A pair of guards walk through a dormatory cell housing female inmates Friday, May 16, 2014, at the Nacogdoches County Jail in Nacogdoches, Texas. (AP Photo/The Daily Sentinel, Andrew D. Brosig)
AUSTIN–Advocacy groups appeared before the Texas Commission on Jail Standards Thursday to discuss improving treatment for pregnant inmates.
The groups, including the Texas Jail Project and Mamas of Color Rising, originally addressed the issue at the Commission’s meeting in September, and were invited to participate in a conference call with Commission members where the groups expressed concerns.
Chairwoman Donna Klaeger said the Commission learned a lot from the call, and would continue gathering information on the topic.
The advocacy groups plan to present recommendations, which will include investigating standards for methadone-using pregnant women and revising treatment plans for women with high-risk pregnancies, to the Commission before their next meeting in February.
Shela Williams was 18 weeks pregnant when she was jailed in Travis County for violating her probation. The pregnancy was high-risk and she was seeing a specialist before her incarceration.
“When she got to Travis County jail the specialized care stopped and she lost the baby at 26 weeks,” advocate Kellee Coleman told the Commission on Williams behalf.
Williams was taken to hospital twice to monitor her pregnancy, and on the second trip was told the baby’s heart had stopped beating. They induced labor that day.
“I wasn’t able to talk to my sister, my family,” Williams said. “I had to have him by myself.”
Dallas County spokeswoman Carmen Castro said Parkland Health & Hospital System handles medical services in the county’s jails.
“Depending on how far along a women is in her pregnancy, they can be expedited to be placed in a separate section, or in an infirmary area if they are nearing their due date,” Castro said.
Comptroller Susan Combs, explaining her biennial revenue estimate in January 2013 (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Texas has logged the biggest single-month percentage increase in sales tax receipts in nearly two years — 12.9 percent.
Last month’s sales tax revenue was $2.41 billion, up from $2.14 billion in October 2013, Comptroller Susan Combs announced Wednesday.
The last time monthly growth pressed into double-digit territory was November 2012, when collections grew by 13.1 percent.
“Strong growth in sales tax receipts was apparent across all major economic sectors,” said Combs, who leaves office in January.
She said “notable increases from retail trade and the oil and natural gas-related sectors led the growth,” signaling “increased spending by both consumers and businesses.”
For the fiscal year that began Sept. 1, Combs has forecast just 3.3 percent growth in revenue from Texas’ 6-1/4-cent sales tax. (Click here, see Table A-13.) September’s receipts were 7.9 percent higher than a year earlier. So as has frequently happened, her projection is looking very conservative.
The news probably will do little to cool the ardor for tax cuts among incoming GOP lawmakers and leaders such as Lt. Gov.-elect Dan Patrick and Gov.-elect Greg Abbott.
In election day interviews, Patrick pledged “serious property tax relief.” Abbott said more vaguely in his Tuesday night victory speech that he would keep Texas No. 1 in job creation by, among other things, “lowering the tax burden.”
But a host of considerations will complicate their effort, including a low-balling of entitlements such as Medicaid by about $1 billion in the current two-year budget cycle; lawmakers’ continued reliance on budget-balancing tricks, such as hoarding $4.2 billion in fees levied for specific purposes; road needs; and the looming threat of a court decision ordering a costly overhaul of school finance.
Sen. John Whitmire, the dean of the Texas Senate (2008 AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)
Update at 4:00 p.m.: Checked tape, made minor changes to Whitmire’s and Nelson’s quotes.
Original item at 11:29 a.m.: The Texas Senate has begun its expected debate over whether to abandon a rule that for many decades has protected partisan, geographic and racial-ethnic minorities.
At a briefing on taxes for new Senate budget writers Wednesday, the chamber’s longest-serving member, Houston Democrat John Whitmire, launched a wry if somewhat backhanded defense of the “two-thirds rule.”
It can protect from attack things highly valued by rural senators, such as an exemption of agricultural equipment from the sales tax, Whitmire said at a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee.
The rule requires two-thirds of senators to agree before a bill can be taken up on the Senate floor.
Earlier this year, GOP lieutenant governor candidate Dan Patrick promised to reduce the influence of Democratic senators by weakening the rule and reducing the number of committees they chair. Patrick is a Houston senator.
On Wednesday, Whitmire interrupted a presentation by the comptroller’s office to discuss the sales-tax agricultural exemption.
