Special session looms as talks fail
$217B budget OK’d, but Straus, Patrick at impasse on tax and bathroom bills
AUSTIN — The Texas Legislature moved to the brink of an almost certain special session on Saturday after a series of opportunities to pass key legislative priorities evaporated in a continuing test of wills between Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus.
Lawmakers were able to muster enough unity to give final passage to the $216.8 billion state budget, but a big divide remains over the so-called bathroom bill, property-tax reform and a bill to keep the Texas Medical Board in operation past Jan. 1, 2018. Failure to pass the medical board measure would force a special session, legislators said.
Negotiations broke down on Friday after Sens. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, and Joan Huffman, R-Houston, met with Straus to try to resolve lingering issues with the House on the bathroom bill, according to officials involved in the talks.
Straus lieutenants had indicated the House would accept a one-sentence modification to a House-passed bill covering only school re-
Abbott reported to be furious over the lack of progress.
strooms and locker rooms, instead of a much-tougher Senate-passed version that covered restrooms in state government buildings.
Patrick responded with a multipage counteroffer that would have covered more than just schools, including all political subdivisions in the state, officials said. Straus rejected it.
Senate leaders said the onesentence fix was rejected because it was “gobbledygook” that didn’t clarify anything.
Patrick also outlined what it would take for the Senate to agree on tax reform — a change in determining how much of a rate hike it takes to trigger rollback elections that allow voters to approve or reject a tax hike. But no talks are ongoing on that because the House did not appoint a conference committee on the tax bill by a Saturday night deadline. ‘A bust, bust, bust’
On the bathroom bill debate, Straus has made his position clear: The Senate can take it or leave it on the scaled-back House version.
Patrick and the Senate have been unwilling to budge either, and Gov. Greg Abbott has said failure to reach a compromise could prompt him to call a special session on the contentious issue.
Patrick repeatedly has said he wants a special session on the issue unless there’s a tougher bill than the House passed.
On Friday, just three days before the end of the legislative session on Monday, intermittent talks continued on all three bills. But by the time both chambers adjourned for the day, no deal had been reach on any of the three.
Five days ago, frustrated by a lack of progress and a hardening stance on both sides, Abbott aides mostly withdrew from active efforts to forge a deal on the issues. Abbott on Saturday was reported to be furious over the impasse, even as the continuing closed-door talks sputtered.
If Abbott calls a 30-day special session, the cost could run at least $800,000 and likely higher, by some estimates. He would determine the subject or subjects, and he could call them back into session for as many times as necessary to get the bill he wants.
Aides to Abbott and Patrick declined comment late Saturday.
But Houston’s Paul Bettencourt, the Senate majority leader and a top Patrick confidante, said the Senate was not to blame.
“It’s a bust, bust, bust, and it’s on the House leadership,” he said.
“Wherever the Legislature goes after we adjourn this session, they’re going to be asked two questions: What happened to property tax relief? And what happened to the privacy act?” Bettencourt said. “And my answer is that the Senate tried. There’s nothing more anyone can do now to fix where we are.”
Straus, a San Antonio Republican, maintained his position Saturday, telling the Houston Chronicle that his chamber would “not go one inch further” on the bathoom bill, and “enough was enough.”
The “Big 3” of Abbott, Patrick and Straus were together briefly in public Saturday as lawmakers held a solemn ceremony to mark the Memorial Day weekend. It was an awkward moment underscored by the governor’s remark in his speech that “it’s not lost on anybody that during the past few months, this Capitol has been a battleground of democracy.”
Back-room talks and attempts at deal making continued through the day while the two chambers gave final approval to the state’s $216.8 billion two-year budget, a spending plan that includes more money for children in crisis and mental health services, holds steady on border security funding and closes four prisons.
The House approved the budget bill on a 135-14 vote Saturday afternoon, claiming important victories in their weekslong negotiations with the Senate over how the state will fund key services such as transportation and health care. All no votes came from Democrats, including Houston’s Rep. Harold Dutton, Rep. Armando Walle and Rep. Shawn Thierry.
