Moore County Journal

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Intel nearly built a massive chip fabrication plant near Fort Worth in 1991, but the tech giant instead picked Arizona because Texas property taxes were too high. Two years later, Texas lawmakers reacted by creating Chapter 313, also known as the Texas Economic Development Act, to offer property tax breaks to major companies that locate new facilities in the state.

Since then, oil refineries, petrochemical factories and even the upcoming Tesla plant outside Austin have enjoyed massive breaks on their property taxes thanks to the program. Today, Chapter 313 agreements account for almost a billion dollars in tax breaks for some of the largest companies in Texas.

In exchange for the tax incentive, those corporations pay fees directly to local school districts to make up for their share of the lost property tax revenue.

But the program is set to expire at the end of 2022, so the Legislature either has to renew it or allow it to lapse, letting any existing agreements between companies and schools slowly fizzle out.

A few months ago, renewal seemed like a guarantee, but debate over revisions to the program has stalled efforts to extend 313.

“I think the session started as if it was a win-win done deal, and I think the argument that’s pretty clear now that we have been making is it’s not a win-win,” said Doug Greco, the lead organizer for Central Texas Interfaith and an affiliate of the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation. “There’s winners and losers, and when the big winners are a small number of companies, and losers are kids in urban school districts, that’s not a deal we want to make.”

For Greco and other advocates, a major problem with Chapter 313 is that the payments from companies to school districts lie outside of the traditional school finance system, which requires wealthier districts to share some of their bounty with poorer ones. The state can’t redistribute excess funds from 313 agreements to districts more in need of money. Instead, school districts that make deals with companies get a massive revenue boost, while other Texas schools lose out.

If that problem can’t be fixed, critics would prefer to see the 313 program scrapped entirely. But neither of the two primary bills proposed to extend the program change the fundamental approach, although they contain other sweeping changes that many experts see as controversial. Rep. Jim Murphy, R-Houston, authored House Bill 1556, which eliminates negotiations between districts and companies while limiting the supplemental payments that districts can receive. Murphy’s bill also would expand the types of projects eligible for 313 deals and remove the requirement for companies to create between 10 and 25 new jobs, according to Dick Lavine, senior fiscal analyst for Every Texan. Rep. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, also proposed Senate Bill 1255, which would make renewable energy companies ineligible for 313 agreements.

Those changes aren’t enough to get 313 opponents on board.

“Some of these districts have multiple projects, so it’s really quite important to them, and the money is sort of outside the school finance system, so it’s not subject to recapture or anything like that,” Lavine said. “I don’t doubt that they do good things with it, but it’s an enormous advantage for the maybe 100 school districts that happen to be lucky enough to be located where somebody wants to put a facility. And it leaves the other 900 just out of the game.”

According to the most recent report on Chapter 313 from the Texas Comptroller, 222 school districts in the state have a total of 509 agreements with companies through the program. That’s less than 20% of all Texas school districts, and the districts that have 313 deals encompass about 5% of K-12 students in the state.

A single district near Houston, Barbers Hill ISD, has 36 active 313 agreements with different corporations conducting projects in the area. Barbers Hill Superintendent Greg Poole has even started his own consulting firm, Jigsaw School Finance Solutions, to broker deals between school boards across the state and companies.

“These deals may – and I emphasize the word may – benefit a small number of school districts, but they provide more benefit to the businesses getting the tax breaks,” said Clay Robison, a public affairs specialist for the Texas State Teachers Association. “And they rip off the vast majority of Texas taxpayers, school districts and school children, who end up covering for the property tax revenue lost to each abatement deal.”

According to an analysis conducted by Nate Jensen, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin, an estimated 85% of the firms with 313 agreements would have constructed facilities in Texas regardless of the tax break, even though the law requires a company to show that it needs the incentive to move to the state.

Losing out on the Intel chip fabrication plant 20 years ago fueled the passage of Chapter 313 in the legislature, according to Texas Taxpayers and Research Association President Dale Craymer.

“The fact that Texas had lost this kind of marquee project drove home for a lot of legislators that, as distasteful as economic incentives may be on the surface, they’re probably a necessary evil,” Craymer said. “And that led, in 2001, to the creation of Chapter 313.”

Craymer said TTARA supports Murphy’s bill because it will simplify the negotiation process and create more incentives for companies to build factories and offices in Texas. Many opponents argue that renewing the program at all will mean more lost opportunities for additional school funding and add to existing economic inequities between school districts.

“Ironically, what makes [Chapter 313] so bad is what makes it so difficult politically to stop, and that’s kind of a common theme when we talk about some of these policies,” Jensen said. “The ones that are the most lucrative, they’re free money for some interest groups, and they’re really complex and hard to explain to the public.”

Despite a longer than expected delay, the House Ways and Means Committee voted out Murphy’s bill 9-2 during a Wednesday afternoon hearing.

But with just over a month left in the session, some experts now believe that House Bill 4242 by Rep. Morgan Meyer, R-Dallas, will offer a compromise between battling interest groups. Meyer’s bill would renew Chapter 313 for two more years without any changes, affording the legislature another chance at changing the law during the next session. The House Ways and Means Committee also voted out Meyer’s proposed legislation on Wednesday, with just one member voting against.

“Now, it seems as if they’re looking for something to get out of committee that is shorter term, two-year or four-year extension,” Greco said. “So that, to me, seems to be the most likely scenario right now.”

