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Ogden: State will win school appeal By Kurt Johnson When Travis County District Judge John Dietz ruled last week that Texas must pump more money into public schools by next October, he opened the issue to a wide range of questions regarding what might happen next, including how the legislature might raise the money to comply with the court's order. State Senator Steve Ogden, whose district includes Williamson County, has stepped up to the plate and addressed some of those questions. "First of all," Ogden said, "I think Judge Dietz's order will be reversed on appeal, because, in my personal opinion, the system we have now is constitutional." Ogden's opinion is shared by another elected official, Gov. Rick Perry. On May 13 in a meeting in Dallas, Perry predicted the schools' lawsuit ultimately will fail because the Texas Supreme Court will side with the state. According to John Carpenter, president of the Highland Park (Dallas) school board, Perry said during the meeting he knows where his Supreme Court appointees stand on the school finance matter and that they won't force the legislature to make changes in the system. After Dietz's ruling last week, Perry made a statement to the media in which he said that the court's decision "is just one man's opinion." Ogden said the legal action by the schools "is a bizarre lawsuit in the sense that we've got taxpayer-supported entities that are a subdivision of the state suing the state and asking the judge to set tax policy, and the process offends me because of the separation of powers issue." "However, I'm ready to go to work to improve the current system," Ogden said. "Just because it's constitutional doesn't mean that it can't be better and I want to make it better." According to Ogden, voters will have to get involved. "We must craft constitutional amendments to better define what the people want the legislature to do with respect to free public education," he said. "We are in the process of getting a judicially-defined public school system," Ogden said, "and what we need is a process in which people define what kind of system they want and how they want to pay for it." According to Ogden, there are three basic options for generating enough money to pay for what Dietz has ordered. "The options are a statewide property tax, a broad-based business tax and an expansion of legalized gambling," Ogden said. He said the solution could involve a combination of the three or even tweaking existing taxes, "but in the long run we'll need one or more of these three options in the mix." The reason no solution has been found, Ogden said, is because "from a process standpoint, we tried to swallow the entire plate at once instead of doing it in an orderly and sequential way." "We are in the position of trying to cut property taxes, overhaul school finance, then put all that into one package, and there's so much in that pot of stew people will choke on it," he said. The process of getting to a solution "needs to be in a sequence and not all at once," Ogden said. "All at once hasn't worked," he said. Regarding the specific funding mechanisms, Ogden said that full-blown casino gambling doesn't have the votes to pass the legislature, even with the school finance crisis. "We might see an expansion into video lottery terminals or video poker," he said, "but I don't see the legislature authorizing casinos." Ogden said the state can't gamble its way to better schools because the revenue source is unreliable. "I don't support an expansion of gambling," Ogden said, "but I'm not against letting the people vote on it through a constitutional amendment, because the voters need to have a say." Regarding the question of whether Perry might call a special session after the November elections to deal with school finance, Ogden said it will only happen if there's an understanding from both the house and senate that a good plan will be presented. "I think there's a 30 to 40 percent chance of a special session this year," Ogden said, "but it's not any higher than that." Asked about what would happen in the event the state loses its appeal to the Supreme Court and the legislature doesn't act to comply with Dietz's order, Ogden said he doesn't think the scenario would come to that. "It's theoretically possible for the courts to shut the school system down," Ogden said, "but it's not very likely to happen." Angela Hill, a spokesperson for Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is appealing Dietz's decision to the Supreme Court, said Friday that the question about a prospective shutdown can't be answered at this time. "It's speculative," Hill said. "We won't know what will happen until the supreme court rules." On the other hand, the statement made by Dietz when he rendered his verdict last week was clear. "I will enter an injunction that state funding of public schools cease unless the legislature conforms the school finance system to meet these constitutional standards. The effective date of the injunction will be one year from the date I enter the order, which will be approximately October 1, 2004," Dietz said.
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