Education & Affordable Housing
School Finance Reform Bills Dead for Now
By Scott O. Shaffer
Jul 20, 2005, 21:20

School finance reform, for now, is all but dead.

Baring a miracle during the last four hours of the first special session of this 79th Texas Legislature July 20, neither House bill dealing with school finance reform will be passed.

The House had yet to begin considering the final conference committee version of the spending bill (“HB 2”) or the tax bill (“HB 3”) by 7:30 p.m.

The Senate began debate on the spending bill earlier in the evening with an aggressive grilling of Senator Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, by Senators John Whitmire, D-Houston, Senator Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, and Senator Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin.

Whitmire earlier in the day had suggested that he might filibuster the bills in the Senate to insure their defeat. As of mid-evening, that had not become necessary.

Both bills have to be debated and passed, by both houses within four and a half hours for the Gov. Perry to claim victory. During the past twenty-nine days, neither the House nor Senate have been able to agree on how to change education spending or how to pay for the changes.

The likelihood that they will reach agreement before deadline, or that Perry will get to making any kind of victory speech anytime soon is remote.

Recent disagreements over the proposed tax plan that “swaps” lower property taxes for homeowners in return for higher sales taxes appear to have wounded the school finance reform proposals during the last days of the session.

Anger about rich school districts having significantly greater per-student funding than poorer schools appeared to be finishing the job of killing the chances of any agreement in the Senate by mid-evening.

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