House Budget Reflects Priorities On Schools, Border Operations

The Texas House Appropriations Committee on Monday passed a $337.4 billion substitute version of the budget for the next two years, sending it to the full House for a hearing next week.

The House substitute is built off of the Senate’s budget bill, meaning that the two chambers will need to negotiate to decide on a final version of the spending plan before sending it to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for signature.

Accordingly, the summary of the substitute published by the nonpartisan Legislative Budget Board reflects many of Abbott’s legislative priorities and those of state lawmakers, including a $1 billion private school voucher program, billions in property tax cuts and continued funding for Operation Lone Star, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Public schools

At $134.5 billion, public schools, including higher education, comprise the biggest chunk of the state budget overall, about 40% of the total.

The Foundation School Program, which sends tax dollars to school districts, is funded at $75.6 billion in the House substitute budget.

It also includes $400 million for school safety and about $7.6 billion for “increased public education funding,” according to the Legislative Budget Board, the nonpartisan group tasked with analyzing and summarizing budget changes.

House representatives are working to advance a pair of bills that would slightly increase funding for public schools and expand a teacher performance bonus program as well as their own version of a voucher bill that would be tied to overall state spending on public schools. The school funding bill came with an expected cost to the state of about $7.56 billion over the next two-years, according to the LBB’s analysis.

The House Public Education Committee was scheduled to take up the Senate version of a voucher bill and its own public education bill on Tuesday morning, but that meeting was canceled. Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, the chair of the committee, on Tuesday afternoon wrote that the meeting has been rescheduled to Thursday to give members more time to review changes in the committee substitute.  

Property tax cuts

Another $6.5 billion is listed in the budget to cut property taxes in the state, a policy that saw broad bipartisan support at the beginning of the session. Of that, $3 billion is set aside to buy down school district taxes via a compression policy, if both chambers of the Legislature agree to pass it.

But the House bill doesn’t reserve funding for a Senate push to increase the state’s homestead exemption — which allows residential property owners to undervalue their homes when calculating local school district property taxes.

Border security

The House substitute would budget $6.5 billion for Operation Lone Star over the next two years, maintaining its funding level from the previous biennium. The border security program, created by Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021, has cost the state $11 billion since its creation.

The state Department of Public Safety would add 560 new officers to help with staffing problems the agency has had since the start of that program.

Medicaid, insurance services

At the state Department of Health and Human services, the committee substitute would allocate $386.4 million to hire more staffers and upgrade technology at the state’s Medicaid offices to more quickly process applications and review eligibility.

Another $100 million would go to client services for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which could help cut its 90,000-case backlog by about 10,000 cases.