THE 3rd CALLED SPECIAL SESSION OF THE 79th LEGISLATURE

Madden Report April 26th - Activities for the first week of the Special Session

I want to thank all our readers in advance for their support, kind words, and interest in the work of the Texas Legislature.

The Special Session opened Monday at 2 PM. Late in the morning Gov Perry issued his call for the legislature. This is very important because under the Texas Constitution we are able only to hear and work on legislation that fits within the call of the Governor. For this session it is equally important to understand what is not in the call at this time. What can happen and we have been told may happen is that if we succeed in meeting the items in the call that when they are completed the Governor may open the call to other issues. The items in the call include property tax reduction, the development of a business margin tax and the elimination of the current franchise tax, increasing taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products, a tax on motor vehicle sales which would also include a tax on the difference between a book and sales price on an automobile, and appropriations of funds to the Texas Education Agency.

The legislature will use some of the time in session to conduct hearing on what we have as Interim Charges. Those are areas the Speaker or Lt Gov have instructed us to study between the 79th and 80th session of the legislature to prepare legislation for the 2007 session. My schedule Monday included meetings with various groups interested in corrections, probation, and prison programs. This is very appropriate since I chair the committee on Corrections. The Governor also hosted a dinner at the Governor's mansion for all legislators where he had members of the Sharp Commission present and we talked about the proposals before the legislature.

Also on Monday legislators began filing bills with 5 bills filed in the House that specifically deal with the items in the Governor's call. Since all tax bills must start in the House per the Texas Constitution these are the bills that would be worked on to implement the Perry Sharp proposals. The House decided to split the legislation into separate bills so that by our rules they could be very limited in their nature and not draw the risk of changes that would either detract from the Governor's call or make the bills unconstitutional and lead to their defeat on a technicality. I will say that I sensed the willingness of many members to put partisanship and differences aside and work hard on the critical bills.

Personally Tuesday was a day of hearings for me and for the members of my subcommittee on Education of the Corrections Committee. We had two charges to work on both dealing with education. In the morning we met with the full House Committee on Education and heard testimony about the Alternative Education Programs in our schools. There are problems with these programs and we heard many of them. We also heard from at least one of the programs in one school district that is doing well. This hearing was interrupted for about an hour for the daily session of the Legislature. We heard from some groups that are concerned our alternative education programs are becoming open highways into the Criminal Justice system. We also heard from our Juvenile Probation Department about our Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program. The difference is that the JJAEPS are used for youths in trouble with the law that have been expelled from existing school systems, while District Alternative Education Programs are run by the local school districts to handle children removed from the classroom for various reasons. The original purpose of the DAEPs was to make the classroom a better place for overall learning by removing disruptive kids and also trying to work on their behavior and learning problems.

At the House session the main item was the referral of bills to the committees with the important tax bills all being sent to the Ways and Means Committee.

In the Afternoon my Education Subcommittee had a very interesting hearing on the Windham School. Windham is the state school responsible for education in the prisons. We looked at its operation and were very interested in how the appropriations for Windham were treated. We heard testimony from Teachers Retirement System, the Interim Director of the Windham School, the Legislative Budget Board, The Chairman of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Board, and Inmate Family Association Representatives.

I also spent time on Tuesday meeting with several groups associated with corrections, several groups talking about tax reform issues, and with the representatives of ATT about new programs coming to the district.

Wednesday was a day of hearings for the Ways and Means Committee. They voted out of Committee House Bills 1 and 2 which are part of the tax proposal. I will talk in detail about the bills in the next Madden Report coming out this weekend.

On Wednesday the House Committee on Corrections visited 2 of our Juvenile Justice Facilities where we incarcerate Juvenile offenders. The two facilities were in Brownwood and San Saba. We had heard testimony in our previous oversite hearings about problems in the TYC facilities particularly San Saba. These visits were extremely educational and eye-opening. I could go into great detail about these visits but they will be talked about in our committee reports that come out later this fall. Needless to say we are working with many groups to help insure better facilities, working conditions, better conditions for the youth in the facility, and programmatic changes in our youth programs. You will be hearing about some of them soon.

Thursday was a day spent mostly in working behind the scenes. There was a lot going on and the biggest news was the Ways and Means Committee passed out HB3, HB4 and HB5. This means we will have those bills placed on a Calendar for Monday. We started to review all that was in and not in the bills. HB3 is the most important of the 3. It is the Sharp business tax proposal. More about the bill in our next Madden Report.

Thursday I met with several advocacy groups on youth and families that are incarcerated. We had some very good discussions and they made some excellent suggestions which we will work on. We also worked on a piece of legislation on textbooks. We know there had been a lot of differences on the technology portions of the legislation worked on in the past special sessions and I am trying to work out some compromises between members of the State Board of Education, textbook publishers, and other education groups plus technology providers. We may have something to offer if this subject comes up later in the session and if not we are working on something for the next general session in January.

I also met the new Probation Department Head for Dallas County and we discussed the Probation Bill we are working on plus other changes we are looking at on funding for Probation Departments and also the changes we may need to make to get the bill we had last session passed. We also talked about possible other programs like SAFEP and after care for drug cases and we discussed Drug Courts.

Friday morning the Republican Caucus met early and discussed the Calendar rules for the debate on the tax bills. Those rules were very important since we did not want to bring up for debate items clearly outside the Governor's call. We also want to make sure the tax payers get the property tax cuts we are promising and that the bills contain the language necessary to meet the Supreme Court requirements for property taxes and for meaningful discretion for the districts. Also there are some rules we normally do to help the bill authors see and understand amendments before they are debated so that we can understand if they are bad, good, OK, or of little consequence. We decided to support the rules recommendations. This vote was taken on the house floor Friday morning and the Calendar rules were passed. Some members, mostly Democrats wanted to have more items to discuss in the appropriations area but allowing that to come up would have meant we were not sending the money as promised to the court requirement or to property tax reduction. Passage of these rules is a pretty good indicator we should have the votes to pass the property tax cut, the sending of future tax revenues to property tax reduction and should be able to pass something like the Sharp Perry plan on the elimination of the franchise tax and the business tax recommendation probably with some modifications.

Friday afternoon I got to come home and spend some time here in Plano. I did work on the bills this weekend and will be going back to Austin early to continue that work and to give the welcoming remarks Sunday to a UT Conference on Outside Reviews of Prison Activities which is bringing worldwide experts to Austin next week.

Also one thing that came up early Friday is a possible attempt to change the language in the property tax buy down bill HB1 which would cause the local enrichment in rich districts like Plano to be subject to recall. I had been one of 14 legislators who in the last special asked for and in the House got a cap on the total recapture percentage from any district. Rep Branch of Dallas had led this effort and we supported it then. Friday morning we signed a letter that said it was critical that HB1 not be changed. We must insist that local districts like Plano have the necessary discretion to use local enrichment for their students. Failure to keep this in the bill will result in Plano and other wealthier districts not being given full access to the local enrichment allowed currently in the bill and I would suggest would make it almost impossible for the Plano district to get voter approval for any local enrichment. I do not think if the voters thought their local enrichment was not going for their children in Plano that they would support any tax increase for local enrichment and that therefore Plano would not have the necessary meaningful discretion required by the Supreme Court. I signed the letter to that effect early Friday about 4 hours before Dr Otto called and asked me to sign it. We clearly recognize that is a horrible amendment if it should pass.

I appreciate everyone's interest and a Madden Report on the tax bills will follow soon.

Jerry Madden