Prisons, Mental hospitals escape Texas leaders’ budget axe

By: Robert T. Garrett/The Dallas Morning News

State leaders facing a growing budget shortfall will exempt prison operations, inmate treatment programs, state mental hospitals, and some education programs from 5 percent spending cuts, a person with knowledge of the process said Tuesday.

Leaders decided against whacking programs that maintain public safety, hold down future spending or improve the Texas economy. Their choices eliminate about one-fifth of $1.7 billion in savings that state agencies offered up, said the official, who isn’t authorized to speak publicly about the decision and did so only on condition of anonymity.

Even as final choices were being made, House budget chief Jim Pitts said that the gap lawmakers will have to close when they craft a new budget next year had reached $18 billion – billions more than the largest figure any state GOP leader has used so far. The Waxahachie Republican said that with a shortfall that large, the Legislature should consider allowing expanded gambling in the state.

“Gambling could help us on our budget,” Pitts said after his Appropriations Committee heard sobering testimony from revenue and budget experts. “I’m going to look at every revenue enhancer that we can get. If you go across the border [to] Oklahoma and Louisiana, you’re going to see Texas cars, and we need to grab that money.”

Together, the developments show how daunting the state’s fiscal situation has become. A deep recession and the 2006 decision to slash school property taxes by one-third, without identifying enough state money to pay for the tax cut, are driving the shortfall.

While leaders already are backing away from spending cuts that would be politically tough, House Speaker Joe Straus said the 5 percent cuts in many programs are “absolutely necessary but not nearly sufficient.”

Straus, R-San Antonio, made a rare appearance before the Appropriations Committee to urge colleagues to shun tax increases and bring “totally new thinking” to the state’s fiscal dilemma.

“We cannot afford business as usual,” Straus said.

He added: “The 5 percent we’ve requested is just the beginning.”

Straus, Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst asked agencies in January to submit spending reduction ideas. The three leaders have been mulling suggested cuts since February.

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