Senior Leadership Northeast Minutes May 18, 2010
Sunny Meeks welcomed the group and discussed the upcoming City Slickers event. She encouraged everyone to come and listen to the good band that was going to be playing.
There were fifteen (15) individuals present representing nine (9) Northeast Tarrant County cities.
Rep.
We are still trying to figure this out, although the latest estimate is somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.7B per year. The national health insurance bill expands eligibility for Medicaid. On the one hand, we know that will cost at least $2.7 billion more a year starting in 2014, and could be as much as $4 billion more a year. On the other hand many of these people who will qualify for Medicaid are already receiving health care through county-based indigent services. Theoretically there would be an offset, but no one knows for sure how well that offset would work.
We really don’t know how we will be able to pay for these services. That is why the state is challenging the legislation in court. The basis of the lawsuit is challenging the legality of the federal government requiring a Texan to buy something the citizen neither wants or feels he needs. If the legal challenge prevails, it could overturn the whole bill or only parts of it.
Summary of the provisions of the bill are available from Kaiser Family Foundation website at: http://www.kff.org/healthreform/sidebyside.cfm
Attorney General
Abbott has joined his colleagues from 13 other states in filing a constitutional
challenge to ObamaCare, the health care takeover bill that the Democrats passed
against the objections of most Americans. Attorney General Abbott's lawsuit
could spell the end of ObamaCare.
Show Attorney General Abbott that you
support him by signing a
petition, GO TO: (http://www.texasgop.org/inner.asp?z=650 at the Republican Party of Texas
website.
Some ask about Nullification. Mr. GREG HOLLOWAY, a Lawyer and Founder of the Austin Tea Party Patriots, says, “Nullification is like shooting a water pistol at a forest fire. There's a lot of other ways, if someone finds a federal law to be inappropriate, to address that.
Among those remedies: A state can sue the government in federal court over a disputed law, just as Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott did, challenging the EPA's designation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
Mr. BOB MOSER (Editor, The Texas Observer): You know, we have this cyclical re-emergence of people who want to declare states' rights in American history. And the actual history of what's happened when those things have happened seems to escape them, and made reference to 1957, when President Eisenhower ordered federal troops to escort nine black students into Little Rock Central High when the Arkansas governor rejected the Supreme Court ruling to integrate public schools.
What does the next State Budget
look like?
Last week, the state’s Legislative Budget Board predicted a deficit estimate of between $15 billion and $18 billion for the 2012-13 biennium. The latest projection by the Chair of Appropriatios is $18B. The Governor, Speaker & Lt. Gov. have already directed agencies to cut spending by 5% during the current budget period. During the upcoming budget period of FY 2012-13, there will have to be deeper spending cuts. There is talk of using most or all of the “Rainy Day Fund” which I’m told should have about $8 billion in it by then. Using the Rainy Day Fund to ease part of the pressure makes some sense. To use all of it would probably be a mistake.
To make up the
difference, there will need to be deep budget cuts. On the Senate side, the Chair of Senate
Finance talking about eliminating some of the current sales tax exemptions. On the House side, the Appropriations
Chair is talking about considering the expansion of gambling to raise the
revenue.
$2.6 billion of
funds for the 2010-2011 budget came from revenues unspent during the 2008-09
budget and rolled into the 2010-11 account.
Then there was a $3 billion
surplus brought about by school finance reform that was put into the state’s
“property tax relief” fund to help pay for public schools. )
A dip in
sales taxes already has caused a $1 billion drop in expected revenues during the
first nine months of the current fiscal year that began last September, and one
economist is forecasting an eventual deficit of $3.5 billion less revenue than
predicted for that area of the two-year budget.
Along with more people —
mostly children and seniors — enrolling in Medicaid and increased health care
costs for the state’s employees, retirees and prison population, it is expected
such costs will add as much as $2.5 billion to the state’s 2012-13
expenditure.
The not so bad news is that there’s about $9 billion in its
Rainy Day Fund, which lawmakers left untouched during the 81st legislative
session last year, but oil and gas prices are volatile, and if you look at the
four biennium, preceding the one we’re in, it has not been a very filled up fund
and it has not always been as large as it has been. Going forward. It may take quite some
time to replenish that fund depending upon how much we use to fill the gaps in
the next budget.
