Not one cent of rainy day fund used despite critical situation for schools. – By a vote of 20 to 11 in the Senate and 97 to 53 in the House on Saturday evening, the Texas 82nd Regular Legislature passed a 2012-2013 budget that makes deep, unnecessary cuts in public education, higher education, health care, and other basic public services. With more than $6 billion available in the Rainy Day Fund, the legislative majorities chose to leave that money untouched rather than use it as intended to keep a short-term funding shortfall from causing long-term damage. They also chose not to address the state’s rickety tax structure, which (thanks to deliberate decisions going back to 2006 and beyond) does not generate the revenue needed to pay for public schools as promised.
The adverse impact of these decisions will be felt in many ways. School districts will receive $4 billion less in state aid, a cut of about $400 a year per pupil, than current law would require in the coming biennium. Another $1 billion plus will disappear for such valuable programs as the state’s grant program for high-quality, full-day pre-kindergarten, which is entirely eliminated. Almost entirely gone is state funding for students at risk of failing high-stakes tests—the so-called Student Success Initiative. For the first time in living memory, the state under this budget betrays its commitment to fund the cost of enrollment growth of 80,000-plus pupils per year. The cumulative impact of all these cuts easily could translate into the loss of 40,000 or more jobs in public education.
The budget passed Saturday chops more than $1 billion from higher education, including a cut in student financial aid that will leave as many as 43,000 college students empty-handed. The bill reduces spending on health care as well, to the detriment of elderly and disabled Texans in particular. Overall, this budget shrinks state spending $15 billion below the 2010-2011 level.
This budget in large part simply shifts costs to the local level or to the next biennium. School districts now may well have to seek local tax-rate increases in order to avoid damaging layoffs and program cuts. This budget deliberately underestimates the cost of Medicaid by a whopping $4.8 billion, and the legislature will have to come up with that money or drastically curtail benefits in 2013.
Texas already ranked 44th among the states in per-pupil funding before this budget and 49th in percentage of high-school graduates.
In the House, 96 of the 101 Republicans voted for this bill, but 48 out of 49 Democrats voted against it. In the Senate, every one of the 19 Republicans voted for this awful budget, but 11 of the 12 Democrats voted against it.
Like the Alamo, this battle was lost because the people that care about Texan’s futures were outnumbered. Texans should remember what happened on this date and at the next, and every subsequent election, Texans should go to the polls chanting, “Remember the 82nd!”
Regards,
Jim
Andy Hailey