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March 23rd, 2011:

More on the microbrew compromise

Mar 23rd, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
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Brewed And Never Battered gives its report from the House Licensing and Administrative Procedures Committee hearing yesterday.

Briefly on HB 602: No one expressed opposition, not even the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas, who have opposed the bill in the past. There is some forthcoming compromise on that bill that apparently everyone is happy with and it looks like you’ll be able to take beer home after a brewery tour later this year.

HB 660 had a tremendous number of supporters, and the roll of names read into the record as supporters of the bill was long and impressive. Among those in support but not wishing to testify were a number of beer distributors and the Texas Restaurant Association.

As you may have read, we’ve gained the support of the other tiers through thoughtful discussion with interested stakeholders. Beer distributors were concerned about self-distribution for a business type that already sells directly to the consumer, and we understand their points. Self-distribution has been removed from the bill. We also lowered the annual limit for aggregate production to 15,000 barrels per brewpub. A number we are very comfortable with. I’m pleased that we were able to come up with a bill that all three tiers really like.

We did have one person oppose our bill, however. Keith Strama, representing the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas, stood up and presented a semi-coherent rambling about how we should allow these kind of changes to the code because… well, just because. Seriously. Strama did present some other barely comprehensible argument, which was called onto the rug in short order by Committee Vice-chair Chente Quintanilla of El Paso. Video of the entire hearing, which you can find here, proves quite entertaining. Strama should have just stuck to “Uh… just because” – turns out that was a better argument than the one he was trying to make.

[…]

What’s Next.

With the WBDT exposed, the ball is back in our court. We have one or two weeks at the most to earn the votes of the committee, after that it will be too late to advance this session. Right now I think we have 4 votes. We need 5. Time to turn up the pressure and continue to urge members of the committee that this the right thing to do. Continue those calls and emails (I’ll post a sample follow up letter tomorrow).

The link to find committee members is here – you can search for the Licensing & Administrative Procedures committee, or just take my word for it that it contains the following members:

Chair: Rep. Mike Hamilton
Vice Chair: Rep. Chente Quintanilla
Members: Rep. Joe Driver, Rep. Charlie Geren, Rep. Roland Gutierrez, Rep. Patricia Harless, Rep. John Kuempel, Rep. Jose Menendez, Rep. Senfronia Thompson

It would be especially helpful for you to express your support for HBs 660 and 602 if one of these folks is your Representative. There clearly is a lot of support for this bill, but until the committee votes it out, that doesn’t mean anything. Lee Nichols has more.

House Appropriations Committee passes a budget

Mar 23rd, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

It’s not much different than what they started out with.

House budget-writers were able to sprinkle some extra money into education and health care but otherwise did little to change the bare-bones proposal with which they started.

The 2012-13 budget will hit the House floor late next week after the Appropriations Committee approved House Bill 1 Wednesday morning in an 18 to 7 party-line vote.

Weighing in at $164.5 billion — about $23 billion less than the current two-year budget — the bill still follows the no-new-taxes, deep-cutting approach that state leaders have long advocated.

“It is a budget that reflects the money we have,” said Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie. “There’s a lot of members of the House, this is as far as we can go.”

Basically, take the original cut-everything, fund-nothing budget, add the $4.3 billion we got back from using a little bit of the Rainy Day Fund to close the last biennium’s shortfall (which as far as I know has yet to be ratified by the House), and leave it at that. Rep. Pitts sounds like he realizes what a turd this budget is.

Rep. Jim Pitts said he’d like to see House-Senate budget negotiators massage the budget his Appropriations Committee approved Wednesday — and even “make it better.”

But Pitts, R-Waxahachie, the House’s chief budget writer, said Texans alarmed at the budget’s deep cuts in spending will need to change some minds in the House, which has an unusually large number of freshman, many elected with tea party support.

“There’s a lot of members of the House, this is as far as we can go,” Pitts said. Asked to elaborate, he said, “They don’t like anything else put in this bill. They feel like they were elected to make cuts.”

I’m glad we’re all clear on that, because I for one will be happy to make the 2012 and 2014 elections all about it. Democrats did the right thing and unanimously voted against this budget, while all Republicans voted for it. Which, again, is fine by me. A press release about this from four of the Dems on Appropriations is here, but I’ve included it beneath the fold because it’s worth quoting in full.

Putting questions of electoral politics aside, there is still the very real matter of whether the House and the Senate can agree on a budget. Texas Politics explores that a little further.

