Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 (Agenda)
Item 21
Mr. Eckstein, we have come to number 21.
21.Consider and take appropriate action on legislative matters, including: a, update on legislative activities, b, fiscal matters affecting Travis County, including the state budget and appraisal cap and revenue cap legislation; c, redistricting of state senate districts and implications for Travis County; and d, amendments to the priorities, policy positions, and the positions on other proposals sections of the Travis County legislative agenda.
>> good afternoon, judge, members of the court, thank you for giving me some time to visit with you at the end of a long day.
I would like to think that you are saving the best for last, but that may not be the case, given the news that I have to report.
first of all, just?
updates on what's going on -- some updates on what's going on.
obviously one of the big issues that the court has been very interested in, moving very quickly right now is the state budget.
there's a handout that was in your backup materials, there's a chart that looks like this.
that shows the major elements of the state budget.
and I think -- at least my copy that I can give, if anybody doesn't have their copy at hand, but this chart shows the 10 different articles of the state budget and what the current levels proposed in the senate bill and the house bill are.
what I will tell you is that last night the conference committee had its first public meeting and decided that with the exception of article 3 having to do with public education and higher education, they really have agreed on what to do with most of that money.
some of the news for us is good, some of it is not necessarily so good.
we're still trying to look for the exact numbers, exact agreements that they made.
we think for instance in article 5 on the money for adult probation and juvenile probation that the senate version which had a little bit more money than the house version which -- is the one that's been agreed to by the conferrees.
we think that the article 2, health and human services article, that they're going to take the senate numbers on that.
that is very important, of course, because, mental health funding and the delivery infrastructure here in Texas very much intersects with our criminal justice system including here in Travis County and the more and more effective funding that we have for mental health, that eases some stress on our criminal justice system.
we also have heard at least that they're going to take the senate numbers on some of the minor funds, road and bridge funds, of gross overweight axle fees, that provided modest amounts of money to the county in order to help fund our business.
so we're still putting together the overall picture.
we will try to come back to the court if not next week, the week after, with an analysis of -- of where the -- where we think the impacts will be in terms of the county budgeting process.
that will continue to be a joint project we do with the planning and budget office.
the other -- the piece of good news with respect to the budget is that the comptroller combs today announced that there's an initial $1.2 billion available for the budget this year.
I think that felipe passed out a brief report from the quorum report that shows where that money comes from.
that is certainly good news.
I think it's probably already been spent by the time I got to report to the court on it.
but as -- where we really stand right now is that the house and senate are arguing over the total amount of money that they're going to put into the budget and that most of the amount of money that's in play is going to go to public education and higher education.
that's an update on the budget.
with respect to revenue caps as members of the court know, we've been very concerned about revenue caps, legislation in general this session and in the last couple of weeks about senate bill 1771.
that bill is still pending on the senate intent calendar.
if a senator cannot get 21 votes in order to bring up a particular bill, he may continue to put that bill on the intent calendar with the hope that at some point he gets those 21 votes.
senator williams has been talking to senators about an amendment that he believes fixes the concerns with the bill.
we have certainly communicated to our senators that senator williams amendment does not fix our concerns with the bill and have been in pretty good communications with senator watson and wentworth in hope that will continue.
that bill has not moved.
I will remind the court that the deadline for reporting a senate bill outside of a house committee is this Saturday.
so we're now on Tuesday the senate has not yet considered the bill on the floor.
for this bill to meet that deadline on Saturday, it would have to pass the senate in florida, go over to the house, get referred to a house committee, get heard in that committee and have a favorable committee report that goes out.
so every day that senate bill 1771 does not move on to the floor of the senate is actually a good day in terms of that particular issue.
>> 1771 is an appraisal cap bill?
>> it is a bill that calls for a new thing called the same services tax rate, but it would be a vehicle for a revenue cap.
not appraisal cap, but a revenue cap.
I?m pleased to report that no bills involving appraisal caps are moving this session it appears.
there's a consensus over at the legislature with the additional demands they expect to be placing on local governments in the next two years they do not want to also add the limitation on ability to raise money that either appraisal or revenue caps would produce.
so those are my comments on those two areas.
the other area that I just wanted to report on was redistricting.
as you know, the senate redistricting committee finally released a map of the senate districts.
that was last Wednesday.
they released the map on Wednesday afternoon.
they announced they were going to hold a hearing on Thursday.
they held a public hearing on Thursday and they voted the bill out of committee on Friday.
so very quick process with frankly very little opportunity for public input.
Commissioner Davis was able to send some written testimony over to the committee.
and -- but it was -- and he and many other Travis County residents I think had the frustration of not being able to gear up to be able to give testimony and of course because we're so closely located to the capitol, we probably had a better shot than many other people did.
I will report that the senate this afternoon has passed that bill out of committee.
with some minor changes it made that actually affect Travis County.
we have not yet seen that, but my understanding is that the federal precincts north of the colorado river that were drawn into senator zaffirini's district over in eastern Travis County have now been drawn back into senator watson's district and I think including the airport, I think senator zaffirini and apparently it was an agreed to deal that did not significantly affect the portions of Travis County that were going to be assigned to senator frasier, coming out of the west, or senator watson coming up from the south.
excuse me.
senator wentworth coming up from the south.
so as soon as we get those new maps, we will share them with the court.
the concern that we still have is that Travis County is divided into four senatorial districts.
that really diminishes Travis County's
>> [indiscernible] in the process.
if you look at the memo, you will see that I broke down the percentage of the vote that each of the four districts would have in -- in senate district 14, which is senator watson's district.
approximately 90% of the voters in his district would be here in Travis County.
so obviously Travis County would play the dominant role, predominant role in electing the senator from that district.
in senate district 21, Travis County voters would represent about 20% of the electorate in that district, actually with the amendment senator zaffirini will have even fewer Travis County people will get a recalculated number to you.
senate district 24 would have about 5.8% of the voters in that district from here in Travis County.
actually have a population, I?m not really talking voters, I?m talking population, and senate district 25 would have about 8.8%.
in those three districts, Travis County voters have relatively little opportunity to -- to influence the outcome of the election.
it is that concern reflected from the resolution that we have drafted for the court's review and possible approval, a copy of that resolution is in your packets.
