Local
Austin City Council Member Proposes New Budget Plan That Avoids Raising Property Taxes
The city manager’s proposed budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year would increase property taxes by 5.7 percent.
Austin’s Four Points Residents Concerned Over New Homeless Encampment
Homeless encampments continue to pose problems in Austin.
Keller ISD Backs Down, Allows Students with Pro-Trump Parking Spot Art to Repaint
After being instructed to erase art depicting the former president, students may now repaint their parking spots.
Sex Abuse Victim’s Mom Scorches Lorena ISD School Board
Amanda Gilmore said, “There’s a special place in Hell” for defenders of Lorena Primary Principal April Jewell.
Local Archive
Campus Carry needs your push now!
Texans finally achieved a House of Representatives floor vote on campus carry Saturday and it passed! You can see Rep. Allen Fletcher’s HB 972 and amendments here. Now to trouble in the state senate; Senator Whitmire (D-Houston), a past strong supporter of campus...
House Ways and Means Needs to Act on CAB Bills
Local government debt is a problem. Every time someone says that, a well-meaning local politician from a small town appears, waving his hand in the air to get your attention. "Not here!" he says, urgently. "Not in our town!" Maybe not, in his town. But local...
Clock Ticking Against Transparency
It has been noted far and wide that the Texas House is moving slower than molasses in January this session. Here we are, mid-April, and the House calendar for Thursday, April 18 features just 7 second-reading bills and 7 third-reading bills - though many, many more...
Too Many Holes To Fill
In my two-and-a-half year odyssey through state government, the forces for more programs, more regulations, more laws, and more agencies never cease to amaze. Every day in Austin, lobbyists and special interest groups show up in my office, on my cell phone, and in my...
Session’s Big Gambling Bill Introduced – SJR 64
Sneaky, sneaky. Though the bill filing deadline has passed and the real work of session is in full swing, Senator John Carona (R-Dallas) managed to get permission to file SJR 64, a constitutional amendment to create the Texas Gaming Commission and authorizing casino...
Texas Senate cowardly on term limits bill
The Texas Senate passed, in a 27 to 4 vote, a term limits proposal that if passed by the House would go to a public Constitutional Amendment vote. Senator Kevin Eltife of Tyler defended criticism of his bill by saying “his bill doesn’t leave it to the Legislature to...
Funding Waste in Higher Ed
The State of Texas isn’t the only government entity using your money for venture capital schemes. The University of Texas now spends millions of public dollars “investing” in student start-up companies. Since 2011, the University of Texas has been using public dollars...
Medicaid Mousetrap
My granddad often told me, "There's always free cheese in a mousetrap." Those words have never rung more true than with Medicaid expansion. I can't help but think Texas is being lured by "free" federal dollars into expanding Medicaid. Mousetraps don't work out well...
Hilderbran goes soft on tax reform
TX Budget CompactI was saddened to see Rep. Harvey Hilderbran go soft on phasing out the state’s horrible business tax known as the margins-tax. Hilderbran, who is chairman of the House Ways & Means committee, appeared on Pratt on Texas at the start of the 83rd...