By J. Lyn Carl, GalleryWatch.com
Austin, TX –
It's the Hatfields and McCoys in the Texas Legislature, as the shots keep getting fired across the rotunda.
Tempers are running high. Accusations abound. And the House and Senate conference committees' ox is apparently in a ditch.
Last night, Sen. Chris Harris (R-Arlington), offered a motion that passed pushing the final Senate Local and Consent Calendar, with more than 400 House bills listed on it, back from the previously scheduled 7:30 a.m. time for today to a later time of 1 p.m. Senate members have been grumbling of late that not enough Senate bills were passing in the House. Harris said he was pushing the Local Calendar back to see what the House was going to do with Senate bills on their Local Calendar this morning.
Negotiations in conference committees on HB 2 and HB 3 are getting bogged down, with lots of finger pointing and some are getting antsy over whether the two public school reform/finance bills will make it out of conference committee in time to meet the end-of-session deadlines.
Now comes House Speaker Tom Craddick defending the actions in the House.
While the Senate members have indicated they want to speed up actions in conference committees, Craddick reminded that the House gave conferees "plenty of time to come to a consensus when we passed both HB 2 and HB 3 out of the House in mid-March."
The House Speaker said the House has been diligent and "fully engaged" in working on both HB 2 and HB 3 for more than two months and has "waited patiently" for the Senate plan, which only arrived two weeks ago.
"With that kind of timeline, tensions are running high and it's easy to point fingers out of desperation," said Craddick. He took to task those who suggested the House has been "distracted on a number of different legislative issues," and said instead that the House has been "intensely focused on school finance reform from day one." The House conferees on the two bills are "moving forward as quickly and as responsibly as they can," said Craddick, but are awaiting figures requested from the State Comptroller relative to the bills. "We are proceeding wisely," said the Speaker. "We need her sign off before we can proceed."
Craddick said he does not see as a negative the fact that conferees are still meeting on the two major bills. "This kind of intense discourse and negotiation is what will hopefully net a final school reform plan of which we can all be proud. The fact that we haven't yet come to a consensus, is evidence of just how deeply passionate both sides are about getting it right for the kids of this state."