Disclosure: Every Texan, Texas State Teachers Association, Texas Taxpayers and Research Association and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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Some very important issues are dull.

Redistricting, for instance.

The numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau this week showed the top line — that Texas has grown to 29,145,505. That’s enough to know how many seats Texas will have in the Congress that gets sworn in at the beginning of 2023, but not enough to know what its U.S. House districts will look like.

Redrawing political maps to fit government to the population every 10 years is a swirl of tedium, ambition, power and law. It comes with a slew of public hearings and debates, on one hand, and countless backroom and private negotiations on the other. It starts with census numbers — that happened this week — zips through the Texas Legislature, and then ends up in the courts, where the litigation never seems to end.

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? But this is how you get your representation in Austin and Washington. And your understandable boredom is the best tool available to people trying to get away with something here.

Bored voters don’t pay attention. And inattention is an ally of any burglar entering the Texas Capitol to pilfer political power.

Statewide officials are elected by all of the Texans who vote, so there’s no district-drawing there. But members of the U.S. House — there will be 38 on the ballot next year, where there had been 36 — have to serve in districts that are exactly the same size, or as close to that as possible.

As an increasingly larger portion of the state’s population scrunches into the triangle formed by Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio-Austin. That’ll mean fewer, larger districts in the less populated parts of Texas and a greater number of smaller districts in the state’s biggest cities and suburbs.

Variations of that change will appear on the new maps for 31 Texas Senate seats, 150 Texas House seats, and 15 spots on the State Board of Education. Those bodies will be the same size they are now, but some officeholders will find their districts are under- or over-populated when detailed census numbers are released in September.

It will mean that some of the people who represent you now won’t be representing you at this point two years from now — even if they get reelected. New district lines can moved by a whole county or a single building, and an officeholder in one district might be in another one with the stroke of a key.

Districts are shaped to fit the new population numbers, to suit current politics and the whims of the friends or foes drawing the maps. Some incumbents will be paired to run against fellow incumbents. Some will find themselves in districts almost impossible to lose.

The total population of the state isn’t enough to determine what the districts will look like, or whether the Legislature will draw districts that reflect the explosive growth among people of color. That’ll come when detailed population numbers are released in September. That’s when that swirl of legislation and litigation and political power plays will really start.

It’s a most entertaining fight, if you have an abiding interest in demographics, political maps, numbers, law and politics. It will determine the shape of the maps that will be used for elections until 2030. Some of us like all of those things. Some, not so much.

But this dull issue is important, and the winners will be the ones who pay attention.

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About a year ago, as a once-in-a-century public health crisis was unraveling across the world, it was abundantly clear how unprepared Texas was for the pandemic.

An aging data collection system within the Texas Department of State Health Services made it difficult for health officials to fully assess the impact of COVID-19, which the state’s official numbers say has left nearly 50,000 people dead. Protective gear and COVID-19 tests were in short supply, leaving health care providers and governments scrambling to find supplies. Waves of infection would soon overwhelm entire hospital systems, while morgues across the state would run out of space to store the dead.

But now, with vaccines widely available and daily new case totals declining, preparing for the next pandemic is competing for space on the legislative priority list. Hot-button conservative issues — such as the permitless carrying of handguns, voting restrictions and measures targeting transgender children — and the state’s response to a deadly winter storm have taken up much of the oxygen in the Capitol this legislative session. And the legislative proposals related to the pandemic gaining the most attention from Republican leadership in both chambers are bills that would restrict the governor’s ability to impose restrictions in public health emergencies.

With fewer than 35 days left in the legislative session, public health experts are urging lawmakers to prioritize preparations for another infectious disease outbreak — the possibility of which health officials say is increasingly likely. Lawmakers this session have filed a flurry of proposals related to the pandemic, many of which are at varying stages of the legislative process. Some, experts say, constitute meaningful reform. Others, they warn, could leave the state worse off.

A “boom and bust cycle”

Gerald Parker, director of the Pandemic and Biosecurity Policy Program at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, said officials often prepare for infectious diseases in the immediate aftermath of an outbreak. But, as other issues take priority over time, attention to and funding for public health issues fades in what he called a “boom and bust cycle.”

“We’re going to be faced with a future series of epidemics, outbreaks — whether they rise in the category of a pandemic, we can’t predict,” Parker said. “But COVID has told us we need to take preparedness much more seriously than we have in the past as a nation.”

One area of particular concern for legislators is the power wielded by the governor during prolonged times of emergency. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott faced fierce criticism from officials within his party over unilateral decisions to temporarily shut down Texas businesses and to require face masks be worn in public spaces. Abbott also resisted calls from some lawmakers to convene a special session of the Legislature to consider pandemic-related proposals and to weigh how the state should spend billions in federal relief dollars.

In response, lawmakers have sought to curb the power of the governor during states of emergency or disaster. The Texas Senate earlier this year took up and passed bills that would prohibit nursing homes from shutting down visitation to people deemed “essential caregivers.” Other measures with Senate backing would forbid the governor from mandating the closure of places of worship or gun stores under any circumstances. These proposals, all of which were listed among Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s top 31 priorities, run counter to guidance from public health experts, many of whom have advocated for strategic closures or capacity limitations as a way to slow the spread of the virus.

