Texas Preliminary Budget Bills Released

Texas House and Senate leaders this week released their respective chambers’ new preliminary state budget bills for the 2024-25 biennium, with each proposing to shell out an unprecedented $130.1 billion in general revenue at a time when the state is awash in more cash than the state Constitution will allow lawmakers to spend.

The proposals, which are similar in totals but differ in some of the details, appear to leave on the table more than $50 billion in available funds at a time when the state has a total of $188.2 billion in funds available for spending over the next cycle — including a historic $32.7 billion cash balance.

Both propose to spend nearly $289 billion in state and federal funds. Neither bill busts the state’s statutory or constitutional spending limit, budget leaders said, nor do they appear to dip into the state’s rainy day fund.

The House and Senate bills both include $15 billion for property tax relief, $1.8 billion for state employee pay raises and $4.6 billion for the governor’s border security program, Operation Lone Star.

The proposals, each of them 1,033 pages, were filed early Wednesday.

Requests by agencies for new money alone — for everything from staff raises to a new law enforcement training center — total more than $15 billion in general revenue. And some of the expected appeals for cash haven’t shown up yet in those legislative appropriations requests.

This story was excerpted from The Texas Tribune.