Border Region $0M, Midland $13.5M
May 28, 2005
HB 1 boost for Midland Memorial but no new faculty funding for El Paso or Kingsville medical institutions
Written by Steve Taylor, Quorum Report
The border region may not have done very well under Senate Bill 1, the main appropriations legislation of the session, but Midland, Texas, is sitting pretty.
A late addition to the legislation appropriates an additional $13.5 million from general revenues to the Department of State Health Services in fiscal year 2006 for use in an interagency agreement with Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. The money will help Texas Tech operate an OB-GYN Medical Residency Program and a Physician's Assistant Program at Midland Memorial Hospital.
Texas Tech's four-year medical school in El Paso gets no new money to hire faculty under SB 1. Nor does the Irma Rangel College of Pharmacy in Kingsville or the Regional Academic Health Center in the Rio Grande Valley.
Sen. Steve Ogden (R-Bryan), author of SB 1, defended the legislation on the Senate floor Saturday evening. He acknowledged there was no new money in the bill for the medical school or the pharmacy school. He said House Bill 10, an emergency appropriations bill, was the vehicle through which the Senate wanted to steer additional operational funds.
Just after midnight Thursday, the Senate amended HB 10, authored by Rep. Jim Pitts (R-Waxahachie), to commit $37 million to the El Paso medical school and $10 million to the Rangel pharmacy school.
Sen. Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso) said he understood that House leaders gutted the amendment. "We were shocked to find that the $37 million for El Paso and the $13 million for Kingsville was removed from House Bill 10. We are working minute by minute to try to restore it," Shapleigh told QR.
At a press conference on school finance Saturday afternoon, Ogden said agreement had been reached between Senate and House conferees on four of the five appropriations bills currently outstanding. He said HB 10 was one of the four.
However, Ogden told QR he would not comment on whether HB 10 had money for the El Paso medical school or the Rangel pharmacy school at this time. "I'm not going to comment until I've got a bill printed and I'm ready to submit the conference committee report," Ogden said.
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