April 14, 2014      1:50 PM
HK: How many special sessions to pass the next budget?
Finding a governing coalition after previous budget maneuvers could be tough
Whether
true or not, the endorsement of Dan
Patrick by both incumbent Senator Bob
Deuell and Texans for Lawsuit Reform have been
taken by many in the capitol community as
the last word on the viability of a Dewhurst
re-election. Given the even longer-shot
nature of the Democrats’ winning the Lt. Governor’s race, war-gaming for next
session has already begun
The
only thing the Legislature must do is pass a budget. Call it armchair speculation, but even more
than a year away, it is not unreasonable to speculate that it will take multiple
special sessions to hammer out a budget.
Senator Patrick’s performance on state budgets has been erratic and
while Tea Party interests may dominate a mid-term primary election runoff, they
are minor players in the state’s trillion dollar economy and twenty-five
million residents.
The
state’s budget is perhaps the most daunting task facing any Legislature. It requires good faith negotiation and buy-in
from myriad constituencies. The appropriators have to negotiate competing interests
– those both on camera and off.
In
his freshman session, Patrick angered his colleagues by handing out several
pages of proposed cuts he claimed the Finance Committee could have made…as the
bill was coming to the floor. The anger
was generated not because it threatened passage of a session’s worth of work
but because it was seen as an effort to capture the narrative. Civilians outside the Capitol would see the
proposed cuts and remain clueless that they were introduced too late to be
considered or had already been rejected.
By Harvey Kronberg
|