WEEKLY REPORT
May 11, 2012
Texas sales tax revenue up 10.9 percent in April, comptroller says
Texas registered another month of strong sales tax collections in April, with revenue increasing to $2.07 billion, a 10.9 percent increase over the same month last year, the state comptroller’s office said Wednesday.
(View complete article here.)
Medicaid spending grows faster than tax revenue
Texas’ share for providing health care to poor children, impoverished elderly people and those with disabilities is growing faster than tax revenues to pay for services, creating another state budget challenge next year, top agency officials told lawmakers Monday.
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OPINION: We ought to know the price of education
The hot mess that Texas calls a school finance system clearly needs to be fixed. It’s unfair and incomprehensible. And it’s not based on hard numbers: We don’t, as a state, know what it should cost for an efficient school to do a good job of educating a student.
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State Rep Unveils Website to Talk School Accountability
Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock of Killeen, who sits on the House Public Education Committee and co-chairs the Legislature’s interim committee on school finance, is attempting to kick-start discussion on what will surely be a hot topic for the 83rd session — how best to evaluate how well schools are educating Texas children.
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Next education commissioner facing big challenges
The state’s much-criticized new standardized testing regime was suspended this year, school districts are suing the state over funding and parents are irate over school budget cuts. The new hire will also have to balance the governor’s policy of frugality with school administrators’ demands that he or she represent their needs in Austin.
(View complete article here.)
Texas cities fighting back against payday loans
Thousands of Texans have been caught in a cycle of debt because they took out a payday loan, and several cities across the state are fighting back.
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Serious oil and gas regulators needed in boom times
Start with the basics in the Republican primary races for two seats on the Railroad Commission:
The 700-employee agency should be called the Oil & Gas Commission to better reflect its regulatory role. At one time, it held regulatory power over railroads, but no more.
(View complete article here.)
Former hard-core juvenile offenders want to help North Texas kids from following in their footsteps
Last weekend, I was surrounded by five ex-offenders, all admittedly former “hard-core juvenile” criminals who had been locked up for a total of 70 years.
(View complete article here.)
Jay Kimbrough Returns to Youth Agency in Trouble
The man who has become Gov. Rick Perry‘s problem solver, Jay Kimbrough, is going back to the state’s juvenile justice agency, which is facing a crisis again five years after the last time he helped bail the agency out of a major scandal.
(View complete article here.)
Senators’ nasty emails refer to personal lives
Republican senators who are potential candidates for lieutenant governor duked it out in an email brawl sparked when Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston accused Sen. John Carona of Dallas of spreading lies about Patrick’s marriage.
(View complete article here.)
Decline in homelessness spurs effort to build long-term housing
Houston’s homeless population declined by 5 percent this year, creating a positive backdrop for a new collaborative effort aimed at moving more people off the streets and into long-term housing.
(View complete article here.)
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