Why House Speaker Joe Straus Just Compared The Senate Finance Committee To Enron
The Texas Legislature’s two houses have about nine weeks to approve a balanced two-year budget. But disagreement over accounting “gimmickry” is dividing lawmakers in the House and Senate. The Senate finance committee approved a $107 billion budget, but House Speaker Joe Straus says that the senators relied on questionable accounting practices to avoid tapping into the state’s rainy day fund, a savings account funded mainly by oil and gas tax revenue.
“This is the Texas Legislature. We are not Enron and I am not interested in cooking the books just to avoid a vote on the rainy day fund,” Straus says. “Gimmickry is not going to get us out of here this time.”
Austin American-Statesman reporter Sean Collins Walsh says that the accounting “gimmicks” Straus referred to involve the way in which the Senate finance committee hoped to implement a new allocation of transportation funding.
In 2015 voters approved Proposition 7 which amended the state Constitution and is set to go into effect next year. The amendment dedicates up to $2.5 billion of state sales tax revenue to transportation funding.
Read more: http://www.texasstandard.org/stories/why-house-speaker-joe-straus-just-compared-the-senate-finance-committee-to-enron/
[font color=330099]What's a couple billion dollars between friends?[/font]
