Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The Legislature's special session on public school finance should collapse and die today. No doubt Gov. Rick Perry will try to make the corpse walk again by calling legislators back for another attempt at cutting school property taxes without anyone noticing the tax increases required to make up the difference.

Given what we've seen so far, we vote for calling it a day — what lawmakers are advertising as education "reform" isn't worth the trouble, because most Texans would net only higher taxes and little improvement in public school financial support.

What's driving the insistence on action isn't a passion for better schools — or even the state trial court ruling that the state's school finance system is unconstitutional.

Rather, it's growing desperation, on the part of Perry and most Republican members of the Texas House and many in the Senate. They want to cut school property taxes and at least appear to be doing something about the so-called Robin Hood system of property wealthy districts subsidizing property poor districts. They are desperate because so many of them made reduction of school property taxes the centerpiece of their election campaigns and, so far, they have failed to produce.

They have failed to produce because, away from the campaign trail and in the world of the state Constitution, state law and competing interests, they have run into a wall of reality. Unlike President Bush and Republicans in Congress, who can borrow gigantic amounts of money to make up for revenue given up for tax cuts, Perry and the Republicans in the Legislature who want to cut school property taxes have to make up for the lost revenue by — raising other taxes. The more they cut property taxes, the more they have to raise other taxes.

From the start, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and the Texas Senate have been more realistic, recognizing the need to tax more businesses and for businesses generally to help shoulder more of the load.

Led by Speaker Tom Craddick, many House Republicans worry first about business interests, and they decided to finance a property tax cut largely by raising the sales tax by one cent for every dollar spent. The increase would fall heaviest on middle- and low-income Texans.

Senators refused to go along. Good for them. They drew the line at a half-cent and, so far, have stood firm.

At this point, the logical thing to do is for the Legislature to back off and wait for the Texas Supreme Court to issue a ruling in the school finance case. Its ruling might not solve the Legislature's problem, but it might help clarify legislative thinking.

But for Perry and many GOP legislators, the biggest problem is keeping their promise to cut school property taxes — no matter what it costs.