I?m happy to entertain any questions that members of the court have about that resolution, that's really the first action item that we want to ask the members of the court to take today.
>> I move adoption of the resolution regarding redistricting to be -- the policy position regarding redistricting to be included into our policy platform.
>> second.
>>
>> I?m sorry, that's on item d of your agenda.
in addition to the policy platform, having to do with adding redistricting as a concern to the county's legislative agenda.
>> so that's -- so that's basically in opposition to senate district committee plan s 125?
>> well, you're talking now judge about the resolution, there's a resolution, there's also a -- also an amendment or modification to the legislative agenda.
>> I?m sorry, I skipped around on you, deece.
I thought that you were --
>> the motion includes what?
>> I can make the motion for both the resolution regarding the senate redistricting as well as the policy platform that relates to redistricting generally, how about that.
>> the specific resolution, judge, does express our opposition to plan s 125.
plan s 125 has been superseded by the amended plan that was adopted by the senate today, which is why in a sense it's really good to have the policy position as well because the policy position does set forth the general principles that the Commissioners court supports in any redistricting plan that would affect Travis County.
>> so the motion is to -- is to approve the recommendation policy plus a resolution?
>> plus a resolution.
>> yeah.
>> any more discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
with Commissioner Davis temporarily off the dais.
>> judge, that's really all that I have, other than to mention there's only 14 days left in the legislative session.
>> woo-hoo.
>> this is the last full moon for the legislative session, hoping everything approves from here.
>> the last motion which covered two items.
>> I do.
>> okay.
>> I?m sorry.
>> this is the last full moon of the legislative session so it's all going to get better from here.
>> I believe so.
that's all that I have, judge, although I?m happy to answer any questions members of the court may have.
>> questions?
the news today sort of hinted that there may be able to reach agreement on some budget before the end of the fiscal year.
do we think that would rule out the need for a special session?
would they still need to come back on education?
>> the governor today has said that he will not sign -- the discussion that has been going on, judge, is they have agreement on all of the articles of the budget except the education article.
there was some discussion of the idea of passing a budget that did not address article 3 and then coming back this summer just to address article 3 the governor said today that he would not sign a budget that was not a complete budget.
so I think probably the concept of -- of just passing a budget that addressed nine articles and not education is a non-starter as of now.
or maybe the legislature will do it and still come back to do the whole -- to do the entire budget this summer.
but I think there are still some hope that they are going to be able to agree on a number that will allow them to pass a budget.
the problem that they're having, as members of the court know, is that in order for the budget numbers to work, particularly with respect to education, there are a number of pieces of legislation that have to pass.
for instance, that would allow school districts more flexibility with class size, that would allow them to -- to take some of the personnel actions they may have to take in order to furlough teachers, in order to change teachers contracts, that sort of a thing.
there is some resistance at the legislature to that.
so the budget assumes that the school districts will have the power to do some of those things in order to adapt to the decreased funding environment that they're going to be working in.
so the political challenge for the leadership of the house and the senate is going to be to try to get a budget passed and get all of the enabling legislation, if you will passed, that will allow the state to move forward.
the interesting thing to note, of course, is that whether or not we are talking about the senate version or the house version, we're still talking about somewhere in the range of -- of 20 to 25 -- I?m sorry, 15 to $25 billion less than we're spending this go around, not accounting for population growth, coast cost services all of that.
as a news article I read together, this is going to be the choice between the draconian budget and the merely severely bad budget.
>> the information that you gave us earlier today, would -- would approval of the various senate versions of pieces of the budget would require accessing the -- the rainy day fund, right?
>> no.
the budget as currently drafted works within existing revenue assuming that you take the senate's numbers for how much money they can get by some of the accounting measures and programs they have.
that's why the adoption of these other bills is so important, judge.
for instance, the senate budget -- the -- or the kinds of numbers that we're talking about would assume for instance that we can speed up collection of the margins tax, which is the business tax that helps make up for lowered school property taxes or that we can put off the payment for a month's worth of our medicaid bill into the next biennium.
there's a number of these accounting tricks, if you will, built into the senate's assumptions about the budget.
>> but they leave the rainy day fund untouched.
>> they both leave the rainy day fund untouched.
>> so the impact on the public sector employees would be pretty much what we've been hearing about for the last two months?
>> absolutely, judge.
>> the reason I ask that it would have heavy impact on Austin and Travis County because the number of state employees that reside here.
>> as you know, judge, the community action network has been talking about some kind of community-wide response to figuring out what's going to happen and how to address that.
because as you suggest, it could have a large impact at the university of Texas, with the state employee workforce, and with other public sector employees being laid off because of reduced funding coming down from the state.
>> okay.
judge?
if I might, in relation to the action that you just took with regards to the amendment to the policy on redistricting, generally, specifically congressional redistricting, I want to point out they have just announced recently the senate committee on redistricting will be hearing on the congressional redistricting plan not laid out to my knowledge, on Thursday, 9:00 a.m., capital extension auditorium, e 1.004, pursuant to last week I think the resolution that you adopted asking us to monitor that as well, we will be prepared next week and working with you for an agenda item to come brief the court with regard to what legal options we might have in response to that.
>> okay.
thank you.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
