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This week, the Governor, Lt. Governor, and Speaker of the House (known collectively as “the leadership”) issued instructions to state agencies and institutions to guide the preparation of budget requests for the upcoming legislative session. Despite the fact that state revenues for the first 10 months of the current 2026-2027 biennium are four percent more than prior-year revenues, the instructions direct agencies to submit base budgets that are three percent less than their current budgets.
State agencies don’t decide how much money they can spend; legislators tell them how much to spend and where to spend it. For their part, legislators depend on state agencies to tell them the truth about current and anticipated future conditions in the state, so they can plan prudently and make wise choices.
Agencies can’t tell legislators the truth about the needs they see emerging if they face artificial constraints. Instead of starting with “do more with less,” state leaders could direct agencies to prepare budgets that fully meet identifiable needs, and then have an honest, public conversation about which of those needs legislators choose to fund at less than the requested amount.
Read the entire post on Substack
In other news, we are continuing to schedule webinars and in-person events, including our upcoming Ready...Set...Go! events in Denton, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston (coming soon). Due to ongoing circumstances, the Upcoming Events block is not displaying cooperatively in this edition of the enewsletter, but you can find ALL our upcoming events on our Events page.
A quick reminder that the Weekly Witness crew will be taking a well-deserved break for the next two weeks. New episodes will be back starting July 29. Meanwhile, you can catch up on episodes you missed, and check out all the great content on our YouTube channel like these short videos of faith leaders talking about voting rights.
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