The Texas Legislature is in full swing now, and the budget cuts are coming together.
Although lawmakers are forced to make tough choices, some of the decisions being made are unfair.
Last Friday House members passed an amendment to the budget offered by Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Nacogdoches, who is a prominent Conservative activist.
The amendment states that universities “shall use an amount of appropriated funds to support a family and traditional values center for students of the institution that is not less than any amount of appropriated funds used by the institution to support a gender and sexuality center.”
Basically, because UH has a GLBT center, it will now have to fund a center for “traditional family values” with the same amount of money provided to the GLBT center. And while that sounds all right in theory, it’s irresponsible of the Legislature to impel universities to spend money in a specific way — especially with the amount of cuts public schools in Texas are about to endure.
It’s a policy that’s fair in words only. The reason the GLBT center exists in the first place is to provide minority students with a voice on campus. The majority already has a voice, because it simply is the majority. Requiring equal funding for a majority voice center is somewhat ridiculous, because the University will most likely have to lower funding for both centers to appease lawmakers.
However, while some budget decisions aren’t being debated enough, some of the extreme measures proposed are being vetoed. The Windham School District, which provides higher education opportunities to prisoners, did not have its funding stripped. Instead, the district will only receive a $1.3 million cut in funds.
Two motions to introduce amendments, one which would have cut all of Windham’s funding and another that would have taken nearly half, were tabled.
The budget bill is now in the hands of the state Senate, as the House passed its draft of the bill 98-49 Sunday night. Let’s hope the Senators are a bit more realistic when it comes time to vote.
Problem is once you blow that rainy day fund in one shot where do you get the money next time around? It is there for a real disaster not because we can not budget properly or refuse to make cuts at the top instead of the bottom.
If you want to purpose the tax the rich here in texas the only way for you to do that is to start an income tax and we have seen how many other states in the past did this and they are in worse shape for it.