Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The 81st Texas Legislature began with strong interest in cleaner energy — lawmakers filed at least 69 bills related to solar and other forms of renewable power — but ended Monday without the boost for the emerging industry that advocates wanted.

In a hard-hitting speech before an audience of economic development, business and academic leaders, the former president of the University of Texas-Pan American said it was “unsatisfactory and unacceptable” that the region has just a handful of doctoral programs.

According to a study published online by the American Journal of Medicine, 60 percent of all bankruptcies in the United States in 2007 were driven by health care costs...Insurance administration costs can take a big bite out of a practice’s revenue. A recent Weill Cornell Medical College study found that a third of the money received by primary care physicians pays for interactions between a doctor’s practice and patients’ health plans.

Gov. Rick Perry's opposition to seeking full funding from Washington for the Children's Health Insurance Program has never made any sense — or cents — for Texas.

Most legislators were pleased they had been able to accomplish much of the agenda presented them in January, but others were still concerned about the many important measures upon which they had failed to act. As a result, unfinished business may result in a special called session at some point in the future.

While tax rates won't be set until December, Pauken said that mounting layoffs are close to exhausting a state trust fund, forcing him and two fellow commissioners recently to authorize what they expect to be $2 billion of interest-free borrowing from the federal government.

Richard M. Burr, the Republican tobacco-state senator who tried a filibuster this week against a bill that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the cigarette industry, flew home to North Carolina for the weekend, conceding that the landmark legislation was likely to pass next week.

Although the numbers are disputed by public plan advocates, the Lewin Group, a health care consulting firm, recently projected that a plan paying Medicare rates would prompt 119 million of the 172 million people who are privately insured to switch policies (while also providing coverage to 28 million of the 46 million uninsured)...Only 12 million people with private coverage would migrate to a public plan if Congress provided protections for insurers, along principles suggested by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. Seeking to broker a deal that might attract Republican support, Mr. Schumer is promoting many of Mr. Nichols’s proposals, including that a public plan be subject to the same regulations as private plans and that it pay providers at higher levels than Medicare.

As expected, the Kennedy bill, called the American Health Choices Act, is to the left of one being written by the Senate Finance Committee, headed by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana. Senate Democratic leaders said the two bills would be merged before going to the Senate floor — in July, they hope.

The Obama administration released yesterday a counternarcotics strategy for the U.S.-Mexico border that calls for deploying new technology, stepping up intelligence gathering and increasing interdiction of ships, aircraft and vehicles that are smuggling drugs, gun and cash.

The Senate recently passed three bills...aimed at moving Texas' seven emerging research universities toward tier one status. The statewide consensus that something must be done to make our institutions of higher education more competitive on a national and global scale is long overdue...With that said, however, I strongly objected to certain criteria in S.B. 1560, as I believe the bill as written will effectively result in the coronation of the University of Houston and Texas Tech University rather than a true competition to incentivize all seven of Texas' emerging research institutions.

There was an 11th hour meltdown that left five state agencies in limbo - and none more important than the Texas Department of Transportation - but Gov. Rick Perry and most state officials agree the session was a success.

President Obama recently summoned aides to the Oval Office to discuss a magazine article investigating why the border town of McAllen, Tex., was the country’s most expensive place for health care. The article became required reading in the White House, with Mr. Obama even citing it at a meeting last week with two dozen Democratic senators.

The theatrics of the 81st Texas Legislature may be over, but Texans are now gearing up for the state’s next feature attraction — a roiling political season topped by a marquee race for governor.

As she describes it, Beth Jacobson and her fellow loan officers at Wells Fargo Bank “rode the stagecoach from hell” for a decade, systematically singling out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages.

If the Texas Legislature had a message this just-ended session about the future of state transportation, it is that intercity passenger rail will be part of the mix.

High rates of uninsured are already evident in many health indicators that are worsening. Statewide, Bujanda said, childhood obesity is alarmingly high and rising rapidly, for example.

With the Legislature gone, Gov. Rick Perry has the spotlight to himself with his final say on legislation. A stroke of his veto pen, and bills nurtured by lawmakers get tossed to the trash heap. One already has been.

If Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison leaves the Senate early to run for governor, it could set off a scramble for contested statewide races – and then countless open local seats.

One of the many procedural fatalities of the final days of the 81st Legislature was a transportation measure that would have given voters the option to fund road construction and other mobility improvements with local taxes.