March 3, 2005

House Democrats Hope to Bypass GOP's
`Road Map' with Alternative School Plan

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

Texas House Democrats went on the offensive Thursday by offering a detour around the Republican leadership's self-styled "Road Map to Results" with their own set of recommendations on how to fix the state school finance system.

Based on the same amount of revenues that the GOP's tax plan would raise, Democratic House leaders said that the alternative plan would invest an additional $5 billion in the state's public schools while elevating teacher pay to the national average and boosting the amount the state spends on bilingual education, pre-kindergarten, dropout prevention and expanding facilities in order to shrink class sizes.

With a significant majority of the chamber's 63 Democrats packed into the Speaker's Committee Room for the announcement, Democratic leaders said their plan would provide a bigger property tax break to taxpayers in 135 of the state's 150 House districts by dropping the ceiling on school taxes from $1.50 to $1.25 per $100 valuation and tripling the homestead exemption to $45,000.

The Democrats plan to submit their alternative proposal as an amendment on the floor when the education legislation is debated sometime next week. Democrats would need to win support from about 15 of the House's 87 Republicans or more if they can maintain a united front during the floor debate.

"Every child in Texas deserves a Highland Park education," State Rep. Jim Dunnam, the House Democratic Caucus chairman, said in a reference to the school bill that Republicans on the House Public Education Committee approved over the objections of the panel's Democrats. The Democrats who opposed the committee plan argued that it was a boon to property owners in the school districts with wealthy homeowners and large industrial plants at the expense of the middle-class.

State Rep. Scott Hochberg of Houston - one of three Democrats to cast votes against House Bill 2 as a member of the Public Education Committee - said the Democratic alternative combines good features in the Republican education legislation such as measures to ensure accountability with proposals that members of the minority party contend are more fair to Texans overall.

"This is a better plan for the state of Texas," Hochberg declared, adding that it would decrease the amount of money shifted from the wealthiest school districts to less affluent districts under the recapture system known as Robin Hood.

While Republicans have acknowledged that their top priority is property tax reduction, Democrats said they want to ensure that Texas students have access to the best education possible before taking steps to bring down school taxes assessed on homes and businesses.

State Rep. Rene Oliveira, the Public Education Committee vice-chairman, said the Democrats' proposal comes close to ensuring equity in public education for all of the state's school children. The GOP plan, which Oliveira also opposed in committee, is "artificial sweetener" that does not do enough to make the public education system equitable.

The Democrats said their plan would spend $2 billion more on public schools than the $3 billion in new money proposed by Republicans by shifting the focus from property tax relief to educational opportunity.