It's budget day. Here are items to watch:
The Texas House on Thursday is set to take up its $337 billion budget plan, giving the full chamber its last chance to weigh in on how the state will spend taxpayer dollars over the next two years. The Senate passed its own version of the budget last month, approving a spending plan that largely aligns with the version House lawmakers advanced to the floor. But the House budget could change by the time lawmakers work through the nearly 400 amendments that have been filed in the lower chamber. Such floor debates typically last late into the night, a marathon known as House Budget Day.
After the budget bill passes the chamber, lawmakers from the House and Senate can start private negotiations to hammer out a final version.The Texas Tribune will provide live coverage and analysis of the debate, which historically has stretched into the late evening, here. Follow along.No litmus test for private school vouchers this year April 10, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. Rep. John Bryant, D-Dallas, proposed a handful of amendments that would take the $1 billion currently set aside for a private school voucher program and use it instead to boost public school funding or provide a cost-of-living adjustment for retired teachers.In one of his amendments, Bryant wants to put the $1 billion toward one-time bonuses for classroom teachers. Another of his proposals would increase the base amount of money public schools receive for each student — $6,160 —a level that has not increased since 2019. Rep. Gina Hinojosa, an Austin Democrat who serves with Bryant on the House Public Education Committee, offered a similar change that would specifically increase districts’ base funding, known as the basic allotment, by $395.
None of the measures are likely to pass the Republican-controlled chamber, which has rejected proposals to raise the basic allotment in prior budget debates. The House Public Education Committee voted last week to advance school voucher and public school funding legislation to the full chamber. The voucher bill would provide families access to roughly $10,000 in taxpayer dollars through state-managed education savings accounts to fund their children’s private school tuition. Unlike in previous sessions, no lawmaker filed an amendment to bar state dollars from being used on school voucher programs. Such amendments, which routinely passed the House with support from Democrats and rural Republicans, served as test votes to gauge the chamber’s support for voucher-like bills. This year, a narrow majority has signed on in support of the chamber’s school voucher bill, a milestone for the historically voucher-resistant House. - Jaden Edison and Jasper Scherer
GOP lawmakers have offered up several amendments that would shift money from other parts of the budget into the attorney general’s office. Three such amendments — from Reps. Briscoe Cain, James Frank, and Mitch Little — would do so by pulling varying amounts from the Texas Lottery Commission. The agency has faced intense scrutiny over the use of couriers — third-party services that enable online purchasing of lottery tickets — and concerns that the practice could enable unfair or illegal activity. Little, a Lewisville Republican, served as one of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s defense attorneys in his Senate impeachment trial. Another one of Little’s amendments proposes making a one-time payment of $63,750 to Paxton for the purpose of recouping the salary Paxton did not receive while impeached and suspended from office in 2023.
Another amendment from Little would extract more than $21 million from the governor’s music, film, TV, and multimedia industries budget, which goes toward the Texas Film Commission, the Texas Music Office, and a grant incentives program for the moving image industry. Under the amendment, the money would be used to give a 6% raise to employees of the attorney general’s office. The office will have a new leader for part of the next budget cycle, with Paxton forgoing reelection to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in next year’s primary. - Jasper Scherer
Among Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s 40 priorities this legislative session are a $3 billion dementia research fund and $500 million in incentives to bring film and television production to Texas. Both have advanced in the Senate, which Patrick runs with an iron fist. But in the House, some Republicans are going after those two priorities, arguing that they don’t fall under the proper role of government. State Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian and head rabble-rouser, filed amendments to zero out both the film incentives package and the dementia research fund — and direct all $3.5 billion toward property tax cuts. “Is taking $500 million in taxes from hard-working Texans to give to liberal Hollywood a conservative thing to do?” Harrison posted on social media, railing against the measure. “Is that the role of government!?” State Rep. Shelley Luther, R-Tom Bean, also proposed directing $155 million from film incentives toward border operations, which is already set to receive $6.5 billion under both chambers’ budget proposals.
And state Rep. Cody Vasut, R-Angleton, filed an amendment to spend $2 billion of the dementia research fund to reduce property taxes.The film incentives proposal, Senate Bill 22, would direct the comptroller to put $500 million into a new Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund every two years until 2035. In March, the Senate approved the creation of the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas with the goal of attracting brain disease physicians and researchers to Texas. Senate Joint Resolution 3, which would require voter approval if passed by the Legislature, would fund the institute with $3 billion in surplus revenue. - Kayla Guo
The Texas Lottery Commission has faced intense scrutiny all legislative session for allowing courier companies to sell lottery and scratch-off tickets over a smartphone app — potentially, lawmakers say, illegally. The outrage over the practice — and the Texas Lottery Commission’s lack of oversight over it — has turned the agency, in many lawmakers’ eyes, into a new bucket of money for their own priorities. Lawmakers filed almost three dozen amendments funneling millions of dollars from the Texas Lottery to items like the Office of the Attorney General’s criminal investigations unit; a substance abuse treatment center for uninsured teenagers; property tax cuts; human trafficking victim services; and higher education research. - Kayla Guo
One proposal would provide $234 million to the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, to plug leaking and exploding wells — an amount surpassing the agency’s entire $226 million two-year budget. Last fall, the commission requested an additional $100 million for emergency and high-priority actions and to cope with inflation. Danny Sorrell, the agency’s executive director, said in a letter to lawmakers that the commission already plugs wells where there is an urgent need, whether or not it has the money in the budget. He said the practice had become unsustainable.
State Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, said in an amendment filed this week that the commission must submit a report detailing the location of each inactive oil and gas well, the risks of leaving them unplugged, a plan to plug or restore them and any information the agency deems necessary. The commission estimates roughly 150,000 inactive wells are scattered throughout Texas. These do not produce oil or natural gas. They are considered “orphaned” when they have no clear owner or if the company in charge of them is bankrupt. In an annual report detailing its oil field cleanup efforts, the commission estimated roughly 8,300, or 5% of all inactive wells, are orphaned. In 2024, it plugged a little more than a thousand of them, costing taxpayers $34 million. – Carlos NoguerasRamos.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/10/texas-house-budget-day/.
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