POLITICS THE BUCKS START HERE

We’ve got just three concerns,” says County Judge Lee Jackson. ’’Money, money, and money.” He was speaking of the county’s needs in the 1989 session of the Texas Legislature, which opened January 10. But he might have been speaking for many local businesses, organizations, and governing bodies. The all-too-finite budget pie is on the table, and the knives are being sharpened. Shortly before the session opened, we asked representatives of the city, the Dallas Independent School District, DART, the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce, Texas Instruments, and others to share their legislative wish lists.

The City of Dallas. Ron Kirk, legislative liaison for the city, says that Dallas had “extraordinary success” in getting what it wanted from Austin in the last biennial session. Several efforts begun in the ’83 and ’85 sessions bore fruit in ’87, he says. As a result, the city is “starting over” in the 1989 session with several priorities. Public safety ranks high on the list.

“Yes, we must have more prisons, but the City Council has said that we definitely must support more thorough rehabilitation measures so that prisoners can enroll in GED classes and learn vocational skills,” Kirk says. If prisoners just sit in prison and learn nothing, he says, “they’ve got no choice” but to go back to crime and drugs. And large numbers of those unrehabilitated prisoners are paroled to the Dallas area.

The city will also seek new powers in cracking down on slumlords. A proposed bill would allow district courts to appoint nonprofit corporations, like Dallas’s Common Ground, to act as receivers for some substandard residential properties. The groups would bring the properties up to code, then lease them out to recoup their investments. “This plan would keep the properties in the low-income housing stock,” Kirk says. “And it would take no public funds to do it.”

The city’s main goal in Austin, however, is always negative. “Our top priority in every session is to defeat bad legislation,” Kirk says. For the city, “bad” legislation is that which brings new mandates from the state without attendant funding to carry them out; or legislation that would chip away at the city’s self-governing power. For example, mobile home manufacturers would love to override the city’s right to set up zoning forbidding mobile homes in certain areas (leading to what a very bad punster might call the Balch Springs-ization of Dallas). In the same vein, the city opposes efforts by police and firefighters to win more mandated benefits, or to set up independent appeals boards to circumvent civil service procedures. “’We don’t knock the concept of any of these good things,” Ron Kirk says. “But they should be done, if they are done, on the local level.”

Dallas County. Lee Jackson, a former state legislator who now sees state government from the other side, is blunt about the county’s lobbying strategy. “We want to come out with our financial future undamaged, and correct past damages done to us,” he says. Above all. the county will push to have the state catch up with its responsibilities in the area of corrections. Around 2,200 prisoners who should be in Huntsville are languishing in the Dallas County jail because the state lacks adequate prison space. The backup galls county commissioners because, according to Jackson, Dallas is the only urban county in the state with a jail that has been certified as meeting state standards. In other words. Dallas has done its part. “They need to commit enough resources to house those prisoners who are the state’s responsibility,” says Jackson. “We have not sued the state over this. We want a long-term solution. But by the end of the session, if nothing is done, all urban counties may be in court against the state.”

Dallas Independent School District. For months a sword has been hanging over public education in Texas: Edgewood v. Kir-by the school finance case, In 1987 a state district judge ruled that Texas’s system of financing public education was unconstitutional because wealthier school districts with more property taxes can buy better facilities and hire more qualified teachers while poor districts lag behind. The judge gave the Legislature a deadline of September 1, 1989, to find an equitable solution or have one imposed from the bench. The 3rd Court of Appeals recently overturned the ruling, but the case will eventually reach the state Supreme Court, where, despite the addition of new conservative justices, the decision could go either way. “If this case is upheld by the Supreme Court,” says Dallas State Representative Steve Wolens. “it will have not a ripple effect but a tidal wave effect on all Texas school districts.”

The DISD had tagged school finance as a legislative priority for this session, but the appeals court ruling has bought the state more time, and it’s unlikely that any sweeping-and expensive-proposal to equalize school funding will pass without pressure from the courts. Still, D1SD is on record opposing the solution favored by Governor Bill Clements, who wants a constitutional amendment that would block the judiciary from reviewing legislative decisions on school finance.

Other money matters worrying the DISD pertain to funding for so-called “at-risk” pupils. The last Legislature passed a law requiring local school districts to provide numerous programs to help potential dropouts-but allocated no money for the programs. The DISD wants the state to add at least $200 per pupil for students who have been held back a grade, have failed three or more subjects, or who are failing due to excessive absences, etc. The district also wants to increase the compulsory school attendance age and relax the “’five-day rule.” Currently, any student with five unexcused absences automatically fails the course; the district supports legislation that would allow students to “buy back” the absences through additional study programs.

