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By Richard Lee
Senate correspondent

AUSTIN — The amount that homeowners can write off of the taxable value of their home before assessment would nearly double under the budget proposed by the Senate on Wednesday.

SB 1, filed by Senate Finance Committee Chair Sen. Joan Huffman of Houston, would increase the homestead exemption from $40,000 to $70,000 at a cost of $1.8 billion for the state. Another $12 billion has been earmarked for further property tax cuts to be proposed in separate legislation.

This makes good on a promise made just one day earlier by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as he was sworn into his third term in office.

“The Governor and the Speaker and the members, we’re going to find a way for long term property tax relief with the billions of dollars from this surplus, because you come first — it’s your money,” he said in his inaugural speech before thousands on the north Capitol grounds Tuesday.

Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott laid out property tax cuts as their top priority at Tuesday Inaugural Ceremony. They were also united on the subject of school choice, saying that this will be the session in which the state joins 30 others in passing some sort of choice program.

Though the legislation is still forthcoming, such measures typically allows parents to withdraw their students from public school and take the amount the state is spending to educate them to go to a private school. This plan has faced staunch opposition in the past, especially from small, rural districts who need every dollar they have.

Patrick said this session, the plan will ensure these rural schools are taken care of.

“The Governor and I will have a plan to protect those schools financially and to make sure those parents have choice also,” Patrick said. “We are going to pass school choice.”

Another issue both men raised in their inaugural addresses is electric grid stability. With the 2021 winter storm still fresh in the minds of lawmakers, there will likely be a bevy of bills aimed at ensuring the lights stay on in Texas no matter what.

Abbott praised last session’s efforts toward that goal.

“Last summer we set 11 all-time power generation records and last month, we weathered brutally freezing temperatures across the state all without any disruptions,” he said, “This session we will build a grid that will power this state, not for the next four years, but for the next 40 years.”

Patrick was more specific about plans for stability, saying that the state must incentivize dispatchable generation, like natural gas plants, in order to ensure there is plenty of electricity to meet the demands of one of the fastest growing states in America.

“We need dispatchable energy we can count on. We will add more megawatts of thermal generation and strengthen the grid,” he said.

Many of the priorities laid out by Patrick for the session are well-represented in the Senate draft budget released Wednesday afternoon. It includes $350 million for rural law enforcement, and $2.5 billion to create a university fund for institutions outside the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems. It would allocate $4.6 billion towards state border security efforts, more money for state hospitals and mental health services, and $228 million towards foster care reform.

Huffman, in her first session heading up the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement accompanying the release that the budget continues the conservative and sustainable spending policies that have left Texas in such an advantageous position. She also acknowledged that there is still much that could change between today and when a final budget, passed by both chambers, is presented to the governor for his signature.

“The base budget is a starting point, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to develop a conservative and sustainable budget that addresses our needs and strengthens our economy.”

The Senate reconvened Tuesday.

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By Richard Lee
Senate correspondent

AUSTIN — The amount that homeowners can write off of the taxable value of their home before assessment would nearly double under the budget proposed by the Senate on Wednesday.

SB 1, filed by Senate Finance Committee Chair Sen. Joan Huffman of Houston, would increase the homestead exemption from $40,000 to $70,000 at a cost of $1.8 billion for the state. Another $12 billion has been earmarked for further property tax cuts to be proposed in separate legislation.

This makes good on a promise made just one day earlier by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as he was sworn into his third term in office.

“The Governor and the Speaker and the members, we’re going to find a way for long term property tax relief with the billions of dollars from this surplus, because you come first — it’s your money,” he said in his inaugural speech before thousands on the north Capitol grounds Tuesday.

Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott laid out property tax cuts as their top priority at Tuesday Inaugural Ceremony. They were also united on the subject of school choice, saying that this will be the session in which the state joins 30 others in passing some sort of choice program.

Though the legislation is still forthcoming, such measures typically allows parents to withdraw their students from public school and take the amount the state is spending to educate them to go to a private school. This plan has faced staunch opposition in the past, especially from small, rural districts who need every dollar they have.

Patrick said this session, the plan will ensure these rural schools are taken care of.

“The Governor and I will have a plan to protect those schools financially and to make sure those parents have choice also,” Patrick said. “We are going to pass school choice.”

Another issue both men raised in their inaugural addresses is electric grid stability. With the 2021 winter storm still fresh in the minds of lawmakers, there will likely be a bevy of bills aimed at ensuring the lights stay on in Texas no matter what.

Abbott praised last session’s efforts toward that goal.

“Last summer we set 11 all-time power generation records and last month, we weathered brutally freezing temperatures across the state all without any disruptions,” he said, “This session we will build a grid that will power this state, not for the next four years, but for the next 40 years.”

Patrick was more specific about plans for stability, saying that the state must incentivize dispatchable generation, like natural gas plants, in order to ensure there is plenty of electricity to meet the demands of one of the fastest growing states in America.

“We need dispatchable energy we can count on. We will add more megawatts of thermal generation and strengthen the grid,” he said.

Many of the priorities laid out by Patrick for the session are well-represented in the Senate draft budget released Wednesday afternoon. It includes $350 million for rural law enforcement, and $2.5 billion to create a university fund for institutions outside the University of Texas and Texas A&M systems. It would allocate $4.6 billion towards state border security efforts, more money for state hospitals and mental health services, and $228 million towards foster care reform.