He called it the “largest, broadest exemption we have.” Whitmire said urban tradesmen could view it as unfair, given they pay tax when they buy vehicles and equipment needed in their work. But the ag exemption has worked well, he said.
Then came the caveat.
“To preserve it, we need to make sure our rural members have a place at the table,” Whitmire said.
Senate Finance Committee Chairwoman Jane Nelson (2009 AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)
Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, said the Legislature tightened administration of the ag exemption in recent years. Beneficiaries have to attest they are engaged in food and fiber production, he said.
Whitmire, though, said that in the next revenue crunch, it and all other exemptions could be reviewed. The state may again face “challenges to find sufficient revenue,” putting the ag exemption at risk, he warned.
“The rural members should be mindful that the Senate rules currently allow them to block any consideration of repealing that,” he said.
Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, interjected, “You talking about the two-thirds rule?”
Whitmire replied, “That would probably be the No. 1 thing that would come to my mind.”
A few minutes later, members of the panel began raising questions about the regressive effects of higher sales tax. Democrats mentioned Patrick’s proposal to decrease local school property taxes, perhaps by adding a penny or two to the state’s 6-1/4-cent sales tax.
Finance Committee Chairwoman Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, quickly cut them off, though.
She noted that higher sales tax is just one way to pay for property tax relief.
“Many of us would like to reduce property taxes,” Nelson said. “We’re going to look at a lot of different possibilities.”
The city of Houston sparked a firestorm when it subpoenaed the sermons of five pastors who led opposition to the city’s equal rights ordinance. Christian conservative groups and politicians, including Attorney General Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz, denounced the action as an attack on religious liberty. Faced with the criticism, the city amended its subpoenas to remove any mention of “sermons.” But it still seeks “all speeches or presentations related to” the ordinance and a petition drive aimed at repealing it.
Opponents had mounted the petition drive but the city ruled there weren’t enough valid signatures to put the repeal issue on the ballot. Opponents filed suit. The case is set for trial in January.
The ordinance bans discrimination by businesses that serve the public and in housing and city employment. Religious institutions are exempt. Critics complain the ordinance grants transgender people access to the restroom of their choice in public buildings and businesses, excluding churches.
Mayor Annise Parker says the city wasn’t trying to intrude on matters of faith. She says it just wants to know what pastors advised folks about the petition process. But critics are deeply suspicious the Houston subpoena could set up a test case aimed at revoking the tax exemption of religious organizations that advocate political activity the government doesn’t like.
What to make of the balancing act between the city’s effort to defend its equal rights ordinance and pastors who encouraged people to oppose it in speeches and correspondence?
What are the limits, if any, of religious leaders to speak out as a matter of religious faith without facing a government subpoena?
We asked our Texas Faith panel of religious leaders, theologians, academics and faith-based activists what they thought of the clash between faith and politics in Houston. Their responses: diverse and provocative.
“I celebrate the courage of preachers who, like the ancient prophets, become critics of the political system,” said one Texas Faith panelist.
But another said: “Foolish paranoid irrationality aside, the city of Houston does not restrict preachers’ ability to pontificate on why some people should be given human rights, but others should not.”
And there was this: What if they had been mosques? Would Ted Cruz and champions of religious liberty been so quick to ride to the rescue?
If you think there’s consensus – even among those in the faith community – you’re wrong.
Dan Patrick answers reporters' questions after a Sept. 29 televised debate. (AP Photo/The Daily Texan, Ethan Oblak)
Republican lieutenant governor hopeful Dan Patrick is attacking Democratic opponent Leticia Van de Putte for a nearly decade-old vote she cast in the Texas Senate.
Van de Putte’s purported transgression, though, was at worst a very common one: She joined every other state senator in voting “aye” on a tax bill amendment in 2005.
Patrick’s latest TV ad hits Van de Putte for the vote, saying she “even supported a tax on employee wages, an income tax on Texas workers.”
But tax experts say that’s misleading — in part, because the tax under discussion was an existing one on businesses that was being tinkered with, not a new one on individual Texans.
Patrick’s ad also omits crucial context, such as that the amendment was offered by a Republican; it was approved, 31-0, though it never became law; and the four GOP senators remaining in the Senate who also voted “aye” are today powerful figures with whom Patrick will have to work closely if he wins on Nov. 4. They include Finance Committee chief Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, and Natural Resources Committee leader Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay.
Is he calling them liberals, I asked Patrick spokesman Alejandro Garcia.
On Thursday, Garcia did not directly respond to my question, though he stood by the ad, which the Patrick campaign titled “Liberal Leticia.”
