Senate Decides To Start Over On School Finance

AUSTIN — (AP) Trying to salvage a crumbling special session on school finance, the Texas State Senate opted Thursday night to scrap previous efforts and start over.

With a new $2.8 billion spending bill to be filed Friday and hearings next week, the Senate hopes to break the impasse on school finance that has thwarted several regular and special legislative sessions the last two years.

“We will begin a new process,” said Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, chair of the Senate Education Committee. “I hope this will satisfy everybody’s desires and needs.”

The announcement of a new effort came after senators met behind closed doors for more than three hours. And while the Senate’s latest move keeps the session lurching along, it may not push the Legislature far enough into finally passing a bill.

The session was on the brink of collapse Tuesday after the House rejected its school spending plan and a critical companion tax bill.

Shapiro and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said that even if the Senate passes a new education plan passes, it won’t take effect without the companion tax bill that lowers property taxes. The state constitution requires that tax bills originate in the House.

“You can’t delink them,” Shapiro said. “Property tax reduction is what this whole bill is based on.”

But a half hour later, House Speaker Tom Craddick said he didn’t have any reason to believe the House would pass a tax plan in the 22 days left in the special session.

“Not at this point,” Craddick said. “We didn’t have the votes. We’ll keep trying, but that’s where we are.”

Just getting the Senate to act has proven difficult for Dewhurst and Republicans who support the measure since the start of the summer’s second special session last week.

The Senate approved its own version of an education bill by a wide margin in the previous 30-day special session, which ended July 20. But Democrats and some Republicans were reluctant to do it again. That bill changed substantially in negotiations with the House, then a Senate Democrat’s filibuster killed it on the final night of the previous special session.

Since then, Democrats and Republicans have been pressured by their local school officials not to pass anything similar to the compromise bill. The Senate already postponed one vote Monday.

Shapiro invited senators to bring their school officials to next week’s hearings.

“I think you’re going to like this new bill,” she said.

The new bill would give districts more discretion in how to spend their money, would keep school board elections in May instead of moving them to November and would not move the school start date to September, she said.

Dewhurst admitted he struggled to muster Senate support for the previous measure.

“He doesn’t have the votes,” Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, said before the Senate went into a “caucus” meeting Thursday afternoon and barred news reporters from attending.

“The Kool-Aid’s in there,” Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston. “They’re not drinking it.”

The state is under court pressure to change its school finance system. A state district judge ruled last year in a lawsuit brought by hundreds of school districts that the system is inadequate and unconstitutional.

Judge John Dietz ordered it fixed by Oct. 1 of this year. The state appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which is expected to rule in the coming weeks or months.

Pledging to reform the school funding system and reduce property taxes, Republican Gov. Rick Perry has called three special sessions since spring 2004, so far without success.

The Legislature has tried to accomplish both with two companion bills ?? one to reorganize and add to school spending and another to reduce property taxes and replace them with other taxes, such as an increased sales tax and cigarette tax.

While educators have spoken out against the education spending bill, claiming it doesn’t go far enough, numerous interest groups have weighed in against the tax bill.