By Paul Emerson
TAC State Financial Analyst
On Thursday, May 26, the House and Senate budget conferees reached a compromise and agreed on HB 1, sending it to both chambers for weekend votes. This doesn’t leave the Legislature much time, since the session ends at midnight Monday, May 30.
In a 9-1 decision, Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) was the only conferee member to vote against HB 1. Assuming HB 1 is successful and passes out of both chambers during the weekend with no substantive changes, the budget currently stands at $172.3 billion in all funds for the next two years (2012-13). This is roughly $15.1 billion, or 8.1 percent less than the current budget, which ends Aug. 31, 2011.
Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden (R-Bryan) noted that HB 1 wouldn’t balance without the passage of three other bills:
Courthouse Preservation Program
Conferees to HB 1 allocated $20.4 million to the Courthouse Preservation Program. These funds are provided in Article IX of HB 1.
Conference Committee Report on HB 1
The TAC County Information Project has prepared a report detailing agency programs that impact counties. For more information on this article, contact Paul Emerson, TAC state financial analyst, at (800) 456-5974 or paule@county.org.
By Elna Christopher
Director of Media Relations
Three important county-related constitutional amendments successfully passed the Legislature this week and will now go to voters in November.
SJR 37
SJR 37 by Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) is important since another bill, SB 100, will move the candidate filing deadline back from January to December. Without SJR 37, the December filing deadline forces county and certain city officials to automatically resign their offices if they announce for a different office, since they would have more than one year of their terms remaining — creating an unlevel playing field for local officials.
SJR 37, sponsored in the House by Rep. Van Taylor (R-Plano) will extend the resign-to-run rule by 30 days, making the resign-to-run rule fairer to local officials, if Texas voters approve it in November. It passed the House 131-14 and had already passed the Senate 30-0.
SB 100 and its House companion HB 2173 by Rep. Raul Torres (R-Corpus Christi), both of which caused the need for SJR 37, are aimed at getting Texas in compliance with the federal MOVE Act on military voting. The MOVE Act requires 45 days for processing military overseas ballots. State officials believed they needed more time to meet that requirement, hence moving the filing deadline to December.
SJR 26
SJR 26 by Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) permits local governments to enter into extended interlocal contracts for joint projects. Under current law, agreements between counties and cities for joint projects are restricted to annual revenues and renewals. Current law prevents local governments from jointly financing and operating extended consolidated services — such as criminal justice buildings, animal shelters and equipment maintenance facilities. SJR 26 would change that to allow such consolidated projects, which could save taxpayers money. By pledging the revenues from these programs, the cities and counties will not need to levy additional taxes to secure these programs. SJR 26 passed the Senate 30-0 and the House 144-0.
The enabling legislation, SB 760, also passed both the Senate and House.
HJR 63
HJR 63 by Rep. Joe Pickett (D-El Paso) would amend the Texas Constitution, Art. 8, sec. 1-g(b) to add counties to the political entities authorized to pledge increased property taxes to bonds issued for redeveloping property in a particular area. This would enhance counties’ ability to designate transportation reinvestment zones, providing an important financing tool to expand and improve transportation options.
The Texas Association of Counties, the Conference of Urban Counties and the County Judges and Commissioners Association of Texas requested support of the amendments, and county officials rallied to the cause, greatly contributing to their passage.
Now, it is up to the voters in November.
By Tim Brown
CIP Senior Analyst
Quite a few counties are looking at salaries as they work on next year’s budget. Salaries of elected officials and county auditors are available from the Texas Association of Counties. A printed version of the TAC Salary Survey 2010 is available to county officials — simply contact TAC at the number below and make sure we have your correct mailing address.
Unfortunately, as usually happens, a number of corrections were found after the report was printed. Those errata are available online. In addition, a PDF version of the TAC Salary Survey 2010 is also available online which has been updated with all of the listed errata.
Two questions that almost always come up about the TAC Salary Survey are: when will it be updated and what positions are included?
First, TAC updates the report on a two-year cycle, so the next survey will be sent to counties in February 2012 and the report will be available sometime in May 2012. Surveying counties and publishing the salary data in even-numbered years allows us to concentrate on the legislature during the odd-numbered years.
Second, the TAC Salary Survey includes salaries for elected officials who receive a salary from the county plus the county auditor. It does not include other appointed positions nor does it include staff positions.
For questions or comments about the TAC Salary Survey, please contact Tim Brown at timb@county.org or call (800) 456-5974. If requesting a printed copy of the report, be sure to include updated mailing information in your request.