AUSTIN — Two of the border region's top priorities lost their funding Saturday with some lawmakers blaming House Speaker Tom Craddick for blocking a $13 million appropriation needed to open the Irma Rangel School of Pharmacy in Kingsville. El Paso also lost funding it needs to open a four-year medical school.

The state already has spent $17 million to build the pharmacy school that is virtually complete and ready to admit the first 35 students of a 65-member class. The school cannot open without operating funds.

"I am very disappointed for the constituents of South Texas, the people who need these services," said Rep. Juan Escobar, D-Kingsville. "From a personal perspective, I am shocked."

Escobar won a special election two years ago after the death of Irma Rangel, who died in office of cancer. Rangel's 1976 election made her the first Mexican American female member of the Texas Legislature.

Escobar and others, including Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, said they were told that Craddick stopped funding for both the pharmacy school and El Paso's medical school.

But a spokeswoman for Craddick said, "the idea that he blocked it is completely false."

"The speaker very much lets the will of the House prevail. He left this up to (budget negotiators) to make the decision, and this is what they decided on."

Instead of $13 million going to open the pharmacy school, the budget calls for $13.5 million to fund an OB-GYN program in Craddick's hometown of Midland. Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden called the funding amounts a coincidence.

The pharmacy program would be the first professional school in South Texas, which lags far behind the rest of the state in the number of doctoral and professional degree programs.

The five public universities based in San Antonio and border region collectively offer 32 doctoral and professional programs — compared to 78 alone at the University of Texas at Austin and 47 at Texas Tech University, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, a pharmacist, said Texas is short of pharmacists.

"It's very hurtful that we would not see the bigger public good in funding something so desperately needed to honor a great woman," she said.

Gov. Rick Perry asked lawmakers to fund the pharmacy school and the border medical school in January during his State of the State speech.

"Yet here we are in the last day, and both are removed from (a supplementary budget) and suddenly a rider appears in the appropriations act for a OB-GYN program in Midland — so essentially, $13 million for the Irma Rangel school went to Midland," Shapleigh said.