“It takes a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate to
use Rainy Day Fund money, so it will take Republicans and Democrats working
together. Needless to say, members
of the Legislature are going to be forced to make a lot of tough decisions
during the 82nd Session.
BORDER SECURITY.
Department of
Public Safety Director Col. Steve McCraw recently outlined some of the
challenges, including trying to coordinate efforts among dozens of state
agencies and hundreds of local government entities. He noted that the state has seen a shift
in illegal crossings from individuals seeking work . . . to well-organized
“gangs” engaging in drug and human smuggling, which makes border protection more
difficult and more dangerous.
Despite the challenges,
Earlier in May, the House Committee on Appropriations heard
testimony regarding new helicopters, drone jets with infrared capabilities to
patrol the border, and recent federal grant funding for homeland security
efforts. The state has received
over $200 million in federal Byrne Justice Assistance Grants since 2005. This
money is split between the state and local governments and provides funding for
border security, port security, the drug war, combating international gangs, and
bioterrorism research, among other items.
The state has
also put significant amounts of general revenue into support for local and state
law enforcement agencies responsible for protecting the Texas-Mexico border area
in terms of manpower and necessary equipment. We provided funds to support
Operation Linebacker in November 2005, and additional funds to support Operation
Rio Grande in 2006. Then we
put $110 million from the 2007 Texas Legislature to support ongoing border
security operations in
The state
has encouraged information sharing in many ways, including the support of two
key initiatives: the
We will continue
to urge the federal government to defend our country's borders, but at the same
time,
We know that
one of the greatest criminal and terrorist threats to the state is a porous
Texas-Mexico border, has taken action to place law enforcement resources in the
border region to curb the exploitation of unsecured areas by Mexican crime
cartels, transnational gangs and would-be terrorists. These efforts have
resulted in a significant decrease in crime in the border region and an
increased sense of security by residents of border communities.
Action / Initiative
Border security
is vital to the safety of every region in
And as I mentioned before, efforts were enhanced in 2006, with continued efforts to implement a strategy of launching a series of border security operations that increased the law enforcement presence along the border; centralized border-related intelligence; unified local, state and federal land, air and water patrol resources; and committed Texas Military Forces assets and leveraged new technologies along the border.
During the 80th Texas Legislative Session that $110 million was dedicated for continued border security.
Technology used
to secure
· License plate readers
· A Virtual Border Watch capability to deter criminal activity
· The latest electronic fingerprint technology at all booking stations
· Portable electronic fingerprint readers
· Radio Interoperability in the border region and key corridors
·
The Texas Data Exchange to enable border wide crime mapping
and statewide link analysis capabilities
Since these
operations began in
Just the other
day, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Friday gave approval to the U.S.
Customs and Border Protection to begin the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)
along the southwest
Is it possible that
We will
undoubtedly look at it. Every
session we have bills filed to create more/better enforcement of immigration
laws in
Regarding its “odds” for passing, we can look to some comments made by some state leaders.
Gov. Perry has
expressed concerns about a few provisions of the
In his official
statement on the question, Lt. Gov.
David Dewhurst never said whether he agrees or disagrees with the
The state's
attorney general will have to enforce whatever the Legislature and the governor
decide to do Attorney General Greg Abbott hit all the talking points, spanking
the feds, noting legal concerns with the new law, and saying the state will
protect you. "The Federal Government's primary job is to protect our borders and
the safety of our citizens — and they aren't getting the job done," Abbott said
in a press release. "Even President Obama acknowledged that
Agriculture
Commissioner Todd Staples didn't respond to requests for comment. But his
opponent, Democrat Hank Gilbert, said the
The new
anti-immigration law signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer continues to
generate a firestorm of comments, polls, protests and debates. While some
question the constitutionality of the new legislation, others think that the
federal government's inaction on the question of immigration has left the states
with very few options.
• Border
violence continues to plague the El Paso-Juarez area. The El Paso Times reports that four men were
gunned down outside a supermarket in Juarez on Tuesday, and five more were
killed in an attack at a
Meeting ended at
10:30am per schedule.
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