The most comprehensive attempt to claw back power from the governor is a proposed constitutional amendment — Senate Joint Resolution 45 and its enabling bill, Senate Bill 1025 — that would require the governor to call a special session in order to declare a state emergency that lasts more than 30 days. The special session would give lawmakers the chance to terminate or adjust executive actions taken by the governor, or pass new laws related to the disaster or emergency. It would also specify that a statewide disaster declaration preempts a local one.

In discussion on the Senate floor, state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, who previously served as Travis County judge, expressed concern that the Legislature would not be able to act quickly enough to respond to events during a disaster.

“I don’t see this Legislature being able to convene fast enough to answer … in the kind of disasters I have seen and expect the state to see in the future,” Eckhardt said.

Eckhardt’s concern was shared by medical experts, who cautioned that state and local officials need flexibility to respond to emergencies in real time.

“Some of those regulatory ceilings Texas has set prevent a lot of really important work that needs to be done at the local level,” said Valerie Koch, co-director of the Health Law and Policy Institute at the University of Houston Law Center. She said that measures like those currently moving through the Legislature often come at “the detriment of public health” and could exacerbate existing health disparities.

In the Texas House, a wide-ranging pandemic bill that was deemed a top priority of the chamber’s leadership has so far struggled to gain momentum. House Bill 3 by state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, would, among other things, carve out future pandemics from how the state responds to other disasters, require local jurisdictions to receive approval from the secretary of state before altering voting procedures during a pandemic and address liability protections for businesses operating during a pandemic. It has languished in the House State Affairs Committee for more than a month.

Koch said that lawmakers should act with some urgency in preparing for the next crisis. But she warned against “a knee jerk reaction” based on “political whims” rather than “sound scientific evidence that justifies various restrictions.”

“It’s much harder to get public buy in if you are slapping a Band-Aid on problems, rather than exploring and researching and analyzing [and] proposing rules that can be applicable in future circumstances,” Koch added.

Some measures from the Senate

Though they haven’t been flagged as top priorities by Patrick, the Texas Senate last week advanced a pair of bills that represent perhaps the most substantial action by either chamber in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The sweeping Senate Bill 968 by state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, who chairs the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, includes a mix of provisions that experts say would bring mixed results.

The measure would require Texas to contract with companies to guarantee an adequate stockpile of personal protective equipment. It would also create the Office of the Chief Epidemiologist within DSHS to respond to disease outbreaks and coordinate with the Texas Division of Emergency Management. An expert panel, composed of five doctors and four health care providers, would be charged with providing recommendations to the chief epidemiologist during declared emergencies or disasters. And the proposal would require health officials to produce a report on the successes and failures of the state’s coronavirus response.

Parker, of Texas A&M University, stressed the importance of cooperation between state agencies in preparedness and response.

“The need to work seamlessly is absolutely essential,” he said.

However, if passed by the Texas House and signed by Abbott, the measure would also limit the duration of a public health disaster or emergency declaration to just 30 days. Only the Legislature would have the power to renew a declaration. And the bill would ban government agencies or businesses from requiring proof of a COVID-19 vaccination, an expansion of an earlier executive order signed by Abbott that outlawed so called “vaccine passports.”

Senate Bill 969, also by Kolkhorst, addresses what Parker called the “heartbeat” of pandemic response: data collection. A glitchy state computer system stymied efforts in the early days of the pandemic to track and manage the coronavirus in Texas and left policymakers with incomplete, and at times inaccurate, data about the virus’ spread. Reliable and transparent data could better prepare hospitals for a wave of infections or inform decisions about resource allocation, Parker said.

“It allows us a better ability to anticipate shortfalls and cover those shortfalls before they even happen,” Parker said.

The bill, which was unanimously approved by the state Senate, would require DSHS to publicly post on its website “all available de-identified public health data” during a disaster and coordinate with local health officials to implement a “standardized and streamlined” method for sharing information. DSHS would also release compliance reports for laboratories that report data to the state and conduct quality assurance checks to ensure data is “systematically reviewed for errors and completeness.” Health care facilities that fail to report information could be fined up to $1,000 for each instance.

“Lawmakers and the public alike have watched as government agencies responded with sweeping statewide policies to reduce the impact of the virus,” Kolkhorst said in a March statement after the bills were filed. “Sometimes these measures struggled to find the right balance between public health and our individual rights. We must now utilize the lessons learned over the past year to improve the state’s response to any future health event.”

“Structural, systemic barriers”

While experts have pointed to the need to prepare for future health crises, they also say that there are immediate steps lawmakers must take to address longstanding disparities in health care that have been laid bare and exacerbated by the pandemic.

Texas has the largest share of uninsured people in the nation, leaving many with costly medical bills at a time when tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. Communities of color in Texas have disproportionately died from the virus, but vaccine distribution in those areas lags behind whiter, more affluent parts of the state.

“These inequities are not new,” said Nadia Siddiqui, chief health equity officer at the Texas Health Institute. “They are a reflection of the deep and longstanding, underlying structural and social inequities that low-income [communities] and communities of color have faced for too long.”

Siddiqui said it’s vital that lawmakers act now to expand vaccination access in rural areas and communities of color through mobile clinics and partnerships with community organizations. She also stressed the need to expand access to health insurance for low-income Texans. Texas is one of 12 states that have not expanded eligibility for Medicaid, a federal insurance program for low-income people.

