Home Appropriations Committee approves 2024-25 state finances invoice draft — right here’s what’s in it

Ali Juell, Senior Information Reporter
March 23, 2023

The Home Appropriations Committee permitted the official draft 2024-25 Texas state finances Thursday, utilizing an unprecedented $302.7 billion finances to fund property taxes, wage will increase and border operations.

The Home will vote on the proposed finances plan within the coming weeks.

Glenn Hegar, Texas comptroller of public accounts, estimated a two-year income of $188.2 billion for the 2024-25 fiscal interval. Hegar stated the upcoming finances 12 months will see a 26% improve in funds from this finances 12 months attributable to power costs and value inflation.

“The income will increase that we’ve seen have been, in some ways, unprecedented, and we can’t fairly anticipate a repeat,” Hegar stated in his Biennial Income Estimate. “We’re unlikely to have a possibility like this once more. This budgeting session is actually a once-in-a-lifetime session.”

Based mostly on elements just like the income estimate for the upcoming fiscal interval and the finances surplus from the earlier two years, throughout every legislative session, the state Home and Senate develop a finances proposal. The proposed finances should account for 2 years of funding as a result of the legislature solely involves session each different 12 months. 

The state has a finances surplus from the 2022-23 finances of roughly $33 billion, a rise from final 12 months’s finances surplus of $26.2 billion. Apart from $10 billion already put aside for the state’s wet day fund and freeway fund, lawmakers can spend the rest of the excess nonetheless they select inside state regulation.

This 12 months’s proposed Home finances consists of funding for elevated trainer and state employee wages, psychological well being providers and property tax cuts.

The proposed finances consists of funding for UT-Austin, resembling an additional $2 million per 12 months within the finances offered by the Nationwide Analysis College Fund — funding meant to assist analysis productiveness and college assist at Texas analysis universities. Moreover, the proposal permits a further $15 million every year for college salaries.  

The Civitas Institute, a assume tank not too long ago shaped on the College, would obtain $3 million in yearly state funding based mostly on the Home’s proposal.

Along with the invoice’s designated funds, State Rep. Carrie Isaac proposed a rider — a further ordinance tacked on to an present invoice — that can stop state funds from being spent on range, fairness and inclusion applications and practices on the college degree, which would come with DEI-focused personnel, actions and coaching.