Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The federal government on Wednesday agreed to pay for Hurricane Ike cleanup costs in Texas for an additional six months, rejecting Gov. Rick Perry's request for money for 16 months.

A commonly heard quip is that the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court is so favorably disposed toward the insurance industry that the only time an insurer loses is when one sues another.

Whether they drove hundreds of miles on their own or were shuttled in vans and buses by their local governments, they have come to the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston from 160 of the state's 254 counties.

When state lawmakers expressed surprise at the size of the Texas Department of Transportation's government relations and public affairs operation, they didn't know the half of it.

A new federal rule gives states sweeping authority to charge premiums and higher co-payments for doctors’ services, hospital care and prescription drugs provided to low-income people under Medicaid.

Private health insurance plans, which serve nearly a fourth of all Medicare beneficiaries, have increased the cost and complexity of the program without any evidence of improving care, researchers say in studies to be published Monday.

And though textbooks are now in many situations giving way to digital media in the classroom, state spending on school technology, such as computers and Internet connectivity, has been dwarfed by the resources put toward textbooks.

Two and a half months after Hurricane Ike blasted the shoreline, alligators and snakes crawl over vast piles of shattered building materials, lawn furniture, trees, boats, tanks of butane and other hazardous substances, thousands of animal carcasses, perhaps even the corpses of people killed by the storm.

State Board of Education member Terri Leo of Spring actually used that phrase to refer to supporters of evolution last week in a public hearing on possible changes to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills requirements for the teaching of science in public schools. The SBOE will vote next year on the revisions.

Although the Texas economy is strong and diversified, it may not escape damage from a weak national economy that will continue to struggle, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Austin business people Monday.

The Tenet hospital chain, second largest in the nation, is aggressively pursuing public health contracts and a larger piece of the market share across the country, often bumping into competitor HCA, the nation’s biggest hospital chain, along the way.

The evidence of an downturn has been widespread for months: slower production, stagnant wages and hundreds of thousands of lost jobs. But the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, charged with making the call for the history books, waited until now to weigh in.

A new bill would create a transportation district, a tax-levying entity that would cover all of the Dallas-Fort Worth area and would be controlled by the Regional Transportation Council or its designees.

After the Legislature in 2001 invented mobility authorities, officials said toll road profits could also be spent on free roads and even passenger rail — anything promoting "mobility." My assumption has been that when money became available — and the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority's sole toll road is in fact clearing more than $5 million a year — the first, second and third choices would be to plow it into other tollways.

Like Ciudad Juarez, the streets of Tijuana are a battleground between heavily armed organized criminal gangs that often include current or former policemen. Although the Mexican army has been repeatedly deployed since beginning of the Calderon administration, it has failed to contain the violence in Tijuana and other parts of Baja California.

'What the heck is a 'multimodal transportation system'?" It's a system that includes a coordinated mix of roads, rail, bus, bike and pedestrian infrastructure moving people and goods through and within a region. We need one of them multimodal jobbies for many reasons.

Texas' new business tax is coming up short of expectations.The state comptroller's office said Wednesday that nearly $4.7 billion has been collected in the first year of the tax, about $1.2 billion less than projected.

As of Nov. 25, the total revenue from the state’s revised franchise tax for fiscal year 2009, which includes September, October and November, is about $195.7 million, said R.J. DeSilva, spokesperson for the State Comptroller’s office.

A Democratic activist filed a complaint Tuesday accusing House Speaker Tom Craddick of violating a state law prohibiting the payment of dependent children with campaign donations. The twist is that Craddick's daughter, Christi, is a lawyer in her 30s — well beyond the minor child that the law targeted — who has been paid a six-figure sum by her father from his campaign donations.

But Craddick opponents have yet to coalesce around a challenger seeking to replace him, ensuring that behind-the-scenes jockeying for one of the most coveted political offices in Texas could continue right up until the Legislature convenes Jan. 13.