“She is clearly a liberal in every sense of the word,” Garcia wrote in an email. He attached a spreadsheet of legislative scorecards from the past two sessions that he said prove his point.
Leticia Van de Putte, in her post-debate press gaggle. (AP Photo/The Daily Texan, Ethan Oblak)
The ratings are by the Texas Association of Business and five staunchly conservative groups, including ones underwritten, respectively, by conservative Midland oilman Tim Dunn and billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch of Wichita, Kan. Curiously, the Patrick campaign did some averaging of the 12 scores, presumably to show Van de Putte is more liberal than Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, and roughly as liberal as Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin.
Garcia said, as the ad does, that Van de Putte supported a statewide property tax in 2003 and opposed property tax relief in 2007. However, as we noted in a story in Thursday’s paper, in one of the two votes from 2007 the ad cites, Van de Putte ended up with a bipartisan majority that had business backing in killing a Patrick effort to tighten residential appraisal caps.
The 2005 “wage tax” amendment, by then-Sen. Kim Brimer, R-Fort Worth, came as Texas lawmakers, under GOP leadership, grappled with how to raise enough state tax money to deeply cut local school property taxes. They were racing to comply with a court order that said the state’s school finance system was unconstitutional. Brimer’s amendment didn’t become law.
It took lawmakers two special sessions in 2005 and a third in 2006 before they finally traversed a minefield of prickly business sectors and professional groups and settled on a more broadly applied business franchise tax. While the old one largely was a tax on corporations’ net income, the new one swept in liability-protected partnerships and professional associations, which had previously been exempt. And it gave employers the choice of deducting employee compensation, cost of goods sold or a flat 30-percent cut from the total revenues that are taxed.
On Thursday, I spoke with some state tax policy experts, including some who declined to be identified because they fear offending Patrick if he wins the election and becomes the Senate’s powerful presiding officer. They agreed that Brimer’s measure wasn’t an income tax on workers, because it would’ve been paid by employers. And though it would have taxed wages, wages were one of three options a business could choose: Paying a tax consisting of 0.025% of net assets, 2.5% of net income or 1.75% of wages.
At the time of Brimer’s amendment, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and FreedomWorks leader Dick Armey foamed with indignation that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and the Senate were leading Texas astray — with a “fancy disguise for a personal income tax,” in the Journal’s wording; or, in Armey’s, “just a clever disguise for an income tax.”
Patrick cited the Journal editorial in his ad attacking Van de Putte.
Nearly three years ago, though, the Texas Supreme Court in the Allcat case ruled that the margins tax lawmakers eventually passed in 2006 isn’t a personal income tax, but a tax on businesses, not individuals.
Almost forgotten in the fierce rhetoric is that it was passed in order to offset the state’s giving more aid to schools so they could lower their local property taxes; and as part of a tax swap package that was supposed to be close to revenue neutral, though it turned out to be something of a net tax cut.
“They were just throwing one thing after another on the wall, to see what stuck,” said tax expert Dick Lavine of the center-left think tank the Center for Public Policy Priorities, recalling the Brimer amendment.
Cleopatra de Leon, left, and Nicole Dimetman hug attorney Neel Lane after February's ruling by a federal judge in San Antonio that Texas' gay marriage ban is unconstitutional. (Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News via Zuma Press/MCT)
The Texas gay marriage case appears on track to be heard late next month or in December, and probably before the same federal appellate judges who consider a contrary ruling from Louisiana, a lawyer for the Texas plaintiffs said Monday.
Neel Lane, who will make the arguments for the two same-sex couples challenging Texas’ ban on gay marriage, said they have been granted their request for an expedited hearing. Last week, Lane’s clients sought the speed-up because one of them, Nicole Dimetman of Austin, is pregnant and expecting to give birth in March.
Late last month, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jerry E. Smith granted Louisiana state officials’ request that the two states’ cases be heard by the same three-judge panel. In Louisiana, a federal district judge upheld that state’s ban.
Lane, a partner in the San Antonio office of the firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, said it will be Nov. 7 before all of the briefs in the Louisiana case are submitted.
In the Texas case, Attorney General Greg Abbott submitted the last of the written arguments to the New Orleans appellate court late Friday. He is challenging a February ruling by U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia of San Antonio that Texas’ prohibition of same-sex marriage is unconstitutional — an edict Garcia held in abeyance so higher-ranking jurists could weigh in.
