According to the House leadership, the budget process is going swimmingly despite record number of amendments.

Ahead of Friday’s budget debate in the Texas House, huge packets of amendments were being distributed around the Capitol. The packages, 500 pages thick constituting 452 separate amendments, were distributed to lawmakers, press and staffers along with the proposed 903-page budget.

(According to the Texas Legislative Council, at least five hundred copies of the budget and the amendment packages have been printed – if you stacked them vertically and stood on top, you would be the fifth-highest building in El Paso, taller than both the County Courthouse and Camino Real Hotel.*)

The deadline for House members filing amendments was 9 p.m. Tuesday evening. With so many amendments tabled, lawmakers look set for a long day on Friday, perhaps even having to come back on Saturday.

A quick read of the amendments in 30 seconds

“This is a lot more than we’ve had in the last several sessions,” said Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Pitts believes this represents more participation by members in the budget process than was previously the case.

“I think that members realize that every member has a voice in the appropriations bill and this is their voice,” Pitts said.

State Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, agreed.

“For the most part, people feel like they were given an opportunity to be part of the process, which for the Democratic members is huge because for the last six years we’ve been shut out,” Gallego said.

El Paso state reps filed only a few of the 452 amendments, among them being one from state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, which would limit the way the governor could appropriate funds from the Texas Enterprise and Emerging Technology funds.

The measure would mean that companies couldn’t receive funds from those sources if any of their officers or directors had in the previous two years, “made a political contribution to the governor, lieutenant governor or speaker of the House in the preceding two years.”

“We had a lot of concern in El Paso and across the nation about pay-to-play politics and this is essentially aimed at lifting that perception of our government so we can start to restore faith in our elected officials again,” Moody said.

State Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, said most of the amendments he filed were transportation-related rather than El Paso-related.

“Everything else has been sprinkled around by the other El Paso members … so I didn’t feel the need to be redundant,” said Pickett, who chairs the House Transportation Committee.

State Rep. Norma Chavez, D-El Paso, filed a contingency rider which would set aside money to fund HB 1725, a bill she is sponsoring that would send more money to school districts for every student in that district who had a parent in the military currently serving in a combat zone.

State Rep. Chente Quintanilla, D-El Paso, said that he had not filed any amendments but that he would support House Appropriations Vice-Chair Richard Raymond, D-Laredo, in his efforts to amend the budget to expand CHIP and Medicaid and make it easier to enroll.

On Tuesday House Speaker Joe Straus said he felt “positive” ahead of the budget debate on Friday.

“My expectations are that we will have ample debate on lots of creative ideas from the members,” he said.

Pitts believes that the consensus is there to ensure the budget process will be “very constructive.” He added that so far, around 120 House members have been polled regarding their general approval of the budget.

“We have some ‘maybes’ but that’s only about 10 and the rest are all ‘yes’,” Pitts said. “There may be things that come onto the bill or come off the bill that change people’s minds but today we have overwhelming support on the budget.”

The budget is an amended copy of the Senate’s budget bill, which passed 25 votes to six on April 1. One of the five ‘no’ votes was state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, who objected to how the federal stimulus money was being spent.

“In this budget, despite $10.9 billion in appropriated stimulus money, you still have not paid for new textbooks; no teachers get a pay raise,” said Shapleigh in a press release. “No money is set aside for bilingual education even though a Federal Judge has held that Texas is violating basic civil right.”

However, Pitts said that he believed that the stimulus money, though complicated, has saved lawmakers from a few arguments because it means Texas doesn't need to cut funds for programs despite a worsening economy and a structural deficit.

“Frankly it has made this job easier because we have money we have to spend, which frees up some General Revenue,” he said. “The stimulus money has come at the right time for Texas.”

Gallego agreed about the federal aid being more a help than a hindrance.

“Generally speaking, the rule is that when you have more money to spend you get into bigger fights,” he said. “(But) the stimulus made our lives easier in that we were expecting to have a huge shortfall but thanks to Mr. Obama we won't.”

One thing the stimulus money will not help with is the costs involved with printing the gargantuan budget and amendment packages. When asked about the fiscal note associated with cutting down that many trees, Pitts smiled and said, “I don’t know. Ask the Lege Council. They’re the ones that printed it.”

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* To be the fifth tallest building in El Paso you would need to be 209 feet tall. [link] 209 feet is 2508 inches. 627 stacked copies of the budget and the amendment package would be at least 2508 inches tall. 500 copies would make you the 10th highest building. However, the Texas Legislative Council told NPT that they had printed at least 500 copies. The actual total is likely to be higher. The 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th tallest buildings all cluster around the 200 foot mark while the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th are considerably higher starting at 239 feet. The tallest building in El Paso is the Wells Fargo Plaza. You would only need to stack 888 copies to have a view of their roof.