Most Tuesday mornings, the Texas Minute—our weekday email publication—includes the One-Click Survey. It’s almost always a question about policy or politics, oftentimes tinged with a bit of humor. We ask readers to not only “click” an answer, but to then reply with...
Deck Starts to Shuffle and Opportunity Emerges for Texas Conservatives Every election cycle provides an opportunity to reshuffle the proverbial deck of lawmakers in the Texas Legislature. This cycle will be no different, with the addition of the potential to replace...
UPDATED September 22 to show property tax relief added to the third special session agenda. A plan to buy down Texans’ school property taxes using surplus money in the state budget advanced in the Texas Senate for the second time this year, and may emerge stronger...
A state lawmaker shakeup is coming to Denton County next year. Voters in the North Texas county will fill at least three, and possibly four, open state legislative seats in 2022. Earlier this month, longtime State Sen. Jane Nelson (R–Flower Mound) announced she will...
This article was updated to include a statement by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. On Monday, State Sen. Jane Nelson announced that she will not seek re-election to the Texas Senate. Nelson currently represents Texas Senate District 12, which includes parts of Denton and...
Update: State Sen. Larry Taylor (R–Friendswood) and State Rep. Lyle Larson (R–San Antonio) confirmed to the Dallas Morning News that they were among the lawmakers in attendance. While citizens are being told to stay home and contend with shutdowns and mandates in...
A leading lawmaker has announced the state budget process will require every agency to utilize zero-based budgeting in the wake of a projected shortfall due to the Chinese coronavirus and government-ordered shutdowns that have devastated the Texas economy. “As I meet...
Tarrant County taxpayers can feel some pride about the scores earned by some delegates they sent to Austin in the 2019 Fiscal Responsibility Index, but they may have some serious concerns about others. The most anti-taxpayer representatives from Tarrant County were...
In the final days of the legislative session, lawmakers were hustling to reach a compromise on legislation to expand the eligibility of a corporate welfare program. But because they couldn’t stop bickering over which cronies should get the cash, the bill suffered...
This article has been updated since its original publishing. Controversial legislation designed to create the “Texas Mental Health Care Consortium” was killed in the Texas House Tuesday evening on procedural grounds, if only for a few hours. Senate Bill 10 by State...
In yet another slap in the face to the taxpayers who elected them, the Texas Senate voted on Tuesday to approve a budget that grows state spending beyond Texans’ ability to pay for it. And not a single senator objected. When the Senate Finance Committee, led by State...
A bill to raise the age for purchasing tobacco products was voted out of the Senate State Affairs Committee on Monday by the narrow margin of 5-4. Authored by the committee’s chairman State Sen. Joan Huffman (R–Houston), the bill passed with the support of both...
Unlike the Texas Senate’s robust homestead exemption plan from 2015—which the Texas House watered down before passing—the upper chamber of the Texas Legislature is now proposing a failed approach that would not provide permanent tax relief. Perhaps the most...
Three major items have now been heard in the Texas Senate, and three times lawmakers have unanimously bucked taxpayers and voted for bigger government. The latest example is Wednesday’s action approving a $6 billion supplemental budget. Senate Bill 500 by State...
In every session the Texas Legislature passes a supplemental budget to cover shortfalls from the previous biennium. This session, the supplemental bill proposed by the Senate includes numerous expenditures out of the Economic Stabilization Fund to cover ongoing...
With just 84 days left in the 140-day legislative session, the Texas Senate has passed its first piece of legislation. No, it’s not property tax reform, ending taxpayer-funded lobbying, or any other legislative priority of the Republican Party of Texas. Instead, the...
Nearly $4 billion. That’s the current price tag of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s proposal to increase public school teachers’ annual salaries by $5,000 across the board, a proposal before the Texas Senate in the form of State Sen. Jane Nelson’s (R-Flower Mound) Senate Bill 3...
Classroom teachers and school administrators found themselves at opposite ends Monday as the Texas Senate Finance Committee considered teacher pay raises. Senate Bill 3, filed by State Sen. Jane Nelson (R–Flower Mound), would give every teacher in Texas a permanent...
When Gov. Greg Abbott gave his State of the State address earlier this month, he prioritized increasing teacher pay, telling lawmakers, “We must provide incentives to put effective teachers in the schools and classrooms where they are needed the most.” Now one...
This session, lawmakers will have record revenues at their disposal to either grow spending, provide tax relief, or both. New legislation with a big price tag aims to address a problem that lawmakers have done a subpar job of detailing for taxpayers. Following Gov....
