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More projects exempted from private toll road moratorium in unanimous Senate vote. The Texas Senate, after hours of closed-door negotiations stamped out hot spots of dissent, unanimously passed revamped toll road legislation Monday that would supplant a bill languishing on Gov. Rick Perry's desk. Perry, who has made it clear he would veto the first bill, House Bill 1892, immediately signaled that he would allow Senate Bill 792 to become law if the House passes it in its current form. Lawmakers involved in the negotiations say they hope to get SB 792 to Perry late this week in time to...

Toll road compromise reached By Ben Wear | Monday, May 14, 2007, 08:10 AM Lawmakers, representatives from the Texas Department of Transportation and others have reached agreement on major toll road legislation that will be laid out this morning in a meeting of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee. But there could be a backlash. Many legislators had said this session that what they didn’t want was to be presented with a large “agreed-upon” transportation bill late in the session with little or no time to absorb it. That’s exactly what they’re getting, however. The bill, in this instance,...

AUSTIN — The House gave final approval Wednesday to placing a two-year moratorium on private toll road contracts, sending the bill to Gov. Rick Perry and setting up a showdown over the future of the state's transportation policy. Perry had urged the Legislature to reject the freeze but has stopped short of promising a veto. The House approved the measure 139-1, showing it has broad enough support that lawmakers could vote to override the governor if he tries to kill it. The Senate approved the bill 27-4 last week. The Legislature can override a veto with a two-thirds vote of...

AUSTIN — The Texas Senate on Thursday approved a bill placing a two-year moratorium on private toll road contracts and creating a panel to review the terms of those agreements. Gov. Rick Perry had urged the Legislature not to act on the bill. He said the state's current transportation system, which involves public-private partnerships to build toll roads, needs to continue if Texas is to keep attracting big companies and jobs. Critics of Perry's proposed Trans-Texas Corridor and the state's contract with Spanish-American consortium Cintra-Zachry have made some lawmakers nervous about the project. Sen. Robert Nichols supported the corridor as...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12, 2007 – The Minnesota governor announced a new program this week to exempt troops and retirees who call the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” home from paying state income tax on military pay and pensions and provide other new benefits. Gov. Tim Pawlenty unveiled the $74.8 million Military and Veterans Support Package Jan. 8. The package includes two dozen initiatives to assist servicemembers, their families and veterans. It will be included in the governor’s new budget proposal, to be submitted to the state legislature later this month. “The brave men and women in the military raise their...

Although I am interested in exemptions made for people of all faiths, I am particularly interested in exemptions that have been made for non-Christians.

Senators weigh whether locally approved breaks should survive statewide tax By Jason Embry AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Thursday, May 5, 2005 Property tax exemptions that senior citizens and other residents receive in many school districts could be wiped away under the Senate's tax proposals, leaving many Texans with far smaller tax breaks than advertised. Seniors in Austin and residents of the Lago Vista and Lake Travis school districts -- as well as Dallas and Houston -- currently receive those exemptions. They come on top of standard statewide exemptions that remove a portion of a home's appraised value from the tax rolls. The...

The Senate Strangles Itself New York Times, July 13, 1996 Sarah Binder, Fellow, Governmental Studies Trent Lott, the new majority leader of the Senate, exploded in frustration on the floor this week, complaining that the Democrats were exploiting the rules to block Senate action. That they certainly were, and so were Republicans—holding up bills on everything from nuclear waste to domestic violence. But what did he expect? To be sure, most Senate leaders endure years, not weeks, of obstructionism before resorting to castigating their colleagues. But Mr. Lott is hardly the first Senate leader to find his party snarled endlessly...

The state plans to dump its longtime auto-emissions contractor and turn over testing to a network of 300 garages across the state - a transition that will bring a halt to all testing for at least six months, starting July 1. Department of Motor Vehicles officials announced Thursday that they would begin negotiating a five-year contract with Agbar Technologies Inc. of Chicago, which would coordinate a decentralized system of testing at local service stations and dealerships. The move would end the state's rocky relationship with Connecticut-based Envirotest Systems Corp., which has handled emissions testing since the program began 18 years...