Money for mental health services, water infrastructure and space exploration are among the items legislators want to fund with the state’s unspent dollars.
Money for mental health services, water infrastructure and space exploration are among the items legislators want to fund with the state’s unspent dollars.Texas Capitol during opening day of the 89th Texas Legislative Session in Austin, Texas, Tuesday, Jan.
14, 2025. AUSTIN _ Money for mental health services, investments in spaceflight and more robust water infrastructure top the list of ways the Texas House believes the state should spend billions in surplus cash. Texas lawmakers opened the 89th legislative session in January with $23.7 billion in unspent tax money that was earmarked for the current budget cycle. Now, the Texas House has sent the Senate a proposed plan for how to spend some of that cash over the next two years. Last week, the House voted 122-12 to spend some $13.8 billion of that rollover on projects ranging from funding water projects to fixing air conditioning in Texas prisons, reimbursing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for lost salary during his impeachment trial and investing in the state’s aeronautics and space research. Many of these are contingent on legislation passing. Some were in the agencies’ requests for new money in the next spending cycle, which starts in September. Several are large investments of more than a billion dollars, while others are one-time payments investing in grant programs or port projects., known as the “supplemental budget,” now goes to the Texas Senate, where lawmakers will come up with their own plan before negotiating a compromise.: $150 million to the State Preservation Board for improvements to Texas House and Senate facilities – split between the two chambers – to be spent at the discretion of the leaders of each. Those expenditures will be exempt from state laws requiring them to go through a competitive bidding process.: $300 million to Gov. Greg Abbott’s space exploration and aeronautics research fund. This money would be overseen by the recently formed Texas Space Commission. It would provide grants for the development of emerging technologies for spaceand spaceflight, workforce training and infrastructure. The bill also provides $131 million for highway infrastructure in coordination with the Texas Space Commission.More than $1 billion to expand inpatient mental health treatment across Texas, including new facilities in Tarrant County, Wichita Falls and Terrell.$100 million to assist volunteer firefighters through the Texas A&M Forest Service’s rural volunteer fire department assistance program, and another $394 million to the forest service to purchase airplanes for wildfire suppression.: $215 million for construction projects at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, including upgrades to air condition units at prisons.: $2.5 billion for the oversight and financing of water infrastructure projects through the Texas Water Fund, overseen by the Texas Water Development Board.: $100 million for child care assistance through the Texas Workforce Commission, funding that will shorten the waiting list for scholarships.: $750 million to the Texas Energy Fund to deploy advanced nuclear reactors in Texas, overseen by the Public Utility Commission.: $315 million to the Texas Division of Emergency Management to expand its network of regional emergency management operations facilities in order to be able to stage resources for natural disasters and other critical response needs across the state.Karen Brooks Harper has covered Texas politics in and out of Austin for nearly 30 years. She's also covered the cartel wars along the TX-MX border, Congress in Mexico City, and 6 hurricanes, among other stories. Raised on blues and great food in the MS Delta, she lives in ATX with her family, her guitar, and her boxing gloves. In that order.
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