2019 Texas Legislative Session Preview

The Texas legislature’s 2019 session will begin Tuesday, January 8.  One of the first items of business will be the Biennial Revenue Estimate delivered by the comptroller of public accounts. The following Monday, January 14, the Legislative Budget Board budget estimates are delivered to the governor and the Legislature. The next day is the inauguration of the governor and lieutenant governor after which the Legislative Budget Board general appropriations bill will be delivered to the governor and the Legislature. Later the same day is the governor’s State of the State address to the Legislature when he’ll deliver his budget to the Legislature.

In the Texas Senate, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick will likely pass out committee assignments within days of his inauguration. If the new Speaker of the House, Dennis Bonnen, holds to the same schedule as the former Speaker, Joe Straus, it will be three more weeks until House committee assignments are handed out.

Pre-filing of bills started shortly after the November election results were certified and bill filing will continue until Friday March 8. Although there will likely be 5000 or so bills filed less than 1000 will likely get much attention and only a few hundred will even get voted on let alone signed by the governor. One issue that Democrats and Speaker Bonnen agree upon is that Public Education finance is a high priority item.

Public education finance is a topic with two fronts, the most obvious being how much money will the legislature allocate and the less obvious being the formula that will be used when distributing those funds to the hundreds of school districts across the state. Given the large previous budget cuts and then small increases that fail to keep pace with increased costs state funding only covers 35-40% of district budgets. Expect a big fight over how much money the state allocates and another quieter fight over how each districts share is calculated.

Dan Patrick has claimed for years and even campaigned on the idea that property taxes are too high especially the portion charged by school districts. He says he’s going to fix that by capping property taxes and other foolishness. The reality is that the reason districts have had to raise their tax rates is that the state legislature with him in the lead has repeatedly failed to adequately fund public education forcing districts to pick up the slack. Expect Patrick to use shell game tactics to obfuscate what’s really happening and his talk radio hucksterism to sell it. The best thing we can say about incoming Speaker Bonnen is that in the past he’s shown quite a lot of spine in standing up to Lt. Gov. Patrick and House Democrats hope that continues.

While in many ways less significant than public education finance marijuana legalization is also highly likely to be in the news as various groups continue the push toward that goal. In November Michigan became the tenth state to legalize recreational marijuana use, roughly twenty other states have passed some form of broad medical marijuana legalization, so it would be surprising to see the legislature finally make a move in that direction. This is especially true considering the huge tax revenues from legalized marijuana that states like Colorado are now reporting.

Our state legislators have until midnight Monday, May 27, to get all their work done. Let’s all hope they make good use of their time.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - January 4, 2019

John Kuempel Touts Distractions From Real Issues

Recently our state representative John Kuempel mailed out a flyer touting he presumably considers accomplishments from the recently completed 2017 legislative session. In this piece of tax payer funded propaganda Kuempel expounds on the value of SB 263 which substantially lowers the cost of handgun license as assisting lower income folks in their quest to take advantage of their Second Amendment rights. I won’t argue the meaning of the Second Amendment or its value in a modern society. Instead I would ask if reducing the fee by over $100 leaves other tax payers subsidizing the cost of administering the licensing program? If it doesn’t, then why were we being gouged by the state in the first place?

On “Election Integrity” Kuempel claims that the smattering of marginal issues addressed in several house ethics related bills is somehow meaningful reform. In reality one of the bills he touts, SB 5 which is another attempt by the legislature to pass a voter ID bill was immediately challenged in court where U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos found it was passed with discriminatory intent and is therefore invalid. The legislature made no attempt to deal with redistricting even though both the state House map and the Congressional district maps have both been found to have been drawn with discriminatory intent. There was a bill filed which would have taken the entire redistricting process out of the hands of the state legislature and put in the hands of every day people but Republicans couldn’t even be bothered to give it a hearing.

Public Education has been considered a top priority of the state since it was enshrined in the state constitution in 1845. Once again Kuempel and his Republican colleagues gave it short shrift. Admittedly they did right by shoring up the retired teachers’ health care plan known as TRS Care but the pittance the provided for educating our precious children barely covers the increase in enrollment across the state. Once again many districts across the state will fund their public schools on the back of property taxes. The problem is that no all districts have the same average taxable real estate values so kids in low taxable value districts don’t get the best teachers or facilities.

Kuempel’s pro-birth stance belies the fact that the legislature placed an undue burden on women whose pregnancies fail by forcing them to pay for burial or cremation services instead of disposing of the remains the same way as an amputated foot or arm. The same bill no forces women to purchase separate coverage for abortions that were once covered by their regular health plans. Regardless of how you feel about abortions most Americans understand that there are some medical circumstances involving either the health of the mother or the viability of the fetus where the only safe thing to do is to abort and now those mothers who haven’t recognized the need for a separate policy will be forced to pay for the procedure out of pocket.

All the purported advances in Kuempel’s missive simply distract from his failure to actually do something to improve the lives of his constituents or in some cases made them worse off. Texan’s whose homes suffered damage in the recent hurricane and haven’t filed a claim with their insurer yet lose some of their rights to compensation due to legislation he voted for. Texas has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world and no substantive action was taken to address it. I don’t think John Kuempel has much to be proud of, do you?

Published in the Seguin Gazette, September 29, 2017

Campbell wants to give discounts to wealthy parents

State Senator Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels) his introduced a bill she claims is aimed at addressing inadequate funding of public education in Texas by allowing state funds to pay $3,500 in tuition to private schools. One of the several problems with this concept, as documented in a study of a similar program in Minnesota, is that children from families are financially unable to take advantage of such a program even though they are the students most likely to attend poor performing schools. Low performing schools and districts are usually in low income areas where there isn’t a sufficient tax base to adequately fund public education needs. So parents are usually too poor to pay the difference between the state funds and the annual $10,000 to $25,000 tuition private schools charge.

