March 31, 2017

Ep41: A weekly trifecta with Paxton, bathrooms and vouchers. Plus, as political tensions mount at the Texas Legislature, the entertainment level grows

40 minutes

As Texas' legislative session passes its midpoint, name-calling and unpleasantness seem to be the order of the day under Pink Dome.

Attorney General Ken Paxton got bad news, as a judge in his home county of Colin County decides to move his criminal-fraud trial someplace else -- and delay its start, perhaps until the fall when the election season begins.

A school-choice bill -- vouchers to opponents -- has the Senate roiling with argument over whether to use tax money to let parents put their children in private schools.

After House Speaker Joe Straus suggested the Senate's budget accounting amounted to a "riverboat gamble," and a lieutenant called it unconstitutional, Senate leaders shot back that the House was cooking the books with its own math.

Add to that Gov. Greg Abbott's proclaiming that the state, not cities, should set the rules in Texas, at a time when local government are angry about unfunded mandates and property-tax reform they say will whack their revenues, and you have all the makings of an entertaining dogfight at the State Capitol.

Get the lowdown on all the political intrigue in Austin in this week's Texas Take -- the leading political podcast in the Lone Star State -- where you get the inside scoop on the Legislature in simple language every Texan can understand -- unvarnished straight talk, as they say.

There's no political-speak here, y'all.

...more

View all episodes

By Houston Chronicle

4.6