The day before the House Appropriations Committee approved a budget that’s about $23 billion less than the current two-year budget and that includes huge cuts for health care and education, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was expressing confidence that the Senate would be able to come up with additional revenue to make cuts all agree are inevitable slightly less injurious.

Asked whether a Senate subcommittee was looking for $5 billion in non-tax revenues, he said, “I’m not sure that I or the committee are looking for a specific number, but we’re looking for an alternative if we don’t go into the rainy day fund as much as some of the members in both the Senate and the House are considering. And what I would rather see is a larger list rather than a smaller list, so that we can very carefully and thoughtfully go through and pick those, if any, that we think make sense and that will fund our operations. In some cases, some of the non-tax revenues are one-time; some of it is recurring.”

Sale of state property is among the list of possibilities, Dewhurst said.

He was parsing his words carefully, knowing that an internecine budget battle looms and knowing also that he’s likely the one who will have to find a solution that somehow mollifies zealous anti-tax, anti-spend members in both houses while avoiding cuts that go deep into the muscle and bones of many state services.

Good luck with that, a sentiment I mean half sarcastically and half sincerely. We’ll let you know how you did next year. EoW, Trail Blazers and Texas Politics has more, and here’s an LBB analysis of HB1, which you’ll either have to figure out how to rotate or risk getting a kink in your neck trying to read.

(more…)

Can the Lege pass a budget?

Mar 23rd, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Robert Miller:

[T]here is a growing chasm between the House and the Senate on the budget. The Governor and House leadership have agreed to spend $3.2 billion from the Rainy Day Fund to balance the FY 2010-11 budget. But, the Governor and House leadership have stated that they will not spend anything from the Rainy Day Fund for the FY 2012-13 budget, nor will the House pass any tax revenue increases. This will result in a House budget for FY 2012-13 of approximately $77 billion of general revenue spending. The FY 2010-11 budget was approximately $87 billion of general revenue spending, including federal stimulus funds of $6.4 billion.

The votes are not there in the Senate Finance Committee to pass a $77 billion budget, much less in the Senate itself. To pass the Senate in Regular Session, the budget will probably need to be at least $83 billion in general revenue. In other words, the Senate is looking to spend at least $6 billion more than the House. If the House says no more Rainy Day Funds and no additional tax revenue, it is going to be very difficult to find the additional money. At this point, you would have to say one or more special sessions is a growing possibility.

Burka makes the point that some Senate Republicans don’t like the budget, either. What happens if no budget gets passed, besides the obvious special session(s), is anyone’s guess. Politically, the Republicans are probably best served by coming up with a budget that allows them to say they cut expenses but did as much as they could to spare public education as quickly as possible, but if that were easy to do they’d have done it by now. Democrats just need to make sure they make the Republicans own all the cuts they do wind up making. The longer things go, the messier it all gets. We’ll have a much better idea how it will go on Thursday when the Senate Finance Committee begins markup of the budget bill.

The “Dan Patrick thinks you’re too stupid to know what you’re voting for” bill

Mar 23rd, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
3 comments

Ugh.

A bill that would remove churches and schools from the drainage fee Houston voters narrowly approved last November as part of Proposition 1 is scheduled for a public hearing Wednesday before the Senate Intergovernmental Relations Committee.

Dubbed Rebuild Houston, the measure amends the city charter to provide for the improvement and renewal of Houston’s drainage and streets by creating a dedicated $125 million-a-year pay-as-you-go fund.

“The language on the ballot was confusing, even to the most informed voter,” Patrick said. “What was not clear to the voters was that the new fee would be placed on churches and school districts, as well as businesses and homes.”

That’s Sen. Dan Patrick, who thinks the federal government should stay out of the state’s business and who isn’t a city of Houston voter, getting the state of Texas involved in the city’s business. Prop 1 opponents were talking about churches having to pay the fee well before the election, and I know there was organized opposition from some of the megachurches in town, so if people didn’t know about this, whose fault is it? Even though he’s not mentioned in this story, you can be sure that Paul Bettencourt, who is costing the city a bunch of money with his frivolous anti-Prop 1 and anti-water rate hike lawsuits, is behind this.

[Mayor Annise] Parker has noted in the past that eight of the state’s 10 largest cities have drainage fees, and that none of the eight exempt churches. For cities with a fee, only Austin and Lubbock exempt schools, while El Paso has a 10 percent discount for schools.

