AUSTIN - State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, says the children of Texas were the big issue when the Senate’s version of the budget came up for a vote last Thursday, not his city’s four-year medical school.

Shapleigh made the statement after an eye-catching and rather misleading headline in the El Paso Times – “Senate OKs med funds; Shapleigh against measure.”

Though the story was about the Senate’s version of the $132 billion state budget, which Shapleigh voted against, the headline focused only on the medical school.

Under the committee substitute to HB 1, Texas Tech University gets the $43 million it needs to hire faculty, obtain certification, and open the medical school in 2003.

“As a state, we must make investment in children a clear value. For that reason, even though this bill included $43 million for our medical school, in good conscience I must take a stand for children in our great state,” Shapleigh said.

“Our medical building will get built; that is not the issue. What is the issue is standing strong for investment in our children and our future, not more tax cuts for the wealthy.”

Shapleigh said that in voting against the budget bill he voted with the people of El Paso and the children of Texas to invest in them and their future.
 
“Over the last 10 years, state leaders have valued tax cuts over kids,” Shapleigh said. He provided a list of the impact such cuts have made: more drop outs than any state in the country; fewer students with high school degrees than any state; the highest percentage of uninsured children in the country; foster children sleeping in hotels, among other problems at Child Protective Services; staffing levels at the Texas Youth Commission that are one-third of the national average for staffing levels at similar facilities; and staffing levels in mental health facilities that have earned the state a lawsuit with the Department of Justice.
 
Shapleigh revealed that he had received a “heartfelt” letter from an El Paso librarian, who wrote: “I, along with thousands of others, are back here in the trenches with not enough staff, materials or technology for a 21st Century education experience. I have the training and the desire…but because of funding issues do not have any library staff besides myself in this 7,000 square foot facility.” The librarian said she was being “run ragged.”
 
Shapleigh said that with a $14.3 billion surplus, $3 billion in tax cuts had been reserved in the budget for the wealthiest Texans in 2010-2011.

“Remember that the surplus was built on the backs of children when radicals cut 500,000 children from CHIP and Medicaid in 2003,” Shapleigh said. “Instead of funding basic programs that give opportunity to our youngest citizens, nine in ten tax cut dollars will go to people who make more than $85,000.”
 
A more children-friendly budget would have seen the $3 billion left invested in CHIP so that another 200,000 kids could have received health insurance, Shapleigh said. The same $3 billion could also have provided the money to allow 100,000 children in TEXAS Grants to get a college scholarship, he said.

The $3 billion could also have funded state universities to stop the 47 percent tuition increases that have occurred in recent years, Shapleigh said, as well as provided extra money for highways, thus lessening the apparent need for more toll roads.

Shapleigh pointed out that186 Texans have died over the last 18 months in mental health and mental retardation facilities. Perhaps some of these could have been avoided if MHMR had received a greater priority, Shapleigh said. The $3 billion could also have been used to increase funding to CPS, where hundreds of children are currently staying in hotels, he said.
 
“So, today, vote me as standing for children,” Shapleigh concluded. “We will build the medical school - but we must build a state that cares for children too.”

Responding to Shapleigh's criticism of the budget on the Senate floor, Rep. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, chairman of the Finance Committee, said: “Every problem you described is addressed in this budget with huge increases in funding.”
 
In a statement later, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst defended the Senate version of the budget, which was passed by 26 votes to five.

Dewhurst, a Republican, acknowledged that more than $3 billion in general revenue and $4.3 billion in the Rainy Day Fund had been held back to insure Texans receive the local school property tax relief not only in this biennium (2008-2009), but in 2010-2011.

“The Committee Substitute to House Bill 1 funds the state's essential services, while limiting growth in all-funds spending to a modest 3.4 percent per year,” Dewhurst said.

“The increase in real discretionary General Revenue spending is also less than four percent per year since the budget contains $2.5 billion in method of finance changes to preserve the Rainy Day Fund and for the repayment of deferrals, which are not new spending.”

Dewhurst said the budget also sets aside $700 million to settle the 13 year-old Frew v. Hawkins Medicaid class action lawsuit against the state, currently being reviewed by U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice.

“Like the budgets we've adopted over the past four years, this budget is conservative and will ensure that government doesn't stand in the way of Texas' continued economic growth,” Dewhurst said.