Border effort gets $495 million boost after leaders tap federal COVID aid, shift funds
AUSTIN — Texas is scrambling to come up with nearly a half-billion dollars to pay the growing tab for its decision to post National Guard soldiers at the southern border.
As foreshadowed by a top aide to Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month, Texas will free up general-purpose state revenue that lawmakers previously budgeted for salaries of state workers by tapping federal coronavirus relief money.
That will allow GOP state leaders to rush $465.3 million to the Texas Military Department, whose top leader has said he’ll run out of money at the end of this month for the 10,000 troops who are supporting Abbott’s Operation Lone Star. Other state agencies involved with the border effort will share in the transfer of another $30 million.
On Friday, Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dade Phelan, Senate Finance Committee Chairwoman Joan Huffman and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Greg Bonnen signed a letter to the heads of six state agencies approving the fund shifts. The letter didn’t acknowledge use of federal pandemic-relief funds, instead focusing solely on the simultaneous reassignment of state general-purpose revenue dollars.
“These transfers are meant to support the deployment of the National Guard with $465.3 million and to support border security surge operations in other state agencies with $30 million,” the leaders wrote. “We understand the Fiscal Years 2020-2021 appropriations would otherwise lapse and be unavailable to your agencies, and that the Fiscal Year 2022 appropriations have been fully funded with other sources, thus this transfer will not affect any agency or program function.”
In a joint news release, the state GOP leaders blasted President Joe Biden for what Phelan called “irresponsible” handling of immigration policy.
The six agencies will fork over $248.8 million of state general revenue from the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31, and slightly more than $246.5 million from the current year’s budget. The money goes to Abbott’s disaster fund, from which he’s been regularly transmitting money for the Texas National Guard and Texas State Guard’s support of the Republican governor’s immigration dragnet at the border with Mexico, according to records obtained by The Dallas Morning News using the state’s open-records law.
While some Democrats have fretted that Texas may be misusing federal COVID-19 relief aid to help finance Operation Lone Star, Abbott and top GOP lawmakers have denied that. The Biden administration hasn’t objected, nor has anyone taken Texas to court over its money maneuvers.
The series of bills Congress passed during the pandemic, signed by Biden and former President Donald Trump, allowed states to use their federal funds for salaries of state public health and public safety employees.
In early April, Sarah Hicks, director of policy and budget in Abbott’s office, told the Senate Committee on Border Security the state could make up for shortfalls in the border security effort by using up to $600 million of the federal dollars to backfill salaries at health, law enforcement and prison agencies, and then transfer the freedup state discretionary dollars to the border effort.
It’s a move that strikes some as misuse and one they worry could put the money at risk of being clawed back by the federal government. On April 8, though, Phelan, a Republican who’s the House’s presiding officer, said his chamber “will take a long, hard, deep dive in how we’re spending dollars and we’ll … make certain the federal clawback is (in the) front of our mind.”
The problem arose because last year, even as they were more than quadrupling the state’s level of spending on border security, lawmakers gave the Texas Military Department only $412 million for the current two-year cycle. In just the first year of the cycle alone, it’s costing at least $1.3 billion to keep several thousand soldiers at the border and thousands of others in support roles elsewhere.
If that’s repeated in the fiscal year that begins Sept. 1, the state’s tab for border security will soar past $5 billion, from $800 million last cycle.
In their letter Friday, Abbott and the four top GOP legislative leaders said the state general-purpose revenue that the six agencies were offering has “been fully funded with other sources.” They didn’t elaborate.
In their past letters offering to yield the money, agency heads appointed by Abbott used variations of a theme stated this week by Department of Public Safety director Col. Steve Mccraw, in his latest request to give up money. “It’s critical that the Disaster Fund (in Abbott’s office) have sufficient monies available to respond quickly and ensure the safety of Texans,” Mccraw wrote. “I can confirm the agency and its programs will not be negatively affected by this transfer.”
After a January transfer of $480.5 million from agencies that run state prisons and perform law enforcement functions, to pay for the National Guard deployment, the new head of the Guard, Maj. Gen. Thomas Suelzer, told senators earlier this month that money would run out at the end of April. He needed $531 million more to fund the Guard’s part of Operation Lone Star through Aug. 31, Suelzer testified. Since then, apparently, the Guard’s shortfall has shrunk slightly.
Yielding the money were the Health and Human Services Commission, $210.7 million; Department of Public Safety, $159.3 million; Texas Department of Criminal Justice, $53.6 million; Department of State Health Services, $36.1 million; Texas Juvenile Justice Department, $31.3 million; and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, $4.3 million.