Patrick said he also objected to the drainage fee, because it puts the city in the position of taxing another government entity – school districts. “School districts can little afford to pay a tax to the city and should not even be asked,” he said.

The level of hypocrisy for Dan Patrick to object to this, given his willingness to cut nearly $10 billion from public education funding and his unwillingness to address the structural deficit that has hamstrung school districts since 2006, is beyond my ability to calculate.

Under Senate Bill 714, the city also would be restricted from transferring the reduction in drainage fees from churches and schools to homeowners and businesses. State Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, is sponsoring a companion bill.

Why don’t you just revoke our charter while you’re at it, too? Shame on you, Rep. Dutton, for abetting Patrick’s screw-you to the voters.

You got a license for that downward dog?

Mar 23rd, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

How much regulation do yoga teachers need?

In the past few years, the Texas Workforce Commission has begun sending letters to programs that train yoga instructors, advising them they must get certified to operate as a career school or college, or request an exemption. Career schools and colleges are regulated under the state’s education code.

Certification costs $1,000 to $3,000, and schools that don’t comply can be closed or penalized $1,000 a day. Exemptions are allowed for training programs that cost less than $500, last fewer than 24 hours or are designed to teach recreational or avocational subjects.

The amount of training required to become a yoga teacher varies, but the Yoga Alliance , a national education and support organization, has 200-hour or 500-hour standards for teachers. Training generally costs at least $3,000.

Jennifer Buergermeister, who owns two yoga studios in Houston and is founder and executive director of the nonprofit Texas Yoga Association , lobbied state Rep. Jim Murphy, R-Houston, to introduce a bill that would exclude from regulation yoga teacher training programs because they don’t meet the state’s definition of a career school or college — institutions that offer postsecondary instruction that leads to a professional academic career or vocational degree.

That change in language through House Bills 1839 and 2167 , now in committee, would exclude schools that train instructors of yoga, Pilates, karate and other recreational activities from the definition if they do not lead to an educational credential.

[…]

Murphy said his bill is more about limited government than yoga specifically. Training programs that don’t require a high school degree or lead to certification shouldn’t be regulated by the state, he said.

“If you’re going to be a barber, I want those schools licensed or inspected. But if you’re just doing something for gardeners about how to grow vegetables, you don’t need to be regulated. It’s a hobby versus a career,” he said. “At the end of the day, I don’t think (regulation) produces any better of a product.”

Here are HB1839 and HB2167. I disagree with Rep. Murphy’s last sentence, but I do agree with the general sentiment about regulating careers versus hobbies. And I’d actually go a little farther than Rep. Murphy and suggest that some of the licensing requirements we have for certain careers serve not as guardians of public safety but as barriers to entry, and they ought to be reviewed for efficiency and effectiveness. Licensing overreach is a topic that Matthew Yglesias often writes about, and I think he makes some good points. I’d call these bills a step in the right direction.

Feral hogs: Still a problem

Mar 23rd, 2011
by Charles Kuffner.
8 comments

I’ve always been glad to live in the city because of stuff like this, but maybe it’s not enough any more.

Arlington and Dallas are among cities along the Trinity River that also have reported problems with wild hogs that weigh several hundred pounds, [Ag Commissioner Todd] Staples said.

Wildlife officials say the hogs are now starting to plague urban areas because of changing habitats and prolific reproduction. Texas has up to 2 million of the hairy beasts, about half the nation’s population, and state officials say they cause about $400 million in damage each year.

Although not all feral hogs have tusks, for years the animals have been a menace in rural areas by shredding cornfields, eating calves and damaging fruit trees – even breaking through barbed-wire fences, said Texas Farm Bureau spokesman Gene Hall. They also wreck ecosystems by wallowing in riverbeds and streams.

“They can do more damage than a bulldozer,” Hall said.

Methods to stop the problem have failed, including a pig birth-control pill studied by a veterinarian and researcher. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering allowing hunters in helicopters to shoot wild hogs at a wildlife refuge in Central Texas, saying they keep destroying the habitat.

Just curious – how effective is shooting them from helicopters, anyway? Is it really possible to bag more of them than you would traditionally? Seems to me the noise from the copters would scare off any animals in the vicinity, but what do I know? Anybody have experience with this? Of course, if that’s not effective then it’s hard to say what would be. I’m glad it’s not my job to have to figure it out.