Something to file away as we prep for a look at the Texas budget, and the budgetary process.
The Texas House’s chief budget writer has filed five bills that could
constitute the “supplemental appropriations” package. Once upon a time,
the supplemental was one bill that tweaked spending in the second
fiscal year of the current two-year budget — in the same session in
which lawmakers would write the next two-year budget.
In recent sessions, though, budget writers made things very hard to
follow. Some supplemental bills spend money across all three fiscal
years, while one passed in 2011 actually cut more spending than it
added. You couldn’t just look at the supplemental bill to see how they
closed out the cycle about to end.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, you might say, is keeping us on our toes.
This year, he has introduced a five-bill, supplemental package. It
actually goes beyond mere spending, or appropriating of money: Some of
the bills would undo accounting tricks and tax-collection speed ups that
lawmakers approved last session. They did those things to avert making
deeper spending cuts as they bridged a two-year, $27 billion budget
shortfall.
We should note that this year, the GOP legislative leaders are
remarkably eager to “re-set the gimmicks.” For instance, they’re
stopping a school-payment delay before it happens. When last used in
2003, lawmakers waited for four years of economic recovery before opting
to re-set the gimmick for future use. Gimmick intolerance probably
plays into some Republican leaders’ apparent strategy of not rewarding
school districts that have sued the state over school finance by undoing
$5.3 billion of school cuts passed in 2011.
The story then looks into those bills.
