06:37 PM CST on Tuesday, January 10, 2006

By LEE MCGUIRE / KVUE News

Candidate: Carole Strayhorn (Independent)

Campaign: Friends of Carole Keeton Strayhorn

Office sought: Governor

Air date: January, 2006

Title: “Texas Independent”

STRAYHORN: “"Partisan politics is making it tough for Texas. After nine legislative sessions full of name calling, our school funding is in crisis, property taxes are up, and judges are having to do our governor's job. We all know that unless we set politics aside, we'll never fix what's broke. I'm Carole Keeton Strayhorn. And I've decided to put partisan politics aside. To run for Governor as an independent. A Texas independent. One tough time might need one tough grandma to shake Austin up."

Statement:

“Partisan politics is making it tough for Texas. After nine legislative sessions full of name calling, our school funding is in crisis, property taxes are up, and judges are having to do our Governor's job.”

Analysis:

-Legislative sessions: It’s true that there have been nine legislative sessions under Governor Rick Perry. Since he became governor in December, 2000, the Legislature has met three times for regular sessions (2001, 2003, and 2005). The Governor has called six special sessions (three for Congressional redistricting, and three primarily for school finance reform).

-Name calling: This is a subjective description. The special sessions over redistricting were filled with partisan acrimony, including two Democratic walkouts to other states. At the time, Speaker Tom Craddick called the missing Democrats “Chicken D’s,” and many democrats had their own nicknames for U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, the Republican majority leader who engineered much of the redistricting strategy. In contrast, while the subsequent special sessions on school finance reform were divisive, they were far less partisan. Most proposals from political leaders failed because House and Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to oppose them. Rather than split along party lines, lawmakers formed coalitions in other patterns: Rural versus urban, and wealthy-districts versus poor, for example. Despite their philosophical and party differences, lawmakers in these large voting blocs defeated (or, in some cases, successfully threatened to defeat) every tax-reform and school-reform plan suggested by Gov. Rick Perry and other top Republicans. In addition, Strayhorn herself engaged in some “name-calling” when she launched her race for Governor on June 18, 2005. Speaking before a large crowd near the Capitol, and referring to incumbent Gov. Rick Perry, she said “I am not a weak-leading, ethics-ignoring, pointing-the-finger-at-everyone blaming, special session calling, public school slashing, slush fund spending, toll road building, special interest pandering, Rainy Day fund raiding, fee increasing, no-property-tax-cutting, promise breaking, do-nothing phony conservative.”

-School funding is in crisis: This is true. The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that the method of collecting money for schools must be revamped. That system relies on a locally-collected property tax that has approached or reached the legal limit in the majority of school districts. The Court did not rule that schools need more money to adequately educate students, although the November, 2005 ruling left that issue open for debate.

-Property taxes are up: This is true. One reason the Supreme Court cited when it declared the school funding system unconstitutional was a lack of flexibility in the current property tax system. This flexibility is no longer present because a majority of districts have raised local Maintenance and Operation taxing rates close to, or up to, the legal limit of $1.50 per hundred dollars of assessed value. While property taxes and property values are set and assessed by local governments, school districts argue that it has been necessary to raise taxes because the state Legislature has gradually reduced the overall share of education funding that is paid by state dollars. In 1950, the state government paid 56 percent of a school’s bills. Today, that number is closer to 32 percent, excluding federal funds. The rest is borne by local property tax payers.

-Judges are doing the Governor’s job: This needs clarification. It’s true that judges have ordered the Legislature to design a constitutional system for funding education. To that end, the Governor must call a special session before the Court-imposed deadline of June, 2006. However, the Courts have not taken over the process of school finance reform, only ordered the Legislature to fix the problem.