By KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX – Texas spent at least $250 million in the past year for medical care and imprisonment of illegal immigrants and other non-citizens.
The House State Affairs Committee heard testimony in Austin. Lawmakers who convene in January could face a projected $18 billion budget shortfall.
Jerry McGinty, with the Texas Department of Corrections, says prisons last month had 11,766 inmates who are foreign citizens and housing them costs $171 million annually. The federal government reimburses 10 percent.
Rick Allgeyer, with the Health and Human Services Commission, said Wednesday that health care to illegal immigrants cost Texas nearly $100 million.
Rep. Pete Gallego of Alpine says there could be significant effects if public age.
Hole in Southwest jet blamed on metal fatigue
Federal investigators say metal fatigue caused a hole to rip open in the roof of a Southwest Airlines jet as it cruised at 35,000 feet last year.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in a report Wednesday that the 14-inch crack developed in a spot where two sheets of aluminum skin were bonded together on the Boeing 737 jet.
The plane bound from Nashville, Tenn., to Baltimore on July 13, 2009, lost cabin pressure and had to make an emergency landing in Charleston, W.Va., There were no injuries.
Two months after the scare, Boeing told all airlines with 737s to conduct repeated inspections of the top of the fuselage near the vertical tail fin. The Federal Aviation Administration has since made those inspections mandatory.
Restoration being done on Texas Capitol
The more than century-old Texas Capitol has a new under-construction look.
The $3.5 million renovation is expected to be finished by late December, a month before lawmakers return for the legislative session.
The Dallas Morning News reported Thursday that the project is the first major work to the building since 1992.
Construction began in May. Scaffolding this week surrounded the dome of the iconic building in Austin.
The project includes repainting the dome and the surrounding rooftops, fixing weather-related damage and refinishing the ornate ceiling in the House chamber.
The original structure was completed in 1888.
The capitol in 1970 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986.