At the start of each session the Lone Star Report publishes its list of the top 10 issues: the challenges, headaches, hot buttons, etc., likely to command center stage as our lawmakers assemble for their biennial bash. You never can tell of course, especially in these excitable times, but here’s how things look to our staff. Herewith our first five picks, not necessarily arranged in order of urgency. Tune in next week for the remainder, including the always urgent issues of the budget and property taxes.

Higher Education. The legislative dressing-down a UT regent got over bonuses granted by the University of Texas Investment Management Corporation (UTIMCO) has only intensified lawmakers’ ire over what many perceive as higher education administrators’ mismanagement of state funds.

Enter tuition deregulation — or, as this session is shaping up, tuition re-regulation.

SB 105 from Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen) already has 18 co-sponsors, including Austin’s own Sen. Kirk Watson (D). So Hinojosa’s bill, which mandates a tuition freeze until Fall 2011 and limits tuition increases thereafter, is a hair’s breadth away from the magic number 21 in the Senate. Assuming it’s not already there. Sens. Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio) and Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) have their own bills to rein in tuition increases.

Here’s the catch: At press time, the Hinojosa bill has not yet been referred to committee. Some have speculated it might go to Senate Finance. But it might yet be referred to the new committee on higher education, which is chaired by Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo), the Senate’s sole pro-deregulation Democrat. If it went there, would she let it out?

How popular reregulation will be in the House is less certain, but the remarkable unpopularity of deregulation indicates it may well have run its course.

UT took aim at the top 10 percent rule last session (top 10 percent in high school graduates automatically qualify for admission to a state college or university). Look for a repeat try in the 81^st. Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) and Rep. Dan Branch (R-Dallas) have each filed bills to limit the program.

This may be the best shot higher education interests have at getting something they want this session, especially considering that the new Speaker of the House represents Alamo Heights in San Antonio, a district with a competitive high school, the type whose students, according to critics of the to 10 percent rule, often find themselves shut out of state schools.

The percentage of students at UT Austin admitted automatically via the top 10 percent rule continues to edge up towards 100 percent, which, some might say, is part and parcel of a broader problem: the paucity of flagship universities in the state. Thus Branch wants the University of Texas at Dallas to become the next Tier-1 university behind UT-Austin and Texas A&M. And Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) wants a new law school.

The state also faces a nursing shortage, the root of which, say certain activists including the Texas Hospital Association, is a lack of adequate faculty to train aspiring nurses, of whom there are plenty, the problem being too little room for them.

Criminal Justice. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Texas Youth Commission, and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission are all under Sunset this session.

The Sunset Advisory Commission narrowly recommended merging TYC and TJPC into a single Texas Juvenile Justice Department, on grounds that their missions are similar enough (if not identical) to create a single agency encompassing their functions to provide for a “seamless” system of corrections and rehabilitation for youth.

But executive directors of both agencies, TYC’s Cherie Townsend and TJPC’s Vicki Spriggs, have objected in unison, saying their respective agencies deal with distinct groups of youth — TYC receiving more violent and troubled offenders, for whom earlier forms of discipline have not worked; and TJPC getting the non-violent types, usually drug-related offenders who can be rehabilitated in less harsh environments.

Since the reforms of SB 103 have halved the youth population at TYC, many, including Sunset Chairman Rep. Carl Isett (R-Lubbock), have said that 2,000 kids is not enough to justify TYC’s existence as a stand-alone agency.

TYC will remain under the scrutiny of the House Corrections Committee following a rules fight over whether to move it to a new “Juvenile Justice” committee. But ultimately TYC’s and TJPC’s fates remain up in the air.

Additionally, Texas faces a mountainous shortage of prison guards. Legislators are looking for ways to encourage more to consider the notoriously low-paying and unpleasant occupation; but, of course, it’s going to cost.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jerry Madden (R-Richardson) plans to bring legislation to create an independent ombudsman for TDCJ, like the one established for TYC.

