Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The uninsured probably would not receive access to the program — a draft of which had been criticized by hospitals, doctors and advocates for people with low incomes — until 2010 or 2011, commission spokeswoman Stephanie Goodman said.

State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who chairs the Senate's Criminal Justice Committee and co-chairs a joint committee studying the juvenile system, said the state is spending more than $100,000 per each of the 2,400 juvenile lawbreakers incarcerated in the system's far-flung outposts. Many of them are located where they are as a result of powerful legislators from rural areas over the years treating the facilities as local jobs programs.

Seven Texans a day are dying because of a lack of health care insurance.That's according to a study by Families USA that found Texas had more deaths from lack of treatment of the uninsured than any state except California.

Angie Chen Button won an expensive and bruising contest over Randy Dunning in the Republican primary race to succeed retiring state Rep. Fred Hill.

An ex-Senate aide defeated a former city councilwoman in a runoff election Tuesday as Houston-area Republicans chose a nominee for former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's old congressional seat in District 22.

Many charter schools have encountered trouble for mishandling taxpayers' money, but state and federal prosecutors don't often pursue criminal charges against them. State government usually goes after errant charter operators through the regulatory process or in civil courts. Some charters clean up their accounting procedures and repay their debt to the state.

State District Judge Joe Hart last week dismissed a campaign finance lawsuit brought by former Democratic state Rep. Ann Kitchen of Austin against the statewide business group, 30 once-anonymous corporate donors and Austin lobbyist Mike Toomey.

Even one wrongful conviction should be a shocking aberration in our system of justice, which is based on the principle that "it is better that the guilty go free than the innocent be jailed." These 30 cases come from the small subset of convictions in which genetic evidence has been preserved by the state and therefore raise the deeply troubling – and largely untestable – possibility of a proportionate number of erroneous convictions in which no DNA testing is possible.With this in mind, I commend Sen. Rodney Ellis' proposal that the Texas Legislature create a commission to investigate each instance of DNA exoneration and assess the likelihood of wrongful convictions in other cases, so that we can begin to reduce the chances that innocent Texans are incarcerated.

If there's a way to avoid clogging the border with traffic backed up by identification verification procedures, why not find it? And that's the opening that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott may have found this week with a ruling that driver's licenses with an embedded computer chip can be used, if the federal government will go along with the idea.

The answer came back that if the state would appropriate $22,500 to provide funding for staff and facilities, CCC would operate through the parks board. If not, the 26 park projects ongoing in the state at the time would be canceled.

It's the start of a new battle over a voter identification law, something Republicans say is needed to preserve the integrity of elections, and Democrats say will suppress the votes of the elderly and minorities.

Gas companies often use eminent domain powers similar to governments' to acquire land for pipelines. But unlike government, for-profit businesses condemn land largely without oversight or democratic process.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst wants Texas senators to return to Austin next year ready to work on plans to slow the growth in property tax appraisals, develop recommendations for a tamper-proof state identification card and contain the state's rapidly rising costs for Medicaid.

Texas legislators seem to have a penchant for identifying problems that aren't problems but which are guaranteed to create a great deal of heat and embroil them in time-consuming controversy. Some Texas Republicans apparently seem determined to press forward with voter identification legislation when the 2009 Texas Legislature rolls around, never mind the political gridlock the issue caused in the 80th Legislature.

State Rep. Armando “Mando” Martinez says McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez showed “great vision” for pushing the concept of light rail during his State of the City 2008 Address.

The Texas Hospital Association wants to help the 5.7 million people - almost as many as the number of people living in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex - who are without health insurance in Texas.

In a direct response to problems in Texas, Congress is considering new limits on the role that private companies can play in states' public assistance programs.

The rush is coming from Oklahoma, Arizona and other states, places that have recently passed tough new anti-illegal immigrant laws.

More than $3 billion in general-revenue dedicated accounts will go unspent for their specified purposes in the current 2007-09 budget period — including balances that have built up over time, plus expected revenue — compared with nearly $2.65 billion in the previous budget cycle.

Perry owes his rise in Texas politics to an energetic coalition of evangelicals, anti-tax hawks and grassroots party activists. But he has rattled them hard this year with moves to vaccinate teenagers against a sexually transmitted virus, his veto of a popular bill aimed at curbing government condemnation powers and, most recently, his embrace of New York Republican Rudy Giuliani, who sent shivers down the spines of many conservative GOP voters.