Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The Texas Transportation Commission would retain its makeup and most of its powers under the Senate's mammoth version of the Texas Department of Transportation bill, which senators approved late Monday evening.

State Rep. Joe Pickett is at odds with state transportation leaders and the federal highway department over his plan to neuter the Texas Department of Transportation, and the first-term committee chairman is digging in his heels.

Two years of planning, positioning and politicking over the multibillion-dollar business of building roads in Texas will come down to a single bill in the Senate as soon as today, when members will spend hours arguing over how to build more roads for more people without spending much more money.

Legislation working its way through the Capitol could curb the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s ability to take property for its planned light rail lines, potentially imperiling the plan, agency officials say.

So, now that a House/Senate conference committee has finished its work on Senate Bill 1, the state budget for the next two years, what is the bottomline on “diversions” of gas tax and vehicle fee money?

Senate Democrats say they have more than enough votes to remove Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education Tuesday when McLeroy’s confirmation reaches the Senate floor.

The Senate is poised to take up its version of the sunset bill for TxDOT any minute. I wrote about this bill -- and the fact that it's carrying a session's worth of ideas on its back -- this morning for the paper. In highlighting the differences between the House and the Senate, I presented some of the comments made to me by House transportation chairman Joe Pickett.

The controversy over whether the dormant Asarco smelter should be allowed to reopen cooled off after the environmental agency, led by Garcia, gave the smelter the go-ahead last year to resume operations. It died entirely when Asarco announced early this year it would permanently close the plant after an unfavorable federal ruling.

Advocacy groups join state legislators in pushing to accept federal stimulus money.

More college students would get financial aid, retired teachers might get $500 bonuses and seat belts could begin being installed on school buses under a state budget compromise endorsed Wednesday night by House-Senate negotiators.

To believe the vocal critics of the local-option transportation funding bill, which is slowly making its way to the floor of the Texas House, you’d have to think that the measure will kill the state economy, drive residents to bankruptcy and bypass ways to use existing revenue for crucial rail and road projects.

Lawmakers negotiating the state budget agreed late Wednesday to give retired teachers and retired state workers one-time $500 bonuses, as a gesture of appreciation in tight fiscal times.

Today, the Texas House Committee on Defense and Veterans' Affairs has an opportunity to vote out a Senate bill authorizing the state to enforce a federal law protecting our military personnel from becoming trapped in a cycle of debt associated with high-cost payday and auto title loans.

Candelario Barragan, center, a math teacher at El Dorado High School received congratulations Tuesday from students Eirick Allen, left, and Anthony Lopez, right, after he was named a Milken National Educator Award recipient. * Photo gallery: Milken award recipient

Dismiss talk of global warming and environmentalism if you must. But times are changing fast and, along with them, the very way we heat and cool our homes and businesses.

More than two years ago, a group of 35 Texas superintendents convened to begin examining the culture and structure needed in our public schools so that today's students have the opportunity to acquire 21st century skills necessary to compete in the global economy.

The city's biggest school district, though, seems to have the most to celebrate and the biggest concerns about official ratings from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test to be released in July.

State Rep. Joe Pickett on Wednesday said he would withdraw an amend ment to a transit bill that would have allowed the El Paso City Council to replace the regional mobility authority.

Republican Don McLeroy's nomination as chairman of the State Board of Education was revived Wednesday when a Senate committee finally voted to recommend him to the full Senate.

Nominations Committee Chairman Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, had left McLeroy’s confirmation languishing in committee for weeks because there was said to be enough opposition on the Senate floor to block the confirmation. A two-thirds vote of the 31-member Senate is needed to confirm the governor’s nominee.