Compromise on recapture?

Aaron Pena quotes from a Quorum Report story that says a deal has apparently been brokered on equity and recapture in the Senate. This is was had Sen. Florence Shapiro's hackles up. Sayeth The Rep:

"The compromise plan has the tax rate broken into three tiers. In the first tier, otherwise known as the basic allotment, funding would be equalized to the 88th percentile.This would put every school district in the state at least as “wealthy” as the Dallas school district, be it through their own tax efforts or a tax effort combined with supplementation from the state. Each penny of tax in the wealthy district in Dallas raises, roughly, $32 per-penny per-child. In this tier, additional wealth above $32 per-penny would be subject to recapture.

The second tier of the tax rate, or enrichment tier, would be equalized to the wealth level of the Austin Independent School District, which sits at roughly the 94th percentile of wealth. Under the plan, every school district would be able to access four cents of enrichment, without voter approval, in the first year of the plan. These four pennies - actually fairly “rich” pennies - could all be used the first year or in a combination of the first and second year, but no school district would be able to access more than four enriched pennies in the biennium. No recapture would apply to these first four pennies. In order to address concerns of Sen. Florence Shapiro’s (R-Plano), every school district would be able to access those first four pennies of enrichment, regardless of compression rate. So those school districts that might roll back to less than $1.33 could access 4 pennies at least as “rich” as Austin. Districts wealthier than Austin would not be subject to recapture on these four pennies, regardless of how much money they raise."

QR says there's support for this on both sides of the aisle. If the Senate ever does anything more than gavel in and gavel out today, we may find out just what all this means. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, the House is at ease until 8:30 tonight when they deal with the latest Senate version of HB2. There's still some unhappiness in that chamber over what the Senate has done with HBs 1 and 5. Peggy Fikac has the details.

UPDATE: HB1 and HB5 have passed.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on May 10, 2006 to Budget ballyhoo | TrackBack