tribune: “An unlikely battlefield in Texas’ budget war is a hushed pink-and-blue hospital nursery, where 1- and 2-pound babies bleat like lambs under heating lamps and neonatal nurses use tiny rulers to measure limbs no bigger than fingers. State health officials, searching for solutions to Texas’ multibillion-dollar budget shortfall, have set their sights on these neonatal intensive care units, or NICUs, which they fear are being overbuilt and overused by hospitals eager to profit from the high-cost care — and by doctors too quick to offer pregnant mothers elective inductions and Caesarean sections before their babies are full term.”
• AP: “AT&T Inc. said Sunday it will buy T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom AG in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $39 billion that would make it the largest cellphone company in the U.S. The deal would reduce the number of wireless carriers with national coverage from four to three, and is sure to face close regulatory scrutiny. It also removes a potential partner for Sprint Nextel Corp., the struggling No. 3 carrier, which had been in talks to combine with T-Mobile USA, according to Wall Street Journal reports.”
• Several people have noted that Gov. Rick Perry did not say he would veto a budget that uses the rainy-day fund in 2012-2013. He said he would not sign it, which means it could become law without his signature. Paul Burka: “I think Perry left himself the wiggle room to allow the final appropriations bill to use some Rainy Day Funds and to become law without his signature. For this to happen, however, budget writers would have to get the final version of HB 1 to the governor’s desk by May 20. The governor has 10 days before sine die (May 30) to decide whether to sign the bill, veto it, or allow it to become law without his signature. The same process applies to the supplemental appropriations bill. (The bills could also become law during a special session.)”
Countdown
70 days until the end of the session. After today, we’ll be halfway through.
By the numbers
Austin weather from KVUE: A cloudy start with patchy mist and fog. Partly cloudy skies in the afternoon and warm. High of 82.
Kirk Bohls after Texas’ elimination from the NCAA tournament: “Yet another Rick Barnes team falls short of maximizing its potential, and slips out of the NCAA tournament after a wonderful and surprising regular season. His Longhorns (28-8) failed to reach the Sweet 16 for the third consecutive year and the fourth time in the last five seasons. The officiating snafu will somewhat cover up a very disappointing slide that doesn’t come close to matching last year’s collapse. A team can’t pick when it peaks, but Texas never got better after starting out 23-2, and finished with a 5-5 record down the stretch. And that’s on Barnes, who is being pigeonholed as a head coach whose teams taper off and don’t play well on the big stage in March. He has talent. And he can consistently get it with three McDonald’s All-Americans on his team — not counting Brown, who has played like one, and Hamilton, who would have been one had he played his senior year in high school. Hamilton said again he will return to the Longhorns and plans to be in the gym Monday. But a great team’s season shouldn’t come down to a final bad call.”