Although the Texas Legislature has reached an agreement on property tax relief, their work is far from over.
Over the next several months, the members of the House and Senate will face the impeachment trial of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a special session on school choice, and an additional special session on the bills vetoed by Gov. Greg Abbott.
If coming battles are anything like the debate on property tax relief, the Texas Legislature will continue to be the source of vigorous political dialogue.
Entering the 88th general session with a historically large surplus of more than $30 billion, one of the major legislation priorities was passing some form of property tax relief. However, the House and the Senate could not agree on what that should look like, leading to a stalemate that would last the entire general session, a full special session, and the first part of a second special session.
Finally, the two chambers settled along the lines of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s suggestions, passing a compromise plan, as covered by The Dallas Express.
With property tax relief out of the way for now, all eyes are turning to the upcoming trial of impeached Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Scheduled to start on September 5, the trial in the Senate represents one of the most significant moments in the history of Texas politics. The last time a statewide official was impeached was more than 100 years ago.
Recently, Lt. Gov. Patrick, who acts as the judge over the court of senators, issued a sweeping gag order after some of the prosecuting House managers were found to be making allegedly inflammatory and prejudicial public comments, as The Dallas Express reported.
Following the Paxton trial, according to the governor’s chief political strategist Dave Carney, Abbott will reportedly call the long-expected special session on school choice proposals.
Gov. Abbott has been a vocal supporter of increasing education options for children through school choice initiatives, as reported by The Dallas Express. Most likely, this would come in the form of an “Educational Saving Account” (ESA) or a similar type of voucher.
Since the Texas Legislature failed to send a bill regarding school choice to Abbott during the regular session, the governor has been open about his intention to call a special session.
“This year, I signed laws to get woke agendas out of Texas classrooms and restore parental rights in education,” Abbott recently tweeted. “We made great progress, but there is more work to be done.”
“Now is the time for school choice in Texas,” he added, reaffirming the likelihood of a coming special session on the issue.
Having spent the past several months traveling across Texas advocating his stance on the issue, Abbott claimed, “Texans in every corner of our state support school choice.”
“We must deliver on our promise to fully restore parents as the primary decisionmakers in their child’s education,” he continued. “Now is the time to bring school choice to every family in Texas.”
Resistance to school choice programs has been fierce, however, with opponents claiming that it would irreparably harm public schools.
In an email received by The Dallas Express, Pastors for Texas Children, an anti-school choice advocacy group, described Gov. Abbott’s proposal as “a policy that diverts public tax dollars to private schools, many of them religious schools, thus compromising a Texas child’s constitutional right to a ‘free public school,’ as well as violating Texans’ religious liberty by using the authority of the State to advance and establish religion.”
Similarly, Rep. James Talarico (D-Round Rock) claimed, “Greg Abbott is trying to defund our public schools with a private school voucher scam. A bipartisan group of legislators stopped him last session, but now he’s calling us back.”
“The ‘school choice’ movement started in the 1950s after Brown v. Board of Education desegrated public schools,” he alleged. “This is a decades-long plot to resegregate schools — to separate the rich from the rest of us.”
However, polling suggests that most Texans favor a voucher program, including a majority of black and Hispanic respondents, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Whatever the outcome of the school choice fight, Abbott has also indicated that he will call an additional special session so the legislature can pass many of the bills he vetoed in an effort to prompt the chambers to reach an agreement on property tax relief and force a school choice plan.
In several of the veto proclamations, Abbott said, “This bill can be reconsidered at a future special session only after property tax relief is passed.”
Still, other proclamations from the governor explained that the bills “can be reconsidered at a future special session only after education freedom is passed.”
However, some statesmen have suggested that Gov. Abbott should expand the call on the forthcoming special session to pass important legislation that did not pass earlier.
Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) told The Dallas Express, “I am proud of the conservative victories the Texas legislature had this session, but my constituents are justifiably furious that we left far too many major priorities undone including securing our border, banning COVID vaccine mandates, empowering parents with education freedom, reining in executive emergency powers, securing our elections, and many other policies to protect individual liberty, constrain government, and resist federal overreach.
“Governor Abbott is right to continue to demand special sessions, and I hope he keeps us in Austin until these issues and others are resolved so that the next generation can inherit a more free and prosperous Texas,” he asserted.