{"id":37188,"date":"2019-05-27T01:03:04","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T01:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37188"},"modified":"2019-05-27T01:03:04","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T01:03:04","slug":"86th-texas-legislature-about-to-end-for-keeps-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37188","title":{"rendered":"86th Texas Legislature about to end &#8230; for keeps, maybe?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=TexasLege%20%23GregAbbott%20%23TexasTechvetschool&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/legislative-session.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-37189\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/legislative-session-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/legislative-session-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/legislative-session.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I am putting my ear to the ground but I don&#8217;t hear much of anything coming from down yonder in Austin.<\/p>\n<p>The Texas Legislature is about to call it a session. It will end fairly quietly compared to recent previous legislative sessions.<\/p>\n<p>I do hope Gov. Greg Abbott refrains from calling a special session to meet later this summer.<\/p>\n<p>What did this group accomplish? A few things.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They approved a form of public school finance reform that doesn&#8217;t respond to a court order. That&#8217;s a pretty good thing.<\/li>\n<li>Lawmakers managed to give public school teachers a raise in pay, which the good teachers surely deserve. Was it enough? Probably not. Then again, it&#8217;s never enough.<\/li>\n<li>Legislators &#8212; and this is a big deal for Amarillo, where I used to live &#8212; approved money for Texas Tech University to build a new school of veterinary medicine in Amarillo. That&#8217;s huge, man!<\/li>\n<li>The Legislature approved a reduction in property taxes, which no doubt is music to those who shell out growing amounts of tax money every year. I don&#8217;t have a particular issue here, given that I&#8217;m old enough to qualify for a homestead exemption that freezes my property taxes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All told, it was a fairly productive session. It also was fairly quiet.<\/p>\n<p>A special session might still occur if Gov. Abbott can find a reason to call one. Whatever. I hope it doesn&#8217;t happen.<\/p>\n<p>Legislators don&#8217;t make enough money &#8211;$600 a month plus per diem expenses &#8212; to stay on the job for longer than the 140 days mandated every other year.<\/p>\n<p>Go home, legislators. We&#8217;ll see you in 2021.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=TexasLege%20%23GregAbbott%20%23TexasTechvetschool&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am putting my ear to the ground but I don&#8217;t hear much of anything coming from down yonder in Austin. The Texas Legislature is about to call it a session. It will end fairly quietly compared to recent previous legislative sessions. I do hope Gov. Greg Abbott refrains from calling a special session to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37188\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">86th Texas Legislature about to end &#8230; for keeps, maybe?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[2006,4523,4653,7777],"class_list":["post-37188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news","tag-greg-abbott","tag-tax-reform","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texas-tech-vet-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37190,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37188\/revisions\/37190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}