AUSTIN — A House spending blueprint for Texas that would buy down local school property taxes, freeze state college tuition for two years, give retired teachers their first cost of living adjustment in 19 years and begin installing air conditioning in 30 prison units won tentative approval Thursday from the Appropriations panel.
What might have been a festive occasion — budget writers have an unprecedented amount of money to spread around this year — turned somber when the usually decorous Appropriations Committee wrangled over a proposed cutoff of any funds for diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state colleges and universities.
On a party-line vote of 16-10, Republicans turned back Democrats’ impassioned pleas for removal of Dripping Springs GOP Rep. Carrie Isaac’s provision.
The committee’s budget bill, more than 1,000 pages, now goes to the printer. A final vote by the panel is expected next week, with a House floor debate expected April 5-6.
As filed in January, both the House and the Senate’s base budgets would spend $130.1 billion of state discretionary money known as “general revenue.”
But Comptroller Glenn Hegar forecast the current cycle will end this summer with a record cash balance in the general fund. With steady growth of the economy and revenue in the next two years, the amounts of money on the table before lawmakers became breath-taking. In Hegar’s words, “astonishing.”
The base budgets spent $43.6 billion less general revenue than allowed by a “pay-as-you-go limit” Texas voters adopted in the 1940s. That’s in addition to $27.1 billion expected to build up in the state’s “rainy day fund” by Aug. 31, 2025.
On Thursday, how much general revenue the House budget would spend wasn’t available, though it appeared to be at least $136 billion. But even that figure obscured reality, after the House panel used the last $5.4 billion of federal COVID-19 relief money for states to pay for prison system salaries
“The recommendations that you have made are going to make some very lasting, generational investments for the people of this state in education, in tax relief, in infrastructure,” committee Chairman Greg Bonnen told his colleagues.
The Friendswood Republican said budget writers are blessed “to be here at a time when we have a really unique opportunity in Texas history to do some things that some of us who have been here a little while haven’t otherwise had the resources to do.”
The House would cut school property taxes with $17 billion — $12 billion of it new tax rate decreases — and add $5 billion for public schools. Whether that’s for the “basic allotment,” the main component of state school aid, or teacher pay, school safety or transportation hasn’t been decided.
Bonnen said House Bill 1 would add more than $3 billion to current spending, across multiple agencies, on mental health and behavioral health. Part of that is completion of a new state mental hospital in Dallas.
Contingent on passage of a separate bill, $3.5 billion more would be spent on retired teachers.
Bonnen noted there would be a cost of living increase for thousands of retired teachers, with those who retired before 2004 getting a 6% increase, those who retired before 2014 a 4% raise and those who retired before 2021 a 2% adjustment. Retirees who are 70 years old or older would receive a supplemental payment of $5,000.
He also touted how $350 million would be added for flood mitigation, $650 million to revamp state funding of community colleges and additional money will flow to foster care providers.
The House budget would provide $343.8 million to install prison air conditioning. A lack of it has caused lawsuits and deaths.
Luis Soberon of the think tank Texas 2036 said it would bring cooling to about one-third of the Department of Criminal Justice’s prison beds, “dramatically improving both the living conditions of incarcerated Texans and the working conditions of the TDCJ staff that serve them.”
In a “supplemental” appropriations bill that will plug holes in the budget passed last session, and also be on the House floor early next month, $3.5 billion would be earmarked for a new higher education endowment that initially would help the Texas Tech and University of Houston systems. Others left out of the Permanent University Fund, which helps the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems, could become eligible in the future.
Fight over ‘diversity, equity, inclusion’
The diversity, equity and inclusion rider that was approved says it’s the Legislature’s intent that no money be used for DEI-type “practices or similar programs, including personnel, training or activities” on state college and university campuses.
Several Republican members of the committee said that nationwide, DEI efforts in higher education have promoted left-wing ideologies and encouraged racial division. They offered no in-state examples.
Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, said the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act opened doors to racial and ethnic minorities that were for too long shuttered.
“Our concern with DEI as it’s being used across the United States is this, it’s that we feel like it undoes much of that,” said Toth, a member of the staunchly conservative Texas Freedom Caucus.
Houston Democratic Rep. Armando Walle, though, said that as the first member of his Mexican American immigrant family to graduate from college, he resents suggestions that efforts to increase minority representation on campus are suspect.
“All that does is sow doubt into my [two] sons and many children that have diverse backgrounds,” said Walle, who has a law degree and represents the Northside and Aldine communities in north Harris County.
Dallas Democratic Rep. Toni Rose said lawmakers “should study, to see how DEI programs work,” before rushing to cut off their state funding.
“Instead of making these political decisions, I wish people would come here to govern — not get re-elected,” she said.
Though committee members debated her provision for nearly 45 minutes, Isaac, a freshman, didn’t speak.
Education budget subcommittee chairman Gary VanDeaver, a Republican who was superintendent of the New Boston Independent School District before winning a House seat in Northeast Texas in 2014, defended the rider.
“We have reports that these principles are being used to promote an ideology that, to be frank with you, is concerning to many of us,” he said.
College tuition freeze
The House adds $1 billion requested by chancellors of six state university systems. They said they would freeze tuition and fees for all undergraduates for two years if lawmakers coughed up the cash.
It would help with advising, tutoring and mental health services for students. Also, universities would get more formula funding, money for employee health insurance and support for providing free tuition to qualifying Texas military veterans and their families.
Financial aid program won’t serve all
TEXAS Grants, the primary way the state helps students from low- and moderate-income families to afford college, would continue to be funded.
According to the Higher Education Coordinating Board, which runs the aid program, a projected 71% of eligible students received TEXAS Grants in fiscal 2022, the highest percentage in eight years.
House budget writers granted an exceptional item requested by the board that added $100 million for TEXAS Grants in the next two-year cycle. The bill introduced in January had $950 million. The board said in its requested budget last fall that it needed the extra $100 million to “maintain the percentage of students served … at 2022-23 levels.”
New DMV title office for Dallas
Under the House panel’s budget, the Department of Motor Vehicles would receive money it sought to open and staff a second North Texas office for vehicle title replacements and title history searches. The one in Carrollton is overwhelmed, like one in Houston, which also would get a second regional service center.
At the Dallas and Houston centers, walk-in customers and phone calls from vehicle owners and county tax assessor-collector staff members “routinely exceed capacity, resulting in significantly increased customer wait times,” the department said in a budget request last fall.
Budget writers granted $3.5 million. Each of the two new centers would have four employees.
The Carrollton center on East Beltline Road serves seven counties. Last year, it served 147,000 customers, up 46% from fiscal 2016.
In an email, department spokeswoman Wendy Cook noted it is not convenient for residents in the south and southeast areas of Dallas. A second location in the southern area would improve customer service as well as be more more convenient, she said.
Dallas state psychiatric hospital
In the supplemental bill, the state would make a final $101.9 million contribution toward completing construction of the adult unit of the Texas Behavioral Health Center at UT Southwestern in Dallas. Ground was broken for it in December. A private donation will supply the $75 million needed to build the children’s unit.
In recent years, state mental hospitals have been completed or renovated in all of the state’s major metro counties. The closest to Dallas was in Terrell, 45 minutes to the east.
In fiscal 2025, the House budget would provide $68.5 million “for workforce development, early clinician recruitment and recruitment incentives for clinicians” at the new hospital, which is in Dallas’ Medical District.
CORRECTION, 2:10 p.m., March 17: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the Texas House panel’s proposed budget would bring air conditioning to about one-third of the Department of Criminal Justice’s prison units. It should have said the plan would bring cooling to about one-third of the department’s beds.