Social Issues. The GOP base will be looking for progress in these areas, particularly with a hard-fought gubernatorial primary looming in 2010 between Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is sometimes portrayed as the softer on the two on issues such as abortion.

When LSR covered a series of GOP primaries last year, and asked candidates what the most important issue was to local voters, the answer was consistently: immigration. GOP voters want something done to address illegal immigrants and to secure the ballot box. While Sen. Dan Patrick’s (R-Houston) move at the start of the session to do away with the two-thirds rule to get voter ID through the Senate was derided by Democrats as pandering to special interests, it probably scored him points with the GOP base.

Patrick is spearheading another effort near the heart of the GOP’s social conservative base: the ultrasound (or “beating heart”) bill, which requires the physician who is slated to perform an abortion to show the pregnant woman an ultrasound and inform her that the fetus or embryo has “cardiac auscultation” (a beating heart).

Of course, even if they get out of the Senate, voter ID and ultrasound both will have to face a considerably more hostile environment: the Texas House.

Bills on opposite sides of the stem cell research debate have both been filed. Sen. Jane Nelson (R-Lewisville) filed a bill to establish a statewide research consortium for adult stem cells, which pro-lifers consider a morally acceptable alternative source for treatments and cures, versus embryonic stem cells, whose sources, embryos, must be destroyed to be harvested. Sen. Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso) on the other hand, filed a bill to advance embryonic stem cell research expansion.

And of course, there’s gambling. The pro-gambling expansion PAC Texans for Economic Development, which targeted several GOP incumbents in the last primary, has set legislative sights on allowing slot machines in race tracks, and is promoting it as a new source of revenue for the state at a time when revenue streams are quickly drying up. But opponents of gambling expansion say expanded gambling has not kept its fiscal promises in the past and won’t now.

Energy and Natural Resources. Perry has sent the message several times that lawmakers and entrepreneurs in Texas should be worried about what is happening in Washington. The fear among lawmakers has been that Texas would get the short end of the stick from President Barack Obama for its inaction on addressing greenhouse gases. Legislators want to make sure Texas has a “seat at the table,” so as not to be denied precious federal funds when mandates from Washington filter down to the states.

So Sen. Kip Averitt (R-Waco) has filed legislation to bring the state at least into compliance with the latest tightened standards of 75 parts-per-million NOx emissions.

Meanwhile, the environmental lobby at the Capitol has released its own new proposals to “kickstart” the solar power industry in the state, with a plethora of lawmakers behind it including Senate Business and Commerce Chairman Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay), whose legislation in 2005 put major gusts in the sales of the wind industry.

Transportation. Of course, the Texas Department of Transportation is coming under Sunset, but that may be just the beginning of things.

Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas) has a vision: high speed rail, which has recently been gaining traction among some North Texas elected officials. The controversy, of course, will occur over how to pay for the rail plan.

To relieve some of the pressure for more toll roads, Carona has proposed raising the gas tax, including indexing it to inflation. He has already filed the proposed constitutional amendment SJR 8, which if passed and endorsed by voters, would allow the Legislature to authorize the State Comptroller to adjust the gas tax.

Some lawmakers, including Carona, have indicated that the agency has already made considerable strides in the two years since the 80^th session. Still, the agency will have some major reforms coming its way. Among those being advanced by lawmakers is an overall shrinking of the agency by trimming away its functions down to the Big Two: building roads and maintaining them. To that end, Sunset has recommended placing TxDOT’s vehicle registry and other functions under a new Texas Department of Motor Vehicles.

The Trans-Texas Corridor has been pronounced “dead,” although critics have said the corpse still breathes. Watch for what happens with Comprehensive Development Agreements, which are the partnerships forged between the state government and private corporations that build toll roads.

Carona has also filed SJR 9, aimed at stopping diversions from Fund 6 so that it can go towards its original purpose: building and maintaining roads.

Of course, there is closely tied in with transportation issues the matter of eminent domain reform. We’ll discuss that issue next week.

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