In briefs submitted by Abbott and the Texas plaintiffs, who include a gay North Texas couple, one thing is clear: Each side wants to focus the appeals court’s attention on a different Supreme Court precedent, be the subject at hand doctor-assisted suicide or interracial marriage.
Abbott’s office repeatedly invoked Washington v. Glucksberg, a euthanasia case from Washington state in the late 1990s. In that case, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a right to doctor-assisted suicide was not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the 14th Amendment’s due process clause because it wasn’t “deeply rooted in the nation’s history.”
“They do not argue that a right to marry a same-sex partner … is deeply rooted in history and tradition,” Abbott writes, referring to the plaintiffs. “Instead, the plaintiffs contend that this Court should simply defy Glucksberg‘s command.”
The state brief says circuit courts in Denver and Richmond, Va., which recently upheld rulings striking down state bans, ducked the requirements of the 1997 euthanasia case. One of the circuits spoke of a need to “stretch to accommodate changing societal norms.” But if judges can ignore precedent and choose what is a constitutional right, “that is not a government of laws, but of men,” Abbott’s brief said.
If same-sex marriage is not a fundamental right, Abbott said Texas’ laws and constitutional amendment that prohibit same-sex unions have to undergo what’s known as a “rationality review.” It can be very favorable to states, especially as Abbott defines it: The state doesn’t have to prove the bases for its law are rational, such as that heterosexual unions are better than homosexual ones at producing children, or that favoring opposite-sex marriage is a good way to prevent unplanned pregnancies.
Lane and other lawyers for the plaintiffs have cited a line of cases about racial discrimination in the South, especially Loving v. Virginia, a 1967 case in which the Supreme Court struck down a law barring a black person from marrying a white person. In Lane’s brief last month, he said Abbott’s argument “parrots Virginia’s failed arguments in Loving.” Lane evoked anti-miscegenation laws in 30 states, and 16 previous cases Virginia’s lawyers were able to cite.
As we reported here, Lane wrote that tradition “does not provide a rational basis for an otherwise unconstitutional law.”
Republican governor candidate Greg Abbott is accusing his Democratic rival of free-spending – not of state dollars, but from her own campaign account.
Campaign expenditure reports released this week show that Davis is paying $2,600 in monthly rent for an Austin apartment. In addition, the Davis campaign has leased an SUV for $924 a month.
“Sen. Davis’ latest fundraising report shows that she spent more than she took in, which isn’t surprising given her history of mining campaign funds to pay for a luxury lifestyle,” said Abbott spokeswoman Amelia Chasse.
As a fact, both campaigns spent more than they raised in the last election report because reserves were used to buy expensive TV advertisements.
And the Davis campaign answered that their spending is judicious.
“With the campaign based in Fort Worth and with frequent trips to Austin necessary, maintaining an apartment for the senator as well as campaign staff is much more cost effective than repeated hotel stays,” said Davis spokesman Zac Petkanas.
The apartment is in one of the most expensive areas for Austin housing, according to a recent survey of rental costs in the city. The average 2-bedroom in the close-to downtown Old West neighborhood is $1,600.
The car is a Tahoe, made in Arlington, Petkanas pointed out.
“With Sen. Davis spending 12 to 14 hours a day traveling tens of thousands of miles throughout the state to campaign, leasing a large enough vehicle to transport the candidate, staff and luggage is much more cost effective than repeated car rentals and short plane trips,” Petkanas said.
Shortly after being elected to the state Senate in 2008, Davis rented an apartment in Austin for the legislative session, spending $23,500 to outfit it, including furniture, cookware and bedding.
The campaign funds were mostly spent at Macy’s, Crate and Barrel and Overstock.com.
Using campaign funds for such purchases is legal and within state ethics rules.
But Abbott spokeswoman Chasse said Davis’ spending shows a “lavish lifestyle at her donors’ expense” that isn’t how most Texans live.
“It seems unlikely that Sen. Davis’ donors expected their contributions to pay for expensive cars and furnishings, and it’s yet more evidence of how out-of-touch Sen. Davis is with Texas,” Chasse said.
UPDATE 5:25 pm: Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Attorney General’s Office, said the lawmakers appear to be engaged in a partisan effort. He said they have failed to recognize that the attorney general has ruled 40 times in the past decade that documents from the Texas Enterprise Fund must be made public.
“Yet again, the Texas Democratic delegation is more interested in political grandstanding than correctly understanding the law or the facts surrounding an issue,” Strickland said.