Texas State Teachers Association. TSTA, the city’s largest teacher organization, also has money on its collective mind. TSTA will back legislation calling for salary increases of approximately $5,000 per teacher. The organization will also work to repel attacks on the career ladder program. Originally part of the 1985 school reform package, the career ladder system is designed to reward superior teachers with an extra $1,500 to $2,000 per year-cocktail money for many a Dallas lawyer or socialite. Many teachers are poised to hit level three of the career ladder next year, but TSTA president Bob Baker tears that if money is tight, the Legislature may try to freeze the number of teachers who will be allowed to climb to that next rung. Naturally, the teachers’ lobby sees this as a betrayal and will fight tooth and nail for full funding.

Dallas Area Rapid Transit. The beleaguered transit system needs help and is looking toward Austin for salvation. DART, under a proposal by board chairman David McCall, is likely to ask for a change in its enabling legislation that would allow each member city in DART to set aside 25 percent of its DART sales tax in an individual account. Over a seven-year period, the money could be used for all sorts of transportation-related projects, from busways to “filling potholes.” according to DART spokesman Ron Whittington. But Dallas representatives are deeply divided on the DART rebate plan, and the Legislature traditionally is reluctant to act on a local matter unless members of the home delegation are united. Representative Bill Hammond calls the DART rebate plan “a chance to keep DART alive, keep it a regional transit authority.” Hammond believes the suburbs will bolt from the system if they don’t get some tangible benefits soon. “If it’s Dallas only, we all lose,” he says. Representative Steve Wolens. on the other hand, calls the rebate plan “hush money for the suburbs” and a “total deviation” from the original intent of the citizens who voted DART into existence. He will oppose the measure. If Dallas speaks with many conflicting voices on the issue, don’t expect much action out of Austin.

Dallas Police Association. The DPA supports a bill that would permit collective bargaining and binding arbitration for public employees, a concept that has long been anathema to conservative Texas. Detective Thomas Elliott, the DPA’s legislative monitor, adds that the bill would also prohibit strikes, walkouts, and lockouts. On other matters, the DPA will oppose a handgun licensing bill that would permit people to carry concealed weapons, and the organization will fight a bill that would make it a capital offense for a jailer, peace officer, or guard to kill a person in custody. The DPA also backs legislation that would require a minimum of thirty college hours for anyone hired as a peace officer. Dallas already requires forty-five hours, but Elliott says a state law would do much to ensure the quality of police personnel. “This would prevent a city, when times get tough, from saying, ’Well, now we’ll take people with a GED,’”

Business. Talk to almost anyone in business these days, from the giant corporations down to the local pizza parlor, and you’ll read two words on their lips: workers’ compensation. That’s top priority on the legislative laundry list of the Fort Worth and Greater Dallas Chambers of Commerce, a list that includes a host of matters important to local businesses as well as those larger “quality of life” issues that nobody can oppose, at least in the abstract: continued funding for early childhood education, incentive funding to encourage excellence in higher education, and measures to encourage small businesses and minority-owned businesses.

“Our insurance has gone through the roof,” says Win Skiles, a senior vice president and assistant general counsel for Texas Instruments, one of Dallas’s largest employers. “This has a real effect on us as a company and on economic development in the state. Texas ranks near the top in insurance premium costs and at the low end of benefits paid to workers. Something’s wrong.”

That something, many business interests believe, is the adversarial nature of the workers’ comp system and especially the right of trial de novo. Currently, a worker who has been injured on the job has his or her case heard by the Industrial Accident Board, which acts as an arbitrator between employer and employee. But Skiles points out that if either party is unhappy with the board’s findings, they can demand a brand new civil trial-and the IAB findings are not permitted as evidence in the new proceedings.

Texas Instruments also hopes to see action from Austin in the area of product liability reform. Among other needed reforms, Skiles says, the plaintiff in a product liability case should bear the burden of showing there was some design, marketing, or manufacturing defect in the product before damages can be recovered. And juries should be asked to consider the risk-utility question in determining liability. “You can always design a safer product,” says Skiles. “You could design a lawnmower with a large cage around it so there was no way the user could be hurt. The question is the utility and cost of doing so.” Under current law, juries are not instructed to consider such questions.

So it’s carving time in Austin. Texas is the largest state still run by a biennial legislature, so everyone will hustle to grab the biggest slice possible before the brief 140-day session ends in the usual midnight maneuvering and hopeless logjams. The victors will applaud the triumph of justice and good sense. The losers will blame spider-hearted conservatives, budget-busting liberals, crony-buttering lobbyists, and the mind-fogging press for the murder of their dreams. As always, it will be quite a show.