Last week, I noted a bill filed by Rep. Rob Orr that would direct some money from the Available School Fund into the public schools. His legislation has now been approved by committee and is likely on its way to passage; this will include a Constitutional amendment that you’ll see on your ballot this November. While I said this sounded good, not everyone agreed with that assessment:
Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who oversees the portfolio affected by the proposal, is among those who disagreed.
“They’re going to raid the fund that was established in 1854, and put in the Constitution as a permanent endowment in 1876, instead of having the (guts) to look at the rainy day fund,” Patterson said after the House Appropriations Committee voted 24-1 for the proposed constitutional amendment and accompanying bill by Rep. Rob Orr, R-Burleson.
State Board of Education member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, last week called the proposal “insane.”
“They want to cook the goose today rather than wait for a lifetime of golden eggs tomorrow,” Bradley said.
Orr noted the fund’s size: “How much is enough? I do not believe it will hamper the fund whatsoever.”
[…]
The only “no” vote on the House committee legislation Thursday was Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio, who said he wanted more information.
“I want to make sure that we’re not making desperate, short-term decisions that jeopardize the ability of future generations to provide for our schoolchildren,” he said.
That’s a good question, and I don’t know nearly enough to answer it. Obviously, the only truly viable fix is to actually deal with the structural deficit, and we all know that ain’t happening. If this does endanger any of these funds, then we shouldn’t be doing this. I appreciate Commissioner Patterson’s perspective, but I would like to hear it from someone who doesn’t have a direct stake in it as well. Does the Comptroller have an opinion on this, or maybe someone like Ray Perryman? We need to hear more about this.
And on a related note, the SBOE gets in the act, too.
Today, Bob Craig, R-Lubbock, delivered a letter to Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, and Speaker Joe Straus signed by nine of his colleagues on the State Board of Education. In it, he said he had found the money — $2 billion — to save approximately 40,000 teaching jobs and fully fund new instructional materials for the state’s public schools.
Its source? The Permanent School Fund.
The board manages the $23 billion fund fed by revenue from taxes and offshore oil-drilling leases and whose interest goes to pay for textbooks and basic operations in public schools. The letter urges the Legislature to pass a resolution allowing the public to vote on a constitutional amendment that would transfer $1 billion each year of the biennium to fund public education.
Six members — the board’s conservative bloc — did not sign the letter. One of them, David Bradley, R-Beaumont, called the proposal “insanity” and emphasized that letter did not represent official action from the board. “Mr. Craig is acting in a rogue capacity,” he said, adding “[He] has delivered this letter without any due deligence and has used to the board’s name as an endorsement.”
Bradley said drawing $2 billion from the fund would “have an impact for generations.”
“By spending the money today, we will not have the four billion [in interest] in seven years, or the eight billion in 15 years,” he said, “It’s extremely short sighted.”
I’m inclined to agree with Bradley on this. This isn’t what the PSF is for. I greatly appreciate the desire of these SBOE members to offset the drastic cuts to public education, but that’s got to be the Legislature’s job. The fact that it ain’t gonna happen is deeply unfortunate and will also have a long-lasting impact, but that’s a problem that will need to be addressed in the next election. Trail Blazers has more.
Charles,
The last time the legislature raided the corpus of the PSF was in 1861. By the time 1865 rolled around, there was consensus that was a bad idea. BTW, the Chron misquoted me. I didn’t say “guts”. I actually said “cajones”. I didn’t know the Chron editors were sooo sensitive. Next time I’ll say “testicles”….
Jerry Patterson
Commissioner,
Texas General Land Office
Thank you for the feedback, Commissioner. I appreciate it, and I do hope we hear more perspectives on this. It’s a big change and it deserves a thorough debate. And for what it’s worth, I had assumed the word the Chron bleeped was “balls”. Silly me.
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