Yesterday, Governor Greg Abbott called a special session of the Texas legislature that is to begin on July 18, 2017. The call was not a surprise given the true urgency of at least one issue, school finance reform, that was not sufficiently addressed during the regular session that ended on May 29th. An overhaul of the overly complex and outdated school finance funding formulas is long overdue, as underscored by comments made by the Texas Supreme Court.
TASBO hopes the legislature will give appropriate attention to this true priority and pass legislation that appropriately addresses public school funding challenges. The Legislature has an opportunity to provide true property tax reform by increasing state aid funding levels if it ends its overreliance on increasing property values as a default school funding mechanism. No other issues listed in the 20 special session topics will have as far reaching impact on the welfare of 5.4 million students and all Texans.
Special session topics listed in Governor Abbott’s press release are:
- Sunset legislation
- Teacher pay increase of $1,000 [to be paid by districts without an increase in funding from the Legislature]
- Administrative flexibility in teacher hiring and retention practices
- School finance reform commission [similar to SB 2144 by Senate Committee of Education Chair Larry Taylor, which did not pass in the regular session]
- School choice for special needs students [private school vouchers]
- Property tax reform [automatic rollback elections to request taxpayer approval for increases above a certain percentage]
- Caps on state and local spending
- Preventing cities from regulating what property owners do with trees on private land
- Preventing local governments from changing rules midway through construction projects
- Speeding up local government permitting process
- Municipal annexation reform
- Texting while driving preemption
- Privacy [bathroom bill]
- Prohibition of taxpayer dollars to collect union dues [prevents school employees from having “union dues” deducted from their paychecks]
- Prohibition of taxpayer funding for abortion providers
- Pro-life insurance reform
- Strengthening abortion reporting requirements when health complications arise
- Strengthening patient protections relating to do-not-resuscitate orders
- Cracking down on mail-in ballot fraud
- Extending maternal mortality task force