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Texas legislators signed on a two billion dollars of $ 338 billion dollars on Saturday on a billions of hikes for the remuneration of teachers, reducing land taxes and strengthening the aquatic infrastructure of the state budget, after the editors of the Chamber and the Senate budget and obtained the approval of the two chambers in two billions of dollars.
The budget is now heading for the controller Glenn Hegarwhich should check that there is enough income to cover the expected expenses of the Legislative Assembly – the last previous step The invoice of 1,056 pages reached the governor Greg Abbottdesk.
The expenditure plan retains money to manage state activities for the next two years, from September to the end of August 2027. It includes the underlying financing of some of the largest invoices adopted by this session, a large part of the IT paid with General Revenue, the main source of taxpayers’ taxpayers in Texas used to cover the basic services.
Legislators approved $ 149 billion in general income expenditure, the rest drawn from federal funds and other revenues of states allocated to specific uses.
The price of $ 338 billion in the budget is almost $ 17 billion more than the legislators planned two years ago, an increase of 5%. However, the legislature should approve additional expenses for the current cycle – which takes place at the end of August – in what is known as the additional budget, which has reduced the increase from one year to the next.
A large part of the budget – more than one in seven dollars – is devoted to the maintenance and supply of new property tax reductions, a tab that increased to $ 51 billion. In recent years, legislators have attempted to slow down Texans’ land tax bills by sending billions of dollars to school districts to reduce the land taxes they receive from owners and businesses.
The state does not receive land taxes; Its chests are filled thanks to a combination of sources which include sales tax, taxes on oil and gas production and franchises on companies.
With the help of a planned budgetary surplus of $ 24 billion, the Legislative Assembly spends some $ 45 billion to maintain the existing reductions that legislators have promulgated since 2019, the rest going to a mixture of “compression” – sending money to school districts to replace the funds they would have otherwise received in the property taxes of the state to pay for the schools of the state labor, or the amount of value at home. A piece of money will also go to tax reductions for businesses.
About $ 3 billion in land tax relief will come from money that legislators initially planned to spend on border security. The team of five senators and five members of the Chamber who hammered the final budget draft diverted almost half of the $ 6.5 billion reserved for the border repression of the State in the previous versions, marking one of the largest budgetary changes in the eleventh hour.
It was a reflection of a drop of several months of illegal border crossings and billions that could come to Texas under A provisional federal plan To reimburse states for their efforts to apply immigration within the framework of the Biden administration.
Senator Joan HuffmanA republican of Houston who chairs the Senate financing committee, said that the spending plan is a “responsible and balanced budget which is all the limits of constitutional and statutory expenditure and meets the needs of our rapidly growing state.”
“Texas’s economy is the desire for the nation, and the budget will ensure the prosperity of our state for future generations,” said Huffman, the first writer of the Senate budget, on the ground on Saturday. “We have exploited our state surplus during several sessions to make targeted and punctual investments without brandishing future budgets.”
representative Greg BonnenR-Friendswood and Huffman counterpart in the House, said that the budget “favors public education, tax relief, public security, infrastructure and the improvement of taxpayers’ services for individuals and businesses”.
The room and the Senate have been largely aligned On the budget counts this session. Each bedroom Plans approved earlier this year which spent similar amounts overall and aligned with articles with large trucks, including the amount of money to be dedicated to good schools, property tax reductions and water infrastructure. A large part of the short characters – describing how this money would be used – was developed in separate invoices.
Among the articles of marquee is An increase of $ 8.5 billion For Texas public schools, the weekly negotiations product between the rooms. The financing package, known as Bill 2Provides additional money for increases in teachers and staff remuneration, preparation of educators, special education, security requirements and early childhood learning.
Another billion dollars in the budget is reserved for a program of good schoolchildren who will allow families to use public money to finance their children’s private tuition fees or pay a range of school -related expenses. Abbott has already signed The bill on good and said that it would approve the school financing bill.
“We have adopted historical policies for nearly 6 million students across Texas, but this is where we give life to these policies,” said the senator. Brandon CreightonR-Conroe and chairman of the Senate of Education Committee, said about the state budget, called Bill 1 of the Senate. “Without SB 1, these reforms are only words on paper. This budget transforms our promises into action and gives lasting weight to our priorities. ”
Shannon Halbrook, an expert in tax policy to the leftist thinking group, each Texan, said that the budget contains “certain things that we consider to be with an asterisk”.
“We are really happy that they invest more in public education,” said Halbrook. “It is not quite the way we would have preferred that they do it. For example, we have always pleaded to increase the basic allocation, because it is a really simple way to provide additional funding for schools at all levels. Instead, HB 2 chooses to do it in a much more complicated and complicated way. ”
More than 70% of the budget is reserved for education and health and social services, the latter includes Medicaid and the health insurance program for children, which offers health coverage to low -income households that do too much to qualify for Medicaid.
Persistent uncertainty was to know how much the state would hike for “community attendants” of personal care, which are paid within the framework of the Medicaid program to help patients with tasks such as laundry, races, grooming, consumption and drugs. The room had proposed to increase their base salary to more than $ 14 an hour, almost $ 2 more than the Senate proposal.
Senator Kolkhorst lawsA Brenham Republican and the editor of the House health care budget, said the problem was “one of the most controversial parties” in its budget section. In the end, the chambers agreed to meet in the middle, spending nearly $ 1 billion in general income to increase the wages of the assistants’ base to $ 13 an hour.
representative Donna HowardD-Austin, said that the attendants fulfill a critical function taking care of the vulnerable Texans, and even with the increases in remuneration, “we have not approached where we must be.” But, she admitted: “We had something.”
“This is the budget of the Legislative Assembly. It does not have everything we want,” said Howard, a long -standing member of the Chamber’s credits committee. “This is all the interest of the reason why we are here. It is a compromise with the Senate … And any compromise does not include everything we fought in the House.”
The budget also requires some $ 10 billion on energy, water and high speed of the state infrastructure. This includes $ 5 billion to double Texas Energy Fund, a loan program funded by taxpayers with low interest rate intended to encourage the development of gas power plants.
The legislators also put $ 2.5 billion in Texas Water Fund as part of the additional budget of the current expenses. The fund is used to pay new water supply projects – such as desalination – repairing old water infrastructure, conservation and attenuation projects of floods.
In November, voters will be invited to approve a proposal to award $ 1 billion per year from 2027 – $ 20 billion in total – until 2047 to guarantee state water supply.
Disclosure: Each Texan was a financial supporter of Texas Tribune, a non -profit non -supported press organization which is partly funded by donations of members, foundations and business sponsors. Financial supporters do not play any role in the journalism of the gallery. Find a complete List of them here.
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