Property Tax Reform & School Finance Reform have begun moving as weve entered the home stretch
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas With one month to go in session budget negotiations are ongoing and Property Tax Reform & School Finance Reform have begun moving again in their respective House & Senate Committees. With only two weeks remaining for House bills to make it out of our chamber floor calendars will get even longer and our days on the floor will start hitting the 12-hour mark on a regular basis.
From a personal perspective two more of our bills (HB 3329 and HB 3671) successfully made their way out of the House this week.
Additionally a couple more of our bills are scheduled to be heard on the House Floor HB 3950 (Creating a Child Welfare Task Force) and HB 2764 (Foster Care Training Requirement Bill).
These two are set on the calendar for Monday and Tuesday.
From a statewide perspective the biggest bill to move this week was SB 12 which invests over $1.1 billion into the Teachers Retirement System to shore up its financial solvency as well as provide an additional check to retired teachers. The most contentious bill debated on the House floor was HB 1585 the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) Sunset bill a bill that dictates who can sell alcohol to whom and when they can sell it.
If you think legislators can argue about taxes water and roads you should see the debate over alcohol.
Finally a preview for the upcoming week. We expect property tax reform to be debated on Tuesday. It also wouldnt shock me if the House votes on over 300 bills next week as we will likely be meeting into the weekend.
Providing Financial Stability for the Teachers Retirement System
This past week the House addressed longstanding financial stability for the Teachers Retirement System by passing SB 12. The primary purpose of the bill is to fully fund our long-term commitments to our retired teachers by increasing the state contribution rate from 6.8 of active teachers salaries to 8.8 over the next five years.
There had been growing concern about whether or not the TRS fund was actuarially sound. Actuarial soundness is a term which essentially means that the expected contributions are expected to pay out expected benefits over the long-term. There was growing concern that the contribution amounts and expected investment returns were falling behind what was expected to be necessary to ensure retired teachers continued to receive benefits for the foreseeable future. SB 12 addresses this by increasing the states contribution rate over the next five years. This will put the fund back on a more sound footing to ensure that our retired teachers continue to receive the retirement benefits they were promised during their careers.
In addition to the increased state contribution SB 12 also provides for a one-time additional check to retired teachers in an amount not to exceed $2400. The increased contribution rate will cost $684 million in General Revenue over the next biennium.
The one-time payment will cost $658 million and will be taken out of the Rainy Day Fund. The version of SB 12 that passed out of the House is different from the one that passed out of the Senate. The bill now goes back to the other chamber where they can either agree with the House version or vote to iron out differences in a conference committee.
House Bill 16 by Representative Jeff Leach protects infants who survive abortion procedures ensuring they receive the same diligent professional medical care given to any other child born in that hospital.
Below is a breakdown of the components of House Bill 16:
- Creates statutory civil causes of action for the surviving child or her parent or legal guardian to pursue against a physician who fails to provide appropriate medical treatment to the child.
- Creates a similar cause of action for the Texas Attorney General to pursue against the physician on behalf of the state (at least a $100000 fine and to collect any necessary attorney fees).
- Outlines strong protections to ensure the woman who seeks the abortion is shielded from liability in accordance with existing state law.
- Establishes a reporting mechanism so a person who has knowledge of a physicians failure to provide the appropriate standard of medical care can report any incident to the Office of the Attorney General.Im proud to be one of the 95 House members to have voted in support of this measure to protect our most innocent. I look forward to seeing it pass through the Senate favorably.
Mental Health Legislation
The biggest broad topics we tackled on the floor last week were Sexual Assault and Mental Health. I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight one of those bills HB 8 eliminating the backlog of rape kits in Texas. The bill does this by:
- requiring the Department of Public Safety (DPS) to conduct an audit to determine the amount location and status of untested rape kits in Texas;
- creating a time requirement for testing new forensic kits;
- increasing the statute of limitations for certain sexual assault offenses and;
- requiring survivors to be notified 90 days in advance if their rape kit will be destroyed.
Additionally the House budget appropriated $38 million in funds to DPS to expand crime lab capacity to get through the backlog. It was unanimously passed out of the House and is an example of how quite a bit of legislation gets passed in the Legislature - a task force to study an issue is formed in one session that task force meets over the interim and comes up with a number of recommendations and then those recommendations become legislation in a following session. I was proud to join every one of my colleagues in voting for this bill.
Also this week the House took up a number of bills dealing with a hot topic this session - mental health issues.
The largest bills (both from a cost standpoint and from the impact on people) were HB 10 (the creation of the Texas Mental and Behavioral Health Research Institute) HB 18 (mental health services for public school students and mental health training for school employees) and HB 19 (mental health and substance use resources in school districts). We also voted on a handful of other smaller mental health bills.
While I understand the importance of adequate mental health resources for local entities to treat those in our communities and voted in favor of most of the mental health legislation before the body this week I voted no on some of them (most notably HB 10).
My concerns mainly boil down to 2 issues:
- Im worried that pouring huge sums of money into universities and mental health research initiatives for a vague unmeasurable goal of improving mental and behavioral health is not the best use of resources nor is it really even possible for legislators or the public to gauge the effectiveness of the programs. Secondarily I am wary of giving millions of dollars to organizations that are extremely biased against a conservative worldview.
- Just as importantly I am concerned that we are creating an expectation that our schools become a mental health organization for their students.
- We are already asking our teachers and administrators to do many things outside the scope of educating students.
- Mental health labels applied to children can often stick with them and negatively affect them throughout their education and for the rest of their lives. Some of what is being considered in legislation could very well make that worse.
- I do believe schools and students should have access to mental health services. I also believe they should not be run and funded by education dollars but by mental health dollars and organizations.
I think that our local mental health authority and mental health officials do an outstanding job of meeting the needs of our region and that there are very real mental health challenges and needs for people in our communities including for some children. However I also worry that we run a real risk of doing damage to people by overly focusing on mental health and therapy and not on fundamental factors that are leading to such a cultural shift like the breakdown of the family absent parents community fragmentation etc.
Please feel free to forward this newsletter along to friends and family and if you have not done so already please find me on Facebook and Twitter. And as always if you have further questions or feedback please call my office at 940-767-1700 or send me an email at votejamesfrank@gmail.com.
We appreciate your interest in state government and it truly is an honor to serve as your State Representative. I look forward to being home and seeing you in a little over a month.
Currently representing District 69 for his 4th term in the Texas House of Representatives State Rep. James Frank serves as Chairman of the House Human Services Committee and is member of the Public Health Committee.