Huffman, in her first session heading up the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement accompanying the release that the budget continues the conservative and sustainable spending policies that have left Texas in such an advantageous position. She also acknowledged that there is still much that could change between today and when a final budget, passed by both chambers, is presented to the governor for his signature.

“The base budget is a starting point, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to develop a conservative and sustainable budget that addresses our needs and strengthens our economy.”

The Senate reconvened Tuesday.

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By Tony Farkas
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The woke tide that crashing on the shores of our society is growing larger.

Recently, one of Texas’ own has stepped into the fray with a bill that on the face of it would be laughed out of Congress, but because of the idea that wokeness trumps common sense is gaining traction, and prompting different adherents to take wild swings.

Such is the case with U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, who filed a bill in Congress making it a crime to incite violence based on rhetoric related to “white supremacy.”

The subtext here deals with racism, and Lee’s fear that words will without a doubt cause white supremacy-inspired hate crime or hatch conspiracies to commit white supremacy-inspired hate crime.

According to the bill, white supremacy-inspired hate crimes are born when white supremacy ideology has motivated planning of or actions that constitute a crime. It empowers the Justice Department, which lately has been given a bloody nose for its ineptitude and partisanship, the task of investigating and prosecuting the “crime.”

On the face of it, this is an issue with free speech. Even if you don’t like what is said, there is nothing that the government can do to limit it, even if said speech inspires some whackjob to do something monumentally stupid and heinous.

The bill doesn’t even make a distinction between printed, spoken or even reported words, so it could be applied in a broad manner, even to newspapers. My nightmare scenario is one that a story I’ve written is deemed to have caused a crime, and off to the hoosegow I go.

That may sound far-fetched, but another thing the bill doesn’t do is identify what exactly white supremacy hate speech is made of. It doesn’t define the boundaries, nor does it give any examples, leaving it to the prosecuting agency, and whatever victim, to decide if what was said that inspired a crime was indeed hate speech.

See the dilemma? Without parameters, then everything is hate speech.

So the other rub is the race part, as this only deals with “white” supremacy. Granted, the history of things doesn’t look good, what with the KKK, Aryan Brotherhood, Skinheads, etc., that push the nonsense of white supremacy, but that’s not to say that similar groups don’t exist in other areas and with other races.

It boggles the mind that a sitting U.S. Representative, sworn to uphold the law of the land which does include equality statutes, would write legislation that would single out a race for practices that exist across the spectrum of society.

It also boggles the mind that this legislation was introduced after the House pendulum swung toward a Republican majority, when it easily could have been introduced when the Democrats were in charge, giving it a better-than-even chance of squeaking through.

It’s been said in discussion groups that the point of this bill wasn’t to right any wrongs, but for political grandstanding. There’s merit in that argument; I believe Lee thinks this is a good thing. But it’s another step toward control the kind of which the woke crowd hopes for — limiting speech to what is approved.

The social climate is becoming one that progressive ideals are becoming more and more acceptable, which will end up taking away the one thing free speech was designed to protect — liberty.

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AUSTIN — Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced the release of the Texas Broadband Development Map last week, which uses data collected from internet service providers (ISPs) to show the availability of various types of high-speed internet access across Texas.

The process for creating the map follows the process used by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to create the national broadband map and meets the statutory guidelines established in House Bill 5 passed in the Regular Session of the 87th Legislature. The map will be updated biannually to incorporate additional information and data gathered by the Comptroller’s Texas Broadband Development Office (BDO).

“For this initial batch of data, we leaned heavily on coverage information provided by ISPs, and we followed federal guidance for speed and eligibility,” Hegar said. “However, the ISP advertised speeds submitted to us don’t necessarily match test speeds on the ground, which is a prime example of the types of flaws that are now more apparent in the federal mapping process and in the definition of broadband services. This is most apparent when you review the speed range layer of the map and see significant areas of the state ineligible for funding under state law, but that clearly have insufficient high-speed broadband service to be competitive in today’s modern world.

“That’s why we are committed to regularly updating the state map, so it reflects recent and accurate data. There will be multiple opportunities to challenge the accuracy of the data, and I encourage the public, stakeholders and legislators, as well as service providers and other vendors, to engage with us on the Texas map so we have the most accurate information available.”

The Texas map is an interactive tool that identifies areas of the state that are eligible for funding broadband expansion projects as defined by state law. State law defines a designated area as eligible for funding if less than 80 percent of serviceable locations have access to internet at speeds of 25 megabits per second (mbps) downstream and 3 mbps upstream.

While statute established a definition of high-speed internet that mirrors the definition used by the FCC, the Comptroller and the BDO understand those speeds are not sufficient to meet the needs of many communities. The quality and reliability of internet service technology can differ greatly. Similarly, the law was intentionally technology agnostic to provide the flexibility needed to achieve widespread broadband expansion in a large and geographically diverse state.

“The FCC’s current definition of high-speed internet as 25/3 mbps is becoming rapidly obsolete,” Hegar said. “One of the things we learned talking to stakeholders around the state last year was that to be truly competitive, communities need internet that is faster than the FCC’s definition of high-speed broadband. For that reason, we designed the map to show coverage at various speeds. We also heard that reliability was a constant concern for certain types of technology, so we want to show stakeholders and lawmakers what type of technology is available in their areas. This functionality will be crucial as lawmakers and the BDO work to prioritize funding in the coming year.”