House Ed Chair Won’t Post Runs for School Finance Bill Online

The chair of the House Public Education Committee won’t publicly release online copies of financial impact summaries for the House’s flagship school finance bill, according to the Quorum Report.

House Bill 2 would increase funding for Texas’s public schools and expand the state’s teacher performance bonus program, among other changes.

Though Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has hailed the bill as the largest school funding bill in the state’s history, the bill would not restore school funding to prepandemic levels when controlling for inflation. Doing so would require about $21 billion in investment, compared to the $7.7 billion included in the bill.

In past sessions, those analyses — or “runs,” in the legislative parlance — would have been available online for superintendents, who would be able to see how much funding their districts would receive under the new plan, according to the Quorum Report.

Instead, the chair of the public education committee, Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, “invites members to pick up copies in person tonight at the Capitol,” per QR.

A staffer from Buckley’s office said that copies of the runs will be available at about 7 p.m.

Monday’s announcement is the second time this session that Buckley has made the legislative process for the school funding bill more opaque. 

During the House Public Education Committee meeting on April 3, at which the committee passed both HB 2 and the voucher bill, Buckley declined to broadcast the committee’s business live, which has been standard practice for every other committee meeting in the House and Senate. 

Though technically not violating the state’s rules on transparency, the move drew condemnation from Democrats on the committee, who livestreamed their own recording of the meeting in response. And some pro-voucher Republicans complained privately about that decision, according to separate reporting from QR’s Scott Braddock, worried that it will cast unnecessary aspersions on the process.

Earlier on Monday, the House Calendar Committee set both HB 2 and the Legislature’s flagship private school voucher bill for floor debate on Wednesday.

This is a developing story. It will be updated with more information.