Eminent Domain. Gov. Rick Perry signed HJR 14 earlier this week — a legally meaningless gesture, since the proposed constitutional amendment will be voted on statewide in November regardless. Politically, it was his ceremonial way of showing support for the amendment. He took serious heat last session after vetoing major eminent domain reform legislation. Many wondered how much of that vetoed bill could be re-passed and signed into law. Much haggling transpired during session on various bills, and HJR 14 is what the Legislature and Perry now have to show for it.

And property rights activists say the bill is weak on protections even now. The Institute for Justice, which litigated the Kelo v. New London Supreme Court case, said following HJR 14’s passage that a last minute change was made to the bill in conference that severely weakened it.

The definition of public use most preferred by property rights advocates says land can be taken only for "possession, occupation, and enjoyment" by a common carrier, i.e. the public. That language makes clear that land cannot be taken from private owner A and given to private owner B just because public officials deem B’s use of the property to be economically better — which is why, according to Bill Peacock at TPPF, cities and counties have opposed it.

The language was in the bill when it went to conference. Coming out, the language was changed to "ownership, use, and enjoyment," which provides no guarantees that private owner A won’t get swindled.

Peacock said the language was "clearly weaker," because everybody knows what "possession, occupation, and enjoyment" means, given 130 years of legal precedent. "Ownership, use, and enjoyment" is vaguer. "Nobody knows what it means," Peacock said, meaning it could take the courts years to figure it out.

But the proposed constitutional amendment does close a loophole that allowed eminent domain authorities to condemn properties on the grounds that properties adjacent to them were blighted. The Institute for Justice had lamented that the loophole allowed for widespread Kelo-type takings.

Higher Education. At the beginning of the session, high tuition was a major pocketbook issue that many thought Republicans need to address if they were to salvage what was left of their majority. The issue remains unchanged. A few vehicles existed at the beginning of the session to rein in higher education institutions whose tuition has skyrocketed since 2003, when tuition deregulation first became law. One was SB 105 from Hinojosa. That bill died. The vehicle that moved was Senate Higher Education chairwoman Judith Zaffirini’s (D-Laredo) SB 1443, which made it to the House’s Calendar Committee but died there thanks to the Democrats’ chubbing.

The University of Texas-Austin has pressed hard for several sessions to amend the rule requiring higher education institutions to automatically admit students in the top 10 percent of their graduating high school class. Lawmakers finally tweaked the automatic admission level to 75 percent of a university’s entering freshman. That cap affects, at this point anyway, only UT-Austin, which had reported admitting some 81 percent of their entering freshmen in 2008 under the rule.

The root of the problem, some have said, is the paucity of flagship universities in Texas compared to other big states, such as California. So House Higher Education chairman Dan Branch (R-Dallas) brought HB 51 to set up a system to create more flagship universities. Perry signed that bill on June 17. Also Senate State Affairs chairman Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock) attached a new research university fund to HJR 14, meaning it too will be up for a statewide vote in November. The goal is to figure out which existing universities in the state are well-positioned to achieve national credibility as tier one research institutions and send them the necessary funding. But they won’t become tier ones overnight.

Meanwhile the state has another law school coming its way, thanks to Sen. Royce West’s (D-Dallas) SB 956, which establishes one for the University of North Texas in Dallas.

Criminal Justice. The Texas Youth Commission (TYC) Sunset bill, which also renewed the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission (TJPC) and the Office of Independent Ombudsman, passed after some jockeying between the House and Senate over how best to insure more communication and cohesiveness between TYC and TJPC.

One of Sunset staff’s bigger recommendations this session was to dissolve TYC, combining it with TJPC into a single agency called the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. Some lawmakers, including Senate Criminal Justice chairman John Whitmire (D-Dallas) and Sunset chairman Rep. Carl Isett (R-Lubbock), thought the move would be a strong step in the right direction for the troubled agency.

But others, like Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon (D-San Antonio), fought hard to keep the two agencies separate and distinct, arguing that they each deal with different segments of troubled youth — TYC with the most extreme cases. Isett argued that it would be difficult to justify the existence of a single stand-alone agency to deal with about 2,000 youths, down to which the youth commission had dwindled in prison population since the reforms of SB 103 from 2007 had been implemented. Hinojosa argued that more time was needed to allow TYC to implement the reforms of SB 103, which he carried, before such a drastic change as combining the agency with juvenile probation.

The final version sent to the Governor creates a coordinated strategic planning committee with members appointed by the directors of TYC and TJPC to facilitate interagency collaboration and communication to create what McClendon called a "seamless" juvenile justice system. TYC would be governed by a seven-member board as established by SB 103.

A handful of bills were proposed to improve pay for correctional officers, of whom the state needs about 1,400 more. But the only stand-alone bill on its way to the Governor is a pilot student loan repayment program for students at Sam Houston State University. The bill, HB 518 by Rep. Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham), pays the cost of up to 30 semester credit hours for junior and senior level coursework, after the recipients have fulfilled a two-year service requirement as correctional officers. If Perry signs, the program will be funded.

Prison guards received a 7 percent salary increase in the budget for the biennium.

Social Issues. Not much ground if any was gained by social conservatives.

The sonogram bill, SB 182 from Sen. Dan Patrick (R-Houston), died on the House’s major calendar. It would have required doctors to offer a voluntary sonogram to a woman who comes in for an abortion. The bill had to be watered down considerably just to get out of the Senate.

"Choose Life" license plates hitched a ride onto the Texas Department of Transportation Sunset bill, which also died.

The Texas Adult Stem Cell Research Consortium, which Senate Health and Human Services chairwoman Jane Nelson (R-Lewisville) hoped to create in SB 73, died in a House committee before deadline. Also, in a departure from previous sessions, Planned Parenthood remains eligible in the budget for millions in tax dollars for "family planning" services that include abortion referrals.

Illegal immigration was the No. 1 issue among GOP primary voters last cycle. The closest Republicans came to addressing it was the voter ID legislation. Going into this cycle, Republican incumbents won’t be able to say