Team Craddick defends budget in war of words
Here's Craddick spokeswoman Alexis DeLee's statement, responding to the Pitts-Talton-Delwin Jones presser alleging big time pork in the two-year budget, and last minute budget shenanigans by the speaker to save his political skin:
"The budget is a strong one -- supported by members on both sides of the aisle. The process that has taken place to put it together is the same as every session in the past. It reflects the various needs of the state."
In addition, Team Craddick arranged for Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, the House's negotiator on the higher education budget, to respond to the dissidents' pork allegations -- one of which was that the speaker loves Dallas' UT Southwestern Medical Center, so much that he inserted two "special items" to give it $19 million.
Earlier, former Craddick ally Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, who was dumped as the House's chief budget writer after running to unseat Mr. Craddick in January, said the speaker always pressures his Appropriations Committee chairman to load up the budget with his pork projects.
"Even when we had a $10 billion budget deficit, there was money put in the budget for Speaker Craddick," Mr. Pitts said.
He was asked if Mr. Craddick pressured him in 2005 to insert Craddick pork.
"Yes," Mr. Pitts said.
For this session's budget, Mr. Pitts said, the speaker has special higher ed items and parking lot money worth nearly $16 million for UT-Permian Basin in Odessa, next door to the speaker's hometown of Midland. Mr. Pitts also ticked off several other items, which he described as Craddick-directed pork, that are in Midland, though a few are in Austin and Dallas.
"As everyone, I think, knows, he's been a pretty big advocate for UT Southwestern," Mr. Pitts said, attributing to Mr. Craddick the Dallas medical school's receipt of $18 million for an obesity research program and $1 million for sickle cell research.
But Ms. Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, said that's wrong. The items were requested "by the Dallas delegation," she said. Specifically, she said, by Craddick allies Dan Branch and Will Hartnett, both Dallas Republicans.
More broadly, Ms. Kolkhorst defended the "institutional enhancement" money for UT-Permian Basin. At West Texas colleges, she said, "It's very hard to recruit professors." Last session, she said, UT, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and the University of Houston got similar money.
She also was asked if Mr. Craddick used higher ed special items, in effect, to buy votes to keep his job. At the dissidents' press conference, GOP Rep. Robert Talton of Pasadena admitted he had no proof of such quid pro quos, which would be illegal.
But Mr. Talton said of Mr. Craddick, "He's being a dictator." He said that while it's rumor, most people believe the budget got loaded with $100 million in Craddick-directed higher ed pork. And Mr. Talton said this alleged budget manipulation by the speaker occurred in that remote period of pre-history -- early May -- when Mr. Craddick "was told that he had to recognize a motion to vacate."
Wait a minute, said Ms. Kolkhorst. While she can't disprove allegations of help-me-I'll-help-you chats by the speaker, she said, "He never did that in my presence."
She also said the dissidents have their figures wrong.
Her version of events, in a nutshell: When the House passed the budget on March 30, it had $22 million of higher ed pork. Then the Senate added $42 million more worth of such items, and left the House's intact, when it blessed the spending blueprint on April 12. In budget conference, negotiators agreed to make it even-steven as they added to the stack of chips.
The Senate piled on an extra $33 million, while the House lugged in $64 million more. But in a bit of cool budget magic, Comptroller Susan Combs said $10 million of the obesity research money didn't "cost the bill" because it actually would pay for itself in reduced state health care expenditures. (Don't you love budgeting?)
Oh, yes, budget negotiators added another $31 million -- most of it for A&M's ever-expanding medical school, which will now be in Round Rock as well as Temple and College Station. But those are listed as "shared by both chambers." Those bacon bits, in other words, had a senator and a rep of some influence weighing in jointly for them.
Bottom line, according to Ms. Kolkhorst: Each chamber got about $75 million of higher ed special items (House actually got $76 mil), and they shared $31 million. So you can't say Mr. Craddick drove $100 million of such pork into the budget. And, she said, 1999 was the highwater mark for such higher ed pork: $334 million worth, compared with about $180 million this session. (She didn't have a figure for current two-year budget.)