And she called on the Legislature to reinvest in an Office of Health Equity. In 2017, lawmakers defunded and quietly shuttered the Office of Minority Health Statistics and Engagement, an office within the Texas Health and Human Services Commission that addressed racial disparities and worked with communities to promote racial equity in health care.

In response, a group of Democratic Texas state representatives filed a measure to formally establish and fund the Office of Health Equity. The Texas House on Thursday is slated to take up House Bill 4139. A similar measure in the Senate by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, was referred to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee but has not yet received a hearing.

“We’ve really got to address those structural, systemic barriers to opportunity and health within our state,” Siddiqui said.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University and the University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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The Texas House gave initial approval on Wednesday to a bill that would expand the state’s medical cannabis program to include those with chronic pain, all cancer patients and Texans suffering from PTSD.

House Bill 1535, by Rep. Stephanie Klick, R-Fort Worth, who authored the bill establishing Texas’ initial medical cannabis program in 2015, would also authorize the Department of State Health Services to add additional qualifying conditions through administrative rulemaking, instead of the Legislature needing to pass a law to expand eligibility.

Currently, patients eligible include those with terminal cancer, intractable epilepsy, seizure disorders, multiple sclerosis, spasticity, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, autism or an incurable neurodegenerative disease. The House must give the bill a final vote, and then the Senate will consider the bill, before it can be sent to the governor to be signed into law.

When hemp was legalized in 2019, the medical cannabis program was rendered mostly moot — with legally permissible cannabis treatments only being marginally more potent than over-the-counter CBD oils or tinctures.

The bill would also raise the THC, or Tetrahydrocannabinol, cap from 0.5% to 5% and make it possible for those in Texas’ medical cannabis program to have access to much higher doses than currently available. THC is the psychoactive compound which produces a high. The National Organization for Reforming Marijuana Laws doesn’t recognize the state’s current program as a true medical marijuana program, instead labeling it a “medical CBD” program because of its emphasis on cannabidiol, derived from hemp and containing only traces of the psychoactive compounds found in cannabis, over THC for medicinal use.

Texas’ program is called the Compassionate Use Program and has fewer enrolled patients and businesses than most other states with medical cannabis programs. At least some form of medical cannabis is legal in 47 states nationwide, but Texas’ restrictions put it in the bottom 11 in terms of accessibility, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

There were only about 3,500 Texans registered with the state to use medical cannabis, though advocates estimate that there are over 2 million people eligible based on current law.

Heather Fazio, director of Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy, says the increased THC limit is “a step in the right direction,” but it still would limit doctors from being able to decide the proper dosages for their patients.

“There’s an incredibly restrictive cap on THC,” she said. “Low levels of THC will work for some people but it doesn’t work for others. And so what we think is that doctors need to be the ones making these decisions, not lawmakers.”

Fazio said the bill would help bring more Texas patients to the program and help reduce the use of addictive opioids. However, she says the bill still “leaves patients behind who desperately need access to this medicine.”

While Klick’s bill strictly affects the legal use of medical cannabis in the state, lawmakers are also taking up bills that tackle how recreational marijuana use is penalized.

The House passed House Bill 2593 on Wednesday, which would reduce penalties for possession of some marijuana concentrate. The penalty for possession of up to two ounces of those products would be lowered to a class B misdemeanor.

And on Thursday, the House will consider House Bill 441, which would lessen the penalty for possession of one ounce or less of cannabis, as well as remove the possibility of jail time or losing a driver’s license. Offenders would receive a Class C misdemeanor, with police issuing a citation similar to a traffic ticket punishable by a fine of up to $500.

Fazio said the bill would especially help keep young people from suffering criminal consequences.

“Not that we want to condone young people smoking weed, but the punishment for possessing it shouldn’t be harsher than the actual use of the plant,” Fazio said. “The penalties have caused far more harm than smoking marijuana ever could.”

While the House has been receptive to bills related to reducing penalties for marijuana use, the Senate has been less welcoming. In 2019, the House approved a bill that would have reduced penalties for marjiana possession, but Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick declared it dead in the Senate — not allowing it to be brought to a vote.

But in recent years, Texans have increasingly demonstrated a desire to see marijuana use legalized in the state. According to the February 2021 University of Texas/Texas Tribune polls, 60% of respondents supported legalization for at least small amounts of marijuana for both medical and recreational use — compared to 49% in 2014.

“There’s a significant shift happening now, and it’s so wonderful to see,” Fazio said. “To see the shift in the way that this issue is perceived, the seriousness that is given at the legislature and now increased support — it’s very rewarding. It’s such an exciting time to be an advocate.”

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The Texas Senate on Wednesday passed a measure to permanently allow Texans to purchase alcohol to go from restaurants, advancing a shared goal of Gov. Greg Abbott and restaurateurs.

House Bill 1024, which cleared the lower chamber last month, would allow beer, wine and mixed drinks to be included in pickup and delivery food orders, securing a revenue stream made available to restaurants in the last year during the pandemic intended to help those businesses when they closed their dining areas.

The Senate approved the legislation, filed by Republican state Rep. Charlie Geren, a restaurant owner in Fort Worth, in a 30-1 vote. The measure now heads to Abbott’s desk.

