Legislative Law Bulletin

Paul Burka, Texas Monthly columnist and BurkaBlog author, asks whether the current Texas budget crisis mist be better managed thru annual budget sessions. The Texas Legislature only meets for 140 days in odd-numbered years; the Texas Constitution generally requires the Legislature to pass a balanced budget (any deficit spending requires a super-majority of each House of the Legislature and, as a practical matter, hasn’t ever happened). As the 2011 session looms on the horizon, Burka notes that “most people involved in writing the state budget have no idea about the size of the shortfall,” yet state agencies are being told to cut their budgets by 10 percent with another 15 percent on top of that estimated to be necessary. Burka thinks that a “thirty-day budget session in June 2012, three months before the end of the biennium, would allow budget writers to prepare a budget based on the latest economic information” and that the Texas constitution should institutionalize annual budget sessions.

This is an idea that comes up regularly in the political science literature and just about every time the Legislature faces huge deficits. Budget writers don’t like it for reasons unknown; when House Appropriations Chairman Rob Junell proposed a wholesale revision of the Texas Constitution in 1999, he tellingly did not include a provision for annual budget sessions. One reason may be that legislators don’t want to have to come back; since they only make $600 per month, plus a per diem when in session, they would have to take away more time for their everyday jobs that pay the bills. Employers don’t look too kindly on Members always taking off to go to Austin; at least they can be assured it’s only every two years. To expect employers, business partners, clients, etc., to understand that you’re going to be gone for the first three months of every year might be a little too much.

The only time in modern history that the idea has been seriously forwarded was the proposed Constitution of 1975, which failed at the ballot box. So while Burka’s idea makes some sense, I don’t see it happening anytime soon.