This bill is really about providing a discount to parents already wealthy enough to send their children to private schools. Once enough better off parents are sending their children to private schools they may no longer care about the quality of public education or be willing to pay the necessary taxes to fund it.

All Campbell’s bill really does is broaden the gulf between the haves and the have nots.

Republicans again found to unconstitutionally under fund public education, it's time to do better

Once again the system Texas uses to fund public schools was found to violate the state's constitution by not providing enough money to school districts and failing to distribute it fairly. The situation is so bad even the conservative SCUC ISD Board of Trustees approved suing the state over the unjust funding formula.

What’s worse is that the same judge, John Dietz, found the system unconstitutional well before the last legislative session was over and yet state our Representative John Kuempel and state Senator Donna Campbell voted for it anyway.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott who as Attorney General is defending the state has again lost in court. Senators Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte, now running for governor and lieutenant governor, both worked hard to overcome resistance to adequately funding public education in the legislature.

On November 4th we’ll elect our state leaders, I’ll be voting for people who have shown they believe in public education and are willing to work hard to invest in our kids futures. I hope you will too.

Why am I a liberal?

I’m a married, straight, middle aged, white male living in the suburbs, the product of 12 years of Catholic schools so you might expect me to be a conservative and yet I’m a liberal; not a neo-liberal but a New Deal/Great Society liberal.

I’m a liberal because I believe that public education is what made this nation great and helped win WWII as well as the peace that followed it. I believe that every child no matter how poor or broken the home or how poor a community they come from deserves a decent education. I believe quality education makes for more productive workforce and a happier, healthier life.

I’m a liberal because I believe that the criminal justice system should be even handed with rich and poor. I believe that justice isn’t just about punishment it’s also about healing the community. I believe that while the death penalty may make you think “they got what they deserved” that penalty has been dealt out to those who were innocent and even when meted out to those who were guilty it only served to harm that person’s family.

I’m a liberal because I believe in economic fairness including fair pay for all, women should be paid the same as men when they do the same job. I believe that everyone who works a full time job deserves a living wage and access to medical care for their family. I believe that farm workers and domestic workers deserve the same minimum wage and job protections as everyone else.

I’m a liberal because I believe our society is rich enough that we as a nation are responsible for seeing to it that no child goes unfed or with medical conditions untreated.

I’m a liberal because I believe the best way to restore and maintain this nation’s economy is to have a full employment policy so that when market demand for labor is low our government puts people to work either directly or through infrastructure improvement projects. I believe that shared prosperity is the only sustainable prosperity.

I’m a liberal because I believe in inclusiveness and human rights so I support marriage equality since every human has a fundamental right to love whom they choose. I believe in immigration reform because every human has a right to earn a living and care for their families. No one should worry that they’ll lose their job if the boss finds out they’re gay or an atheist.

I’m a liberal because I believe that it’s none of the government’s business what anyone does in their own home or to their own body so jailing someone for smoking marijuana or restricting a woman’s right to control her own body is out of the question.

I’m a liberal because I believe in community, we all do better when we work together instead of stepping on others in a race to get "ahead". I support expanding Medicaid because like public education it is good for everyone, healthy students learn more, healthy employees are more productive and all that saves money in the long run.

I’m a liberal because I believe that making war is too often done for the profit of a wealthy few and not the welfare of the many either in this country or in the nation that is the battlefield. I believe that if we do make war then our troops deserve not only our respect but also the finest medical care available whether they are wounded physically or mentally.

I’m a liberal because I believe that in a democracy government is nothing more or less than the organized will of the people. Government is there to insure that those people are not taken advantage of whether through outright fraud or abusing the commons.

I’m a liberal because I believe in protecting the environment that humans and our society have adapted to. Being green doesn't cost jobs by raising costs, it actually creates jobs and saves money as well as leaving a better world for all our children. I believe that as the nation that creates the most green house gases per capita we have an obligation to lead by example and significantly reduce our emissions before asking others to do so especially developing nations like India.

In short I’m a proud liberal because I believe it is everyone’s responsibility to make our world a better place and I accept my share of that responsibility. Do you?

Kuempel throws local school districts under the bus - Again!

State Representative John Kuempel continued to attack public education by actively participating in the witch hunt that killed CSCOPE thereby costing many school districts in the state money as they will now need to develop their own individual curricula instead of sharing resources with all other districts. Superintendent Burnie Roper of Lackland ISD called the claims of anti-Americanism in CSCOPE “ridiculous.” Given that Lackland ISD serves many children from the sprawling airbase I doubt Roper’s anything less than a patriot.

Shortly after the vote Thomas Ratliff, Republican member of the State Board of Education, issued a press release that said in part “With the elimination of CSCOPE, the amount of resources and human capital required to develop curriculum for those 875 districts just multiplied because they are all on their own again.  This is the very duplication of effort and waste of taxpayer dollars that CSCOPE had solved, at least before today.”

Last session Kuempel disregarded pleas from constituents and local school board members who urged him to protect funding for public education and instead voted to cut public education funding by $5 billion.

Once again Kuempel has thrown the school districts in HD 44 under the bus telling them to find the resources to replace the service CSCOPE had provided them without fully restoring funding to prior levels. Local control means that each independent school district had the choice to use CSCOPE or not, with this vote Kuempel and those who supported this witch hunt have removed that option.