Regarding the Vought documents, Strickland pointed out that the attorney general reversed it’s December 2004 decision withholding records, after lawyers for The News pointed out that Vought already had received the contract and funding. The earlier ruling had been based on the Governor’s Office assertion that the contract was still pending and competitive.
The Vought information was ordered released in April 2005.
“The Texas Democratic delegation should spend more time understanding the facts of this issue before asking for investigations into documents that have repeatedly been released to the media and the general public,” Strickland said.
ORIGINAL POST 3:30 pm: Six U.S. representatives are calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the questionable dealings of the state’s job-closing incentive fund.
Part of the request, made by Texas Democrats, is aimed at Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is now the Republican frontrunner in the governor’s race.
The Democrats are asking for the Justice Department to look into whether the Texas Enterprise Fund’s failure to follow guidelines in state law might warrant criminal charges.
They also want an examination of Abbott’s decision in 2004 to deny a public information request by The Dallas Morning News that would have shed light on problems, including the fact that some companies were receiving money without even filing an application.
The Texas Enterprise Fund was created in 2003 as a business incentive, largely administered by Gov. Rick Perry, specifically to create jobs and foster capital investments.
But an independent audit released two weeks ago showed that the fund handed out $222 million to a handful of companies and universities that never filed an application and that there was little criteria for winning an award and little state monitoring once a contract was signed.
Vought Aircraft was among seven entities that never filled out an application. It received $35 million, some of which eventually had to be paid back after the company failing to meet job creation benchmarks.
Another recipient that never filed an application was the semiconductor company Sematech, receiving $40 million. Sematech moved to New York shortly after spending the incentive money.
The News asked for the applications submitted by those companies from the governor’s office in 2004. The governor’s office appealed to the attorney general, saying it shouldn’t have to release the information because it included proprietary information from the companies that could help their competitors if made public.
Instead of saying there were no applications, the attorney general issued an opinion saying the information produced by the companies was proprietary and didn’t need to be released.
It’s that action that the congressional members want independently assessed, saying it is, “a serious matter we feel deserves immediate and independent investigation by your office.”
“We also believe that federal intervention is warranted because of the possible unethical and illegal actions by the Texas Enterprise Fund (“TEF”) and the Office of the Attorney General (OAG),” the letter stated.
It did not specify what federal laws might have been violated by the state actions. In addition, federal money was not part of the awards; all of the money provided to the companies came from state taxpayers.
The letter was signed by Marc Veasey of Fort Worth, Sheila Jackson Lee, Al Green and Gene Green of Houston, as well as Ruben Hinojosa of Mercedes and Joaquin Castro of San Antonio.
Plaintiff gay couples celebrate trial court victory at February news conference in San Antonio. From left: Cleopatra De Leon, Nicole Dimetman, Mark Phariss and Victor Holmes. (AP Photo/San Antonio Express-News, Jerry Lara)
The plaintiffs in the Texas gay marriage case are asking a federal appeals court to schedule oral arguments next month because one of them is expecting.
Austin lawyer Nicole Dimetman is pregnant and expects to give birth for the first time on March 15, lawyers trying to overturn Texas’ gay-marriage ban announced Sunday.
“The need for justice and equality has always been urgent,” San Antonio lawyer Neel Lane, of the firm Akin Gump Strauss Haurer & Feld, said in a statement. “This development — Nicole’s pregnancy — only underscores that. We hope the [U.S.] 5th Circuit [Court of Appeals] will do what it can to move this case forward expeditiously.”
Dimetman and 13-year partner Cleopatra De Leon, an Air Force veteran, were married in Massachusetts five years ago. They want Texas to recognize their marriage.
After they were married, De Leon gave birth to a boy, now four years old. Dimetman adopted him. But adoption is expensive and time-consuming, and the couple would like to avoid going through the procedure again, Lane said. He noted that while for heterosexual couples, the establishment of parental rights is automatic, De Leon would have to do the adopting this time — to be legally recognized as a parent of the child they’re expecting.
“More importantly, the child will be exposed to great uncertainty and insecurity if, for some reason, Dimetman is rendered incapable of caring for the newborn child,” Lane said. “For instance, if Dimetman did not survive childbirth, the baby could be an orphan without a parent directing the baby’s care.”
The appeals court hasn’t set a date for a hearing in the case. Most of the briefs have been filed, though Abbott is scheduled to respond to the plaintiffs’ latest arguments very soon.
