WEEKLY REPORT
February 10, 2012
Voters Asked for Cuts – Do They Like the Results?
Two years ago, the Republican primary was teeming with angry conservatives stirred up by federal fiscal policy. Not all of them were Tea Party members, but all of them seemed to get labeled that way. Whatever the description, their effect on last year’s legislative session was clear.
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EDITORIAL: Experience deficit in next Legislature spurs debate
With all the attention the failed presidential run of Gov. Rick Perry, the Texas redistricting battle and the school funding lawsuits have gotten in recent months, it’s easy to overlook other issues shaping up in Austin.
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Disagreement continues over redistricting maps
North Texas would get a new congressional district dominated by minority voters under a new set of political maps proposed by the Texas attorney general Monday, but many Democrats and minority community leaders strongly oppose the proposal.
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Texas voting map wrangling continues to put elections in limbo
Is an agreement among the multitude of parties fighting over Texas redistricting maps a real deal?
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Texas’ primary date likely to get pushed back again
Last-ditch negotiations to save the April 3 Texas primaries appeared dead Tuesday, throwing the state’s messy redistricting dispute back to a federal court that must sort through a widely panned partial deal and pick a new date.
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Slow Redistricting Lowers Clout of Texas Voters
In a parallel political universe — one in which redistricting maps were in place and elections were on schedule — Texas would be getting national attention right now.
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Texas sales tax still exceeding expectations
Texas’ sales tax collections topped $2 billion in January, crossing that threshold the second time in three months.
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Texas ranks 41st in financial security
There is little doubt Texas has survived the Great Recession better than other states, but a study by the Corporation for Enterprise Development has found that 27.7 percent of Texas households have no financial cushion in case of an emergency. If you exclude homes and automobiles from the calculation, 50 percent of Texans have no assets they could use to survive if they suddenly lost their income.
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State reviews health insurance hikes, lacks authority to halt them
Under the 2010 federal health care reform law, Texas is reviewing medical insurance companies’ rate increases of at least 10 percent to determine whether they are justified, but even if reviewers find a problem, they have no way of heading it off or even letting the public know about it.
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State property values up slightly last year
With each new bit of positive economic news, Texas has been beating expectations and that feeds the bottom line of the state budget.
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State Negotiate $26 Billon Agreement for Homeowners
After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said. It is part of a broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market’s downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses.
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Texas’ slice ‘very limited’
Texas will get a $428 million slice of a $25 billion settlement between 49 state attorneys general and the nation’s largest mortgage servicers and lenders.
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Key Players Drive Texas Medical Board’s Stem Cell Rules
When the Texas Medical Board called a stakeholder meeting in July to discuss the state’s burgeoning adult stem cell industry, it was at the behest of Gov. Rick Perry, the soon-to-be presidential hopeful who had just received an injection of his own stem cells, and of Stanley Jones, the orthopedist and biotech entrepreneur who performed Perry’s experimental procedure.
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