Keyword: Infrastructure
Second Reading Podcast: Another special session in Texas set to end with a whimper
Jim Henson and Josh Blank look the state of play in the final days of the special session, and discuss how to assess the overall performance of the 88th Legislature.
New UT/Texas Politics Project Poll: Most Texans look to Republican leaders to resolve differences, deliver on major priorities
The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds large majorities of Texans saying that it’s important for the legislature to improve the reliability of the state’s energy grid and water supply while reducing property taxes – even as disagreements among the state’s Republican leadership about how to accomplish some of these goals, particularly property tax reduction, but also grid reliability, continue to boil over in public.
The poll reveals much less agreement and more partisan division in opinions about what the legislature needs to accomplish, and in response to specific policy proposals, especially on social and cultural issues that continue to roil politics across the nation, including abortion, transgender rights, and education.
Second Reading Podcast: A conversation with Ross Ramsey about the big issues facing Texas
In a new Second Reading Podcast, Jim Henson talks with Ross Ramsey about how Texas is tackling the fundamental issues facing the state, and how he's thinking about them as he writes his last set of regular columns as Executive Editor of The Texas Tribune.
Public Opinion in Texas at the Intersection of the Agendas of President-Elect Trump and the 85th Legislature
Whether one takes President Trump literally or seriously – or both or neither – the advent of unified government under the auspices of a Republican Congress and a Republican President (nominally, at least) will shift the context within which the 85th Texas Legislature meets to pass a budget and create laws and public policy for the state. After 8 years and four sessions of counting on having a Democratic president and his policies to use as default examples of bad policy and government failure on most every issue, the Republican leadership in Texas now finds the federal government, and their national party, led by a President who on many of the most salient issues to Texas Republicans took positions strikingly similar to those they have used to win a host of lesser offices in recent years.