Lane noted that a three-judge panel, yet to be named by the appeals court, will hear the Texas case and one from Louisiana. In the Louisiana case, a federal district judge ruled that state could ban same-sex marriage. Briefs in it are to be completed by Nov. 7, Lane said. So a November oral argument in the Texas case would be ideal, as Dimetman would like to attend, he said. It’s unwise for women to travel late in their pregnancies if that can be avoided, and as of next month, Dimetman won’t have entered her pregnancy’s third trimester, he said.
The other lead plaintiff couple in the case is from North Texas. A year ago, Plano lawyer Mark Phariss and physician assistant Victor Holmes, who have been together more than 17 years, unsuccessfully tried to obtain a marriage license in San Antonio. The Bexar County clerk’s office refused to issue them a license because they are both men.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has asked the appeals court to overrule U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia’s February ruling that the state’s prohibition of same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Garcia, who sits in San Antonio, said Texas’ ban stigmatizes gay and lesbian couples for no legitimate reason, thus depriving them of due process and equal protection. In July, though, Abbott filed a brief arguing that courts should let the people in states and their legislatures decide whether to let people of the same sex marry. Saying judges should intervene only when states violate fundamental rights, Abbott said gay marriage can’t be considered such a right because it isn’t rooted deeply in the country’s history and traditions.
Texas Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Kyle Janek (2008 photo by AP's Harry Cabluck)
The agency that periodically looks at whether state agencies are efficient has urged that five existing social services agencies be merged into one.
The consolidation would reduce fragmentation in programs such as Medicaid and women’s health, help the five departments better manage their $24 billion of contracts and finish a streamlining effort the Legislature began in 2003, said a report released Friday by the Sunset Advisory Commission.
A 15-year-old pilot program for mental health services delivery in the Dallas area, NorthSTAR, is “outdated” and should be blended into a statewide model, the commission’s staff report also recommended.
“The state did not finish the job,” the report said of a 2003 law that reduced Texas’ health and human services system from 12 agencies to five.
One of them, the Health and Human Services Commission, oversees the rest and administers most of the state-federal Medicaid program for the poor.
Its leader, former state Sen. Kyle Janek, did not specifically comment on the sunset group’s recommendations.
In a written statement, Janek said he’s pushing the four department chiefs under him “to look for ways we can simplify things behind the scenes so it’s easier for people to get the help they need, no matter which of our agencies they turn to first.”
Rep. Garnet Coleman, center, at a 2013 mental health forum in Dallas (Brad Loper/Staff photographer)
Janek said the state’s sprawling health and welfare bureaucracy will “be ready to quickly put in place” whatever changes lawmakers approve next year “to improve our programs and ensure we operate as efficiently as possible.”
A veteran House social services policy writer, though, disputed the report’s recommendation of further consolidation.
Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, noted that smaller agencies, overseen by independent boards appointed by the governor, were used until the early 2000s.
The arrangement worked better than the current system, under which Janek and the four other department heads are named by and answer directly to Gov. Rick Perry, Coleman said.
“Moving the deck chairs around doesn’t solve the customer service problem and it also consolidates more power under one person, the governor,” he said. “So it lends itself to more political decisions.”
The report said the existing set up suffers from problems such as “blurred accountability,” duplicated administrative support staffs and unnecessary expenses.
“Fragmented programs result in divided policy direction and weakened administrative oversight,” it said.
Instead of unwinding the 2003 consolidation, though, the report urged lawmakers to create one big commission “with divisions established along functional lines.” Such a merger “clarifies lines of authority [and] helps to reduce the silo mentality that the five-agency system reinforces,” it said.
In mental health, the report recommended discontinuing NorthSTAR. Since 1999, the program has provided talk therapy, psychotropic drugs, psychiatric hospitalization and substance abuse treatment for Medicaid recipients and uninsured poor people in Dallas, Collin, Ellis, Hunt, Kaufman, Navarro and Rockwall counties.
The report criticized NorthSTAR as standing apart from society’s ongoing push to integrate mental and physical health services. It said the pilot “continues to exist as an island with the state,” and is unable to tap into federal funds provided under Texas’ Medicaid “transformation waiver.”
Coleman, though, said NorthSTAR has avoided mistakes state officials imposed on the rest of the state in the past decade, such as trying to limit state help to people diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disease and major, treatment-resistant depression. NorthSTAR used a managed care model and helped all comers, he said.
“They’ve been able to serve more people and it works,” he said. “Consumers, mental health advocates, everybody I’ve talked to loves NorthSTAR.”
The sunset commission, a 12-member group comprised of five senators, five state representatives and two public members, will meet next month to take up the staff’s recommendations.