Abbott signed a waiver in March last year to allow to-go alcohol sales. The waiver was originally to last until May 2020, but it was extended indefinitely. As lawmakers began their work during the current legislative session, expanding Texans’ access to booze picked up bipartisan support.

“Making tools for alcohol-to-go permanent will accelerate the industry’s recovery, supporting thousands of jobs and small businesses along the way,” said state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, laying out the bill Wednesday. “Once this provision was placed in through the pandemic, we saw restaurants that were closed down, open back up.”

The new, permanent alcohol-to-go option could benefit the restaurant industry after it was devastated during the pandemic. According to the Texas Restaurant Association, 700,000 restaurant employees in Texas lost their jobs in the early days of the pandemic, and thousands of Texas restaurants have closed.

“Bars and restaurants in Texas have leaned on cocktails to-go throughout the pandemic as a lifeline to keep their doors open and generate revenue,” said Kristi Brown, senior director of state government relations for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. “Now, the legislature has taken action to make this critical measure permanent and provide long-term support for Texas businesses. We thank Governor Abbott for being a vocal supporter of cocktails to-go and encourage him to sign this bill as soon as possible and make the business- and consumer-friendly measure permanent in Texas.”

Disclosure: The Texas Restaurant Association has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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An updated analysis of February’s Texas power crisis by experts at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas shows that lost wind power generation was a small component of the huge losses in electric generation that plunged much of the state into darkness during the severe cold weather.

While Texas Republicans were quick to blame renewable energy during the storm — and have continued to target renewable energy for reform during this year’s legislative session — a recently updated report on the causes of generator outages during the week of Feb. 14 show that the most significant cause of the low power supply to the grid came from natural gas plants shutting down or reducing electricity production due to cold weather, equipment failures and natural gas shortages.

In ERCOT’s first preliminary report on the causes of the power crisis, released in early April, the grid operator included a chart that appeared to show power generation losses from wind as just slightly smaller than natural gas generation losses that week. But that analysis used the capacity of the state’s wind turbines to generate electricity, not what wind turbines would have actually generated if not for the outages.

Wind power feeds into the grid depending on weather conditions, and renewable energy sources typically have much higher potential to generate electricity than what is actually produced on a day-to-day basis; sometimes renewable power generates a lot and at other times none or very little. ERCOT uses detailed weather forecasts to estimate how much wind and solar power will be available to the grid.

In the updated analysis included in a Wednesday ERCOT meeting, the grid operator calculated that for the week of Feb. 14, natural gas power losses were several times that of wind generation.

More than 100 people died in the Texas power crisis, which could become the most expensive disaster in state history as the costs continue to be tallied.

The analysis also provided a more detailed picture of the reasons for natural gas outages, showing that disruptions in natural gas supply to the plants were a bigger share of the outages than initially estimated. Still, weather-related problems and equipment problems remained the biggest reasons for natural gas plant outages.

Natural gas fuel and transportation companies have recently posted huge profits in the aftermath of the Texas power crisis. Kinder Morgan, one of Texas’ largest pipeline companies, posted a more than $1 billion profit in the first quarter due to the power crisis, a result of voluntarily cutting power back and selling gas at inflated prices.

Meanwhile, companies in the power sector have faced big losses in the aftermath of the storm. Vistra Corp. said it lost more than $1 billion during the crisis; the power giant primarily blamed the losses on high natural gas prices for plants, reporting that it spent more than twice what it usually spends in a year on natural gas during the week of the storm.

The big financial losers and winners since February have sparked a financial crisis in Texas’ electricity market that lawmakers have struggled to contend with; rescue bills to prevent companies from shuttering generation and staving off pass-through costs to customers are expected to be taken up by the Texas House on Monday.

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Texas’s top state leaders announced Wednesday they are releasing $11.2 billion out of nearly $18 billion available in federal pandemic relief funding that has been dedicated for the state’s public schools.

The announcement comes as education advocates and Demcratic lawmakers have been urging officials in recent weeks to release the money that was set aside by Congress for Texas’ public schools to address learning loss and cover pandemic-related education expenses.

It’s unclear how the state plans to spend the remaining $7 billion in stimulus money, which was allocated through multiple aid packages in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That funding could not be immediately released due to federal requirements, state officials said.

“The State of Texas is ensuring that our public schools have the necessary resources to help Texas students recover from learning loss related to COVID-19,” said Gov. Greg Abbott in a press release.

At least one U.S. Congressman criticized state leaders, calling the announcement “belated.”

“State Republicans are hardly justified in patting themselves on the back for ending a blockade that should never have occurred,” U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett said. “After four months, Governor Abbott is still obstructing distribution of the remaining $5.5 billion, which Congress approved in December. Even today, he has failed to offer any justification for his delay and attempt to divert these funds from our schools. Our children’s future is not a place to cut corners and misuse federal aid to education for non-educational purposes.”

State officials had previously argued the reason they hadn’t allocated the one-time funding to the schools was because they were awaiting federal government guidance about whether the state would need to increase funding for higher education to make the K-12 funding available.

Last week, the federal government weighed in and clarified the state must maintain both higher education and public education funding at the same proportion to the budget as it was in 2017, 2018 and 2019 to tap into those dollars. Effectively, that means Texas would have to increase higher education spending by $1.2 billion to unlock the K-12 stimulus dollars.

