Saturday, February 28, 2009

Gromer Jeffers, Jr.

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus said Friday that he was hopeful that the Legislature will approve a bill to bring a University of North Texas law school to downtown Dallas.

During a taping of WFAA-TV's Inside Politics, Straus said Dallas-area lawmakers are in key positions to help get a bill through the House.

"I hope so," the San Antonio Republican said about whether a UNT law school bill would pass the House. "I hope we make progress. We almost made the necessary progress in the last session."

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Tawnell D. Hobbs, Dave Levinthal and Gromer Jeffers, Jr.

Some city and state leaders are calling the possibility that Mayor Tom Leppert could take over the Dallas school district a long shot, though he is still not discussing whether he has considered it.

"That would be a dramatic change from governance models we've had in Texas," said Dan Branch, R-Dallas, co-chairman of the Dallas delegation to the Legislature.

Branch said no area lawmakers are expected to file bills to give the mayor control of the district. He added that the delegation is looking to Superintendent Michael Hinojosa and a new chief financial officer to get things fixed at DISD.

Posted on Monday, February 23

By Clay Robison

AUSTIN — Speaker Joe Straus, a Republican who owes his recent promotion to a large bloc of House Democrats, practiced bipartisanship even before his ouster of Tom Craddick.

Although a lifelong Republican of the traditional, country club genre (as opposed to the more-rabid social conservatives who now control the Texas GOP), Straus has in the past voted for Democrats for selected offices and presumably will do so in the future.

"He has voted for a few," spokeswoman Angela Hale said. "It's a matter of looking at the ballot and voting for the best person."

February 22, 2009

Marlena Hartz

Morris News Service

Texas needs to overhaul its failing higher education system - which isn't adequately reaching its fastest-growing population, Hispanics - to avoid a downward spiral in quality of life and economic competitiveness, according to a new government-commissioned report meant to inspire legislative action.

Some of the report's antidotes include outreach programs for Hispanic parents; changing the state's higher education funding formula to reward institutions for graduation rather than enrollment rates; creating a fund to establish more tier-one universities; and amending the top 10 percent rule, which gives high school graduates in the top 10 percent of their class automatic admittance to the public university of their choice.

Posted on Saturday, February 21, 2009

By Gordon Dickson

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State lawmakers are filing bills again to toughen rules of the road, including proposals to crack down on cellphone use and drunken driving.

It has become a biennial tradition of sorts in Austin to debate driver behavior issues, such as whether police in Texas should be allowed to set up sobriety checkpoints, or whether drivers with first-time alcohol offenses should have to install interlocking breath testing devices in their cars.

But this year, supporters and critics say many of these bills stand a better chance than ever of passing. Texas is one of a handful of states that don't do checkpoints, and there's talk at the federal level of requiring states to strengthen driver safety laws to qualify for future federal grants.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Dallas-area lawmakers in the Texas House are pleased with their committee assignments. They now lead three of the "big four" committees and hold a key chairmanship of the critical Higher Education panel.

While these legislators still have their chests stuck out, it's a good time to find out what they are going to do for their constituents.

Several area legislators provided one key accomplishment they hope to achieve by the end of the session.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Texas's complex school finance laws are what you would expect from a system that has been cobbled together in response to changes over the years. The thing has become so darn unfathomable that most of us have no idea what the various formulas, weights and lingo mean.

But we can know this: It is ludicrous for the state to have a system where students in three of Texas' largest cities come from "wealthy" districts that are eligible for the state to take some of their money and give it to poor districts -- when, get this, the majority of the students in those big cities come from poor families themselves.

I doubt this is what legislators had in mind when they created a share-the-wealth wrinkle in the school funding system 15 years ago, But that's the crazy case today, or is about to be the case, unless the Legislature makes some changes.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The sight was encouraging: Local and state elected officials of both parties standing shoulder to shoulder in support of legislation to build out the region's transit network and upgrade the grid of roads and bridges.

Such was the scene at Monday's announcement of the newly filed Texas Local Option Transportation Act. Passage by the Legislature would permit county elections on new taxes and fees so North Texas could pursue the long-sought goal of rail expansion. Dallas and the other 12 DART cities could choose other transportation improvements.

The local-state show of support was far different from the 2007 lawmaking session. Some lawmakers then gave only grudging lip-service to the rail plan; others were hostile or resentful that local officials had pushed them to support the ambitious project.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Respect from new speaker

North Texas came away with committee assignments from new House Speaker Joe Straus as befits an economic powerhouse of 6.5 million people. The new clout is concentrated in key committee chairmanships held by Reps. Burt Solomons of Carrollton (State Affairs), Jim Pitts of Waxahachie (Appropriations) and Brian McCall of Plano (Calendars). One other cause for North Texas optimism is Rep. Dan Branch's appointment to chair Higher Education. That bodes well for the region's ambition to boost the research prowess of state universities. North Texas is overdue for a Top Tier school on par with a Texas A&M or a UT-Austin.