The 88th session of the Texas Legislature has less than 30 days until sine die, and a number of deadlines must be met for additional bills to pass into law. UT Tyler political science professor Mark Owens, Ph.D., explains the process and answers a question many Texans are asking: Will property tax relief happen this session?
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. The 88th session of the Texas Legislature has crossed the 30-days-to-go mark, and there are a number of deadlines that’ll have to be met for legislation to move forward. We’ve invited UT Tyler political science professor Dr. Mark Owens to help us sort out what’s happening and what’s still to happen. Welcome.
Mark Owens: Yeah. Thank you. This is an exciting time. Let’s get right into that tug of war going on between Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan giving Texans property tax relief.
Mike Landess: Now, that seems to be a pretty straightforward thing. What’s the hang up?
Mark Owens: A couple of the opportunities here are to think of what we’ll see packaged in this idea. I think the lieutenant governor wants to see a really big increase in what the homestead exemptions will be. That’s a push. And the other thing here, we think that’s gonna have a long-term impact, right, to the future, and so this is a big question. Do you want short-term effects versus long-term impact of this bill and where are they gonna find agreement. Because I think this is one where it’s a governor’s priority. We have a massive surplus. It really is just now dotting the i’s and finding out what people can agree to. The other, I think in this case, the state House looked for a way to help businesses with their property taxes, too. So it’s not just, you know, when you think of property tax, this can be owned by us as sort of private individuals and our homesteads, but also the companies that are here. And so I think that’s where some of this sticking point is being, one group who’s gonna be best for business. That obviously has a huge impact of what the local incomes will be for their areas.
Mike Landess: The Senate has passed most of the lieutenant governor’s stated priorities. While the house isn’t moving along quite as fast, Patrick has threatened to seek a special session to make sure his agenda is addressed. Do you think it’s gonna happen?
Mark Owens: I think in this case, there’s only part of these big agenda items are gonna move through. We have, this week serves as the last week for the house bills to be considered for the first time and then move over to the next chamber. At that point, they have essentially 2 weeks to come to an agreement of the House and Senate sides. So we really are almost coming into the last hour of the legislature, and we see opportunities here, where in the past, the state Senate or the state House, hold back one of those bills so that they can actually use that as a leveraging chip to get 30 more days for a special session afterward.
Mike Landess: Ah, so we could probably look for one of those. The school voucher issues, or choice issue, still isn’t totally worked out. Texas educators seem to be resigned that some version will pass and become law, but they’re still raising concerns about stagnant funding for schools specifically with inflation stuck at 2014 funding levels.
You understand their problem. I mean, they’ve got 17% inflation, and their bills are going up as well as trying to hire people and keep people.
Mark Owens: Right. I think this is the one to remember that this idea of potentially having school choice and an opportunity might change some of your school enrollment, but it’s not.
Public schools are still gonna be very large. They’re still looking through a post-COVID period of losing, you know, teacher resignations at the same time, not being able to fill the teachers. It’s a lot of turnover that they have to work through at the same time that we’re talking about increasing or adding to the capacity of what the facilities are for educating those students. And I think this is why you see a lot of the ISDs across the state reminding people that it’s their time to get a large portion of this surplus and…
Mike Landess: That’s the $3.27 billion surplus we’re talking about.
Mark Owens: Yes. That could be expanded right now to things like the buildings and other things.
There’s a lot of ways to do this, but the big thing here is to remember that surplus is probably gonna continue every year after Texas is growing. That also means we have a lot more students to sort of take care of, to be able to unfold into the systems now.
Mike Landess: House Bill 2127 is an interesting one, and it seems to be moving right along.
That’s one that would severely limit the powers of cities and counties in self-governing. Are you surprised that that’s moved along as well as it has? I would think city and counties would be fighting this tooth and nail.
Mark Owens: Yeah. We have seen this maybe through the last seven years or more in Texas.
There’s a thought here about San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and Austin. They have the ability of having such large local budgets to do things on their own without the state, and the state sometimes wants to make sure that they have some control over this. We’ve seen states try to put more groups here decades ago. This was called Sanctuary Cities, right? More recently, this is about other details of providing services. More recently, we can think of, this goes back 4 years ago on the question of how they look at local law enforcement. And the state tried to regulate that as well. So they want more power over this in the state, but I’m wondering if there will be any success this time around.
Mike Landess: Is there anything to indicate that it’s a good talker, but it may not move anywhere?
Mark Owens: Right. I think this is something, again, continue to talk about, but I think across the state, we have a principle of limited government. I think the municipal associations will continue to lobby against this.
Mike Landess: A target has been painted on programs for diversity, equity and inclusion, also known as DEI, all across the country. Big items in this legislative session as well. The author of the bill here in Texas says, DEI is about ideology, and it favors race over merit. While supporters say that it fosters inclusion and provides equal access to all. This is a hot topic in education in Texas and across everywhere. Is it gonna move anywhere here in Texas, do you think? Or is this a talker, too?
Mark Owens: Early on, it seemed more like a talker than the fact of something that Texas would do. Um, raise a profile, right? In particular, see if the coordinating board would do something, in particular, see if the University systems would do something. I mean, Texas Tech has taken a change on this, Texas A&M as well. We’re seeing sort of in this case, institutions regulate themselves. But the state of Florida just passed a law like this, and I think we’ve seen back and forth even 2 years ago, some opportunities here of when things move in other state legislatures, Texas also may not follow. They’re considering it right now, too, but it’s gonna be harder on this case. I think the probability of passing might be a little bit higher, even though it’s not certain.
Mike Landess: This is more of a national conservative agenda.
Mark Owens: I think that’s true. Yes.
Mike Landess: Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has promised to ban tenure in higher education in Texas, and this is spawned from a spat that he had with some University of Texas at Austin professors who he felt were putting themselves above the law. Do you think that’s gonna move along? I mean, there are 5,000 teachers currently on tenure track in the state system.
Mark Owens: You know, I think this is one that typically does being, you know, can be brought up as a talker for decades, and it’s not likely, I think, to move forward. One of the questions that we continue to see here is it’s almost a conflict with the governor’s big agenda to increase the number of top research universities in Texas, attract the best talent. Attracting talent comes with some of the norms of which exist in academia, which is tenure. I mean, this is a certain opportunity that’s part of the rank you earn in order to get a promotion. And, I think when you wonder about that, this will be a question here. If Oklahoma has done something like this, Oklahoma might not be attracting the kind of talent and academic research that’s propelling part of the Texas economy. There’s a lot of exciting things happening in Texas politics.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been UT Tyler political science professor Dr. Mark Owens. To hear this interview again or to share it, go to kvut.org. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
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