Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

In its aftermath, the question most asked about the 79th Legislature is: "What happened?"

Be forewarned: Months may pass before we know everything the lawmakers did. But some things they didn't do are so astounding that rumors of a special session being called soon are rampant.

Despite pronouncements about giving schools more money, changing how they are funded and revamping how taxes are collected, no such proposals were approved.

Forget that a state court ruled that Texas' school funding system doesn't fund schools adequately, that money isn't distributed equitably or that local taxes have become a de facto state property tax.

Once in session, lawmakers' talk about improving schools so more kids will navigate them successfully degenerated into disputes about offsetting the revenue lost from lowering property taxes.

Two bills emerged: House Bill 2 to revamp the funding system and House Bill 3 to overhaul the tax codes. And after five months, they evolved into each chamber's own version of each bill.

Interestingly, none of the proposals seriously addressed the enrollment growth our schools will experience, or the challenges schools will face as growing percentages of kids enroll that need specialized curricula and individual attention. Nor was a long-term mechanism provided to generate the greater revenue this will require.

Those concerns were lost amid the debates about how to best shift the tax burden from big business and households with incomes in excess of $140,000 to the other 80 percent of Texas taxpayers.

And in the session's final hours, House and Senate leaders could not even agree on how to stick it to the poor and middle class!

Along the way, a few worthy measures miraculously sneaked through the process. But tragically, very pressing proposals were killed by capricious ideologues, or were lost amid the confusion of the session's harried final days.

Among the biggest casualties of this disastrous Legislature were Texas' institutions of higher learning, and none were hurt more profoundly than those in South Texas and along the border, where higher education is most needed, and where the population is Texas' youngest and fastest-growing.

As we reported earlier, funding to hire faculties for El Paso's medical school and a dental school in Kingsville was capriciously denied, so both schools' virtually finished buildings will remain vacant.

But the Legislature also failed to authorize $1.1 billion of tuition revenue bond requests — costing taxpayers only the debt service — that will stall campus construction throughout Texas for at least two years.

Among the victims were the new $45 million Texas A&M-San Antonio campus, UTSA's $45 million engineering building, UTHSC-San Antonio's $50 million research tower and two regional academic health science centers in the Rio Grande Valley ($20 million and $6 million, respectively). Also stalled were construction projects at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi ($14 million), Texas A&M-Kingsville ($45 million), Texas A&M-International ($20 million), Texas A&M Citrus Center ($8 million), UT-Brownsville ($25 million), UT-Pan American ($28.5 million), UT-El Paso ($30 million) and a college-high school center in Starr County ($3 million).

Considering the urgency, can these expenditures be restored without losing another biennium?

Stay tuned — there is hope.