“It’s a good product. It does meet the needs of Texas,” said Rep. John Zerwas, the Republican from Richmond who led the House in the budget talks. “I think it will set us up well for the coming biennium regardless of how our economy goes.”
Lawmakers could expect a shortfall of about $1.2 billion in general revenue when they return to Austin in 2019, Zerwas added. ‘Significant investments’
Straus said the chamber stood by its promise to pass a balanced budget while making “significant investments” in mental health services and Child Protective Services funding. The bill provides an additional $508 million for child protection, including $88 million in new funding to hire nearly 600 CPS caseworkers. It also allocates $300 million for new construction and major repairs at the state’s mental health hospitals, as well as $37.5 million for a new mental health jail diversion program.
“We started with a sizable shortfall, but we are ending this session with a balanced budget that invests in some very important priorities,” Straus said in a statement after the vote.
Democratic Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie praised the budget outcome with regard to several House priorities this session, but he called it “a mixed bag” and lamented the Legislature’s failure to rollback spending on border initiatives and to restore previous Medicaid payment cuts to therapists who help severely disabled kids.
“Unfortunately, in this conference committee report, the Senate appears to have gotten its way on the border, which a lot of us think is not necessary when illegal border crossings are at their lowest levels in a generation,” Turner said. “I also think people in this chamber agree it is horrendous that children who can’t walk, can’t talk, can’t swallow are being denied services because of the therapy cuts instituted by the Senate two years ago and will continue with this budget.”
On border funding, SB 1 allots $800 million — the same amount as last biennium’s budget — to pay for a surge of police along the state’s southern border, including $97.1 million to recruit, train and equip 250 new Department of Public Safety troopers and other full-time support positions through 2019. When negotiations began in January, Zerwas said budget writers were in a wait-andsee mode about whether Texas could pull back on that funding in the event that the Trump administration would ramp up federal spending on the issue.
“Unfortunately, we just don’t have enough concrete evidence that the federal government will start stepping up and providing the security along the border we expect,” Zerwas said Saturday.
In the Senate, which voted 30-1, chief budget writer Nelson touted the two-year spending plan as a successful compromise in a year that began with a multibilliondollar revenue shortfall and public disagreement among legislative leaders over how to pay for the state’s growing needs.
“This budget is smart. This budget is compassionate. And it keeps Texas on a successful path to the future,” she said.
While the spending plan holds education funding levels steady this biennium at a basic allotment of $5,140 per student, the budget adds almost $2.7 billion to cover student enrollment growth as the state expects some 80,000 more students each school year. Texas is currently responsible for teaching 5.3 million public school children.
The approved budget is $352 million more than the current state spending plan. Lunch shaming bill passes
The Legislature sent several other bills to the governor’s desk, including a bill to crack down on “lunch shaming” by permitting school boards to let schools continue giving students hot lunches for two weeks after credit on their prepaid lunch accounts run out. Students now could receive sandwiches or cereal instead. The bill by Rep. Helen Giddings, D-DeSoto, struggled to pass the House after falling victim to political maneuvers that killed a slew of bills, but it gained traction on SB 1566 and spurred a large Texas food bank to begin collecting donations to pay down student lunch debt.
The Senate also passed a bill that would require the state to study the General Land Office’s State Power Program, which sells energy to schools and local municipalities. The original bill sought to phase out the program and was brought by an electricity provider who lost a bid for the state’s energy contract in December. The bill had since been watered down and added to SB 736, giving the Legislature a chance to revisit the issue in the 2019 pending the results of the study.
The Senate OK’d SB 5, a voter ID bill that would make it a state jail felony to make a false statement in order to vote without an acceptable form of photo ID. The bill, named late in the legislative session as an emergency item for the governor, has yet to be voted on by the House.