Abbott has applied for a federal waiver that would allow Texas to bypass increasing higher education spending, but no decision has been announced on whether the waiver was granted. His office did not respond to questions about what this announcement means for higher education funding or why the public school funding was released. The announcement said legislative leaders will work to address outstanding issues about distributing the rest of the federal funding by the end of the legislative session.

K-12 and higher education advocates argue increasing funding for higher education is worth it to receive the nearly $18 billion in relief funds for K-12 schools.

“The state is seeking a federal waiver to avoid this additional spending, but that is the wrong thing to do, especially at a time when our institutions of higher education need the additional funding to cover extra expenses incurred during the pandemic,” said Texas Faculty Association President Pat Heintzelman in a press release this week.

School districts also called the state to release the money because they need to know how much money schools will receive as they develop budgets for next year. While the funding can be used for a variety of resources, including extra mental health support, counselors and more staff, school leaders were growing concerned they would run out of time to hire the necessary staff without access to more money.

“This is a positive first step in getting the funds our schools need,” said Zeph Capo, president of Texas American Federation of Teachers, in a statement. “It’s unfortunate that it took nearly two months of pushing the governor to get to this point. Many districts that have been contemplating cuts related to pandemic expenses can now implement plans to help students catch up.”

The governor’s office and Texas Education Agency have argued the state has supported public education by fully funding virtual learning and maintaining fully funded budgets for school districts regardless of attendance declines. A spokesperson for Abbott also previously said that the proportion of funding going to higher education has decreased because of increases in K-12 investments.

This money is in addition to approximately $2.2 billion in federal funding to help Texas public schools manage the pandemic. It also comes after the state increased its investment in public education by more than $5 billion from the previous year in 2019.

Duncan Agnew contributed to this report.

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Former President Donald Trump is stepping up his involvement in the final hours of the Saturday special election to fill the seat of the late U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, R-Arlington.

Trump — who endorsed Wright’s widow, conservative activist Susan Wright, for the seat on Monday — is hosting a tele-town hall for her on Thursday night, The Texas Tribune has learned. The town hall is being put on by the Club for Growth, the national conservative group that endorsed Susan Wright on Wednesday.

The Club for Growth has also launched an 11th-hour radio ad to spread the word about Trump’s endorsement, which came on the second-to-last day of early voting. The minute-long spot warns that “out-of-state anti-Trump forces” are working against Susan Wright and says the race “may be a key test of Trump’s continuing power in the party.”

The race is arguably the first major electoral gauge of Trump’s clout within the party since he left office in January. He made an endorsement in another special congressional election last month in Louisiana, but it was far less competitive. Trump has made clear he plans to remain a force in GOP politics moving forward.

Susan Wright, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, is one of 11 Republicans on the ballot Saturday, which features 23 candidates total — and is likely to go into a runoff. While she secured Trump’s backing Monday, it came as at least two GOP rivals continue to tightly align themselves with the former president, possibly stirring confusion about who he is truly supporting in the crowded special election.

One GOP candidate — Brian Harrison, the former chief of staff at the Department of Health and Human Services under Trump — has been airing broadcast TV ads showing him standing beside Trump in the Oval Office. Another Republican running, former pro wrestler Dan Rodimer, is leaning heavily on the fact that Trump endorsed him when he ran for Congress last year in Nevada, regularly advertising that he is the “only candidate [in the special election] to have ever received a Trump endorsement.”

Susan Wright and her allies have limited time to capitalize on the Trump endorsement, which arrived Monday afternoon. By the end of that day, 32,000 votes —a significant chunk of the total anticipated vote — had already been cast. The early voting period ended Tuesday with over more than 45,000 ballots cast.

In addition to the radio ad, the Club for Growth is spending on text messages and phone banking to boost Susan Wright in the race’s closing hours, according to disclosures made Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.

While the Club for Growth formally backed Susan Wright on Wednesday, it has been involved in the special election for weeks, spending over a quarter-million dollars attacking one of her closest GOP competitors, state Rep. Jake Ellzey of Waxahachie. The group backed Ron Wright when he first ran for the seat in 2018 and then again when he sought reelection in 2020.

The Trump tele-town hall for Susan Wright is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, and the Club for Growth’s president, David McIntosh, is expected to join. Trump previously dialed in to similar events last year for two Texas congressional hopefuls, Tony Gonzales and Ronny Jackson, on the eve of their hard-fought primary runoff elections. Both prevailed in their runoffs and went on to win in November.

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A plan to overhaul the pension for Texas’ future state employees and shore up billions of dollars in unfunded obligations owed to retirees received initial backing on Wednesday from the Texas Senate.

Republican State Sen. Joan Huffman’s proposal to revamp the Texas Employees Retirement System moved forward by a 20-11 vote, despite fierce opposition from some state workers’ unions. Senate Bill 321 would enroll new state workers hired after Sept. 1, 2022 in a cash balance plan — similar to a common 401(k) retirement account — rather than the traditional defined benefit pension plan.

“This is a good bill,” Huffman said. “It’s good for current workers, it’s good for future workers and it requires a great investment by the state of Texas into their employees.”

Texas’ pension fund faces a $14.7 billion shortfall. Huffman amended the bill on Wednesday to authorize annual payments of $510 million through 2054 to pay down debt owed to the fund. The measure’s original language included yearly, $350 million payments. But Huffman said the increased contributions would save the state $34 billion in interest payments over the next three decades.

New workers would be required to contribute 6% of their pay to the retirement account, down from the 9.5% required of current state employees. It would guarantee 4% annual interest with a gainsharing provision that could boost interest as high as 7%. Gainsharing is a method by which employees receive additional compensation if they meet certain, predetermined benchmarks. The current state pension plan has a return target of 7%, but has fallen short of that target in recent years.

Law enforcement employees and custodial workers would contribute an additional 2% of their earnings to a separate fund, as current workers in those roles do. They would also be eligible for the 4% guaranteed interest.

At the time of retirement, Texas would match the value of an employee’s account at 150% of its value. The supplemental fund for law enforcement and custodial workers who have been employed for at least 20 years would be matched at 300%. Both matches are the same as are available under the current pension plan, Huffman said.

Texas employee unions argued that changes to retirement benefits for state workers would further exacerbate staff turnover and harm already “dangerously understaffed” state agencies. Jeff Ormsby, executive director of the Texas corrections chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, in a Tuesday statement called the traditional pension plan the “bedrock of public employee benefits in the state.”

Staffing shortages led the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in December to permanently shutter one state prison and temporarily close two others. TDCJ has long struggled against dangerous, chronic understaffing, but the number of officers has reached critical lows in recent months.

“Any change to a cash balance plan will hurt public service workers and undermine their retirement security by exposing them to more risk and a less reliable retirement benefit,” Ormsby said.

The Texas State Employees Union, which represents nearly 10,000 current and retired state workers, last week blasted “a handful of top Republicans” for crafting the proposal “behind closed doors.” The measure was unveiled and quickly passed out of the Senate Finance Committee last Monday. Huffman said at the time that she did not solicit input directly from state workers prior to the hearing.

Judy Lugo, TSEU’s president, said in a statement last week that lawmakers for years have underfunded Texas’ pension system and repeatedly bucked calls to increase pay for state employees.

“The State of Texas is already struggling to compete for a competent workforce,” Lugo said. “Stripping benefits and punishing frontline workers in this way doesn’t help anyone — it doesn’t even help the budget.”

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Local voters will decide Saturday if Lubbock becomes the state’s next “sanctuary city for the unborn.”

The election could make the West Texas city a test case for a burgeoning movement that began in the East Texas town of Waskom and has since prompted some two dozen cities to try to outlaw abortions. Nearly all of them are in Texas, but Lubbock is the largest and the first that is home to an abortion provider — Planned Parenthood, which opened a clinic to offer birth control and screenings for cancer and sexually transmitted infections last fall. The clinic began providing abortions this month.

“They’re murdering babies here in our city,” said Jim Baxa, with West Texas for Life, an anti-abortion organization. “We need to stop that.”

Abortion rights advocates say the proposed ordinance amounts to an extreme ban that is out of step with the views held by a majority of polled Texans, who support some allowances for abortions, like in cases of rape or incest.

But the vote has also pit Lubbock’s hardline conservative base and large churches against the City Council and a former GOP precinct chair, who say battles over abortion access are best fought at the state and federal levels. City Council members, several of whom have said they oppose abortion, say the proposed ordinance could be challenged in court, teeing up a costly legal fight.

“Taxpayers are being used as pawns essentially to have this legal battle at their expense,” said Aurora Farthing, the former GOP precinct chair who started a political action committee urging residents to vote against the proposed ordinance.

The May election is unusual: Lubbock’s citywide officials are typically voted on in even-numbered years, and the proposed abortion-related ordinance is the first citizen-led ballot item since a 2013 recall election, the city secretary’s office said.

It’s unclear how much the May election will cost, though recent elections have had tabs between $159,000 and $240,000.

The push to make Lubbock a “sanctuary city for the unborn” began in the last two years. Anti-abortion activists — led by state Sen. Charles Perry, from Lubbock, and others — rallied enough signatures to bring the measure to the City Council, which unanimously rejected the proposed ordinance, citing legal advice that it would conflict with state law. But the proposed ordinance will still be put to a public vote Saturday, under the city charter’s rules.

In a letter demanding that the proposed ordinance be placed on the ballot, the activists said it was “because we fear God, view the intentional shedding of the blood of unborn children to be an inconceivably wicked action, and we believe that we all have a responsibility to protect the lives of the smallest and most vulnerable humans among us,” it said.

Perry said he was tied up with the Legislature but would have a comment after the election Saturday.

The proposed measure outlaws abortions within the city’s limits, and allows family members of a person who has an abortion to sue the provider and those who assist someone getting an abortion, like by driving them to a clinic. It would not be enforced by the government unless the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision or made other changes to abortion laws.

There isn’t an exception for people pregnant as a result of rape or incest.

The strategy of waging abortion fights at the local level has divided staunch anti-abortion activists, and several other Texas towns, including Mineral Wells and Omaha, have voted down similar ordinances or walked them back under advice from city attorneys.

The vote comes as the Texas Legislature and other Republican-led statehouses across the country are pushing to curtail abortion access and challenge Roe v. Wade before a newly conservative-leaning Supreme Court.

Richard D. Rosen, a constitutional law professor at Texas Tech University, said the proposed ordinance tries to make a “clever end run around Roe.”

Because local officials wouldn’t enforce the prohibition if it’s passed, ordinance proponents say there’d be no one for abortion providers to sue to stop the ban from taking effect. Instead, Rosen expects a private citizen would sue Planned Parenthood and the legal fight would go from there.

Rosen expects the ordinance would be “DOA” — dead on arrival — in the courts, but it might cost a lot of money for abortion rights proponents to defend.

“As long as Roe is good law, I think these suits will ultimately fail, but it [could make] abortion providers … expend money for attorneys’ fees, and it takes time,” Rosen said.

Proponents of the ordinance are confident they’ll prevail in court and are deeply skeptical of a 17-page legal analysis posted on the city website and cited by the City Council that says the proposed ordinance is void under state law. They also have an attorney who has offered to work free of charge, but there could be other costs, like for the opposite side’s attorneys.

Groundswell of activism 

The election — typically a low-turnout affair dominated by municipal issues — has sparked a groundswell of activism in Lubbock. The early voting turnout has already surpassed May elections going back to 2009, when voters of the formerly “dry” city allowed beer and liquor to be sold in Lubbock’s stores.

In early April, several pastors and their wives gathered at the invitation of a group supporting the anti-abortion ordinance at a venue called Spirit Ranch. David Wilson, pastor at Southcrest Baptist Church, where Perry is a deacon, said the building was “completely full,” and that he’d rarely seen that kind of unity and involvement across denominations.

“If this was a tax issue, the churches wouldn’t be involved in this, obviously,” he said. “But moral issue has to do with life, and we believe that life is a gift from God.”

Wilson said his church has set up tables to help parishioners register to vote and hung a banner declaring its support of the movement. The church has given out flyers and urged people to put pro-ordinance signs in their yards. After Easter, he told attendees of the church — which drew 3,000 to Sunday services before the pandemic, and draws around 2,300 now — about the coming election.

“We try to make it very clear, we’re not condemning anybody who’s had an abortion,” he said.

Meanwhile, an anti-ordinance coalition that includes Planned Parenthood has organized block-walkers to knock on doors and call prospective voters — some of whom seem to not know much about what the proposed ordinance would do, said one 46-year-old campaign volunteer named Kim Gonzalez.

“Once we start talking about the details, they don’t like to hear that women who are victims of rape and incest aren’t excluded from this,” she said. “A whole bunch of people are just like, you know, ‘Wow, I’m really glad that you called me and told me, I’m going to get out to vote.’”

Gonzalez, who said she worked in health care for 20 years, said it had long been apparent to her that “women didn’t have proper reproductive health care here in West Texas,” where the nearest abortion clinics were 300 miles away in Fort Worth or New Mexico.

Sarah Wheat, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, said in a statement that the organization provides “respectful, compassionate services” for those seeking abortions and other health services, regardless of the patient’s income level or insurance status.

“Political efforts underway in Lubbock and the Texas Legislature would create new barriers to abortion that disproportionately impact low-income patients and communities of color,” Wheat said.

The movement spreads 

The “sanctuary city for the unborn” movement has rippled through towns, often spurred by fears that abortion access will expand or frustration from conservatives that state lawmakers aren’t doing enough to curtail the procedure.

Mark Lee Dickson, the East Texas pastor behind the movement, said he approached the mayor of Waskom in 2019, out of concern that a Louisiana abortion provider might relocate across the border to the town.

Waskom became the first in the nation to pass an ordinance outlawing abortions, he said. Since then, towns as far away as Nebraska have made similar moves.

“We see abortion as the ending of human life. We see it as murdering little children,” Dickson said in a phone interview from Florida, where there’s a similar push for a “sanctuary city” in Naples. “These are very conservative communities that are very God-fearing people, and they did not want to see something like that … just like some people wouldn’t want to see a strip club in their community.”

Dickson’s activism was spreading in West Texas around the time Planned Parenthood was preparing to open a clinic in Lubbock, said Terisa Clark, a volunteer with a pro-ordinance group called Project Destiny.

She said the proposed ordinance reflects the beliefs of her conservative city and portrayed some of those fighting it as out-of-town outsiders, citing the source of donations received by organizations on different sides of the campaign.

That’s partly why she likes the idea of putting the abortion ban to local voters.

“We recognize that [the state Legislature has] a hard time getting things passed because there are a bunch of representatives that represent [a] diverse group of people,” she said.

State lawmakers earned the ire of hardline conservatives last session by focusing on bread-and-butter issues like property taxes and school finance. This year, they’ve backed a slate of abortion restrictions that abortion rights advocates call the most “extreme” nationwide.

But Baxa, with West Texas for Life, said lawmakers are still being too timid and have ignored a bill that that would criminalize abortion — and potentially open up doctors and women who get abortions to charges that carry the death penalty.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas — which sued Waskom and six other East Texas towns that declared themselves sanctuaries — is watching the vote closely. (The lawsuit was dropped; those cities aren’t home to abortion providers and had differently worded ordinances.)

Drucilla Tigner, a policy and advocacy strategist with the group, said the proposed ordinance is structured to “undo our natural checks and balances” in an attempt to let “unconstitutional laws can go into effect.” It’s a pattern that’s been replicated in abortion restrictions now before the state Legislature.

“Whether or not they’ll be successful is certainly still an open question,” she said. “But I do absolutely think that this is the new strategy from the … anti-abortion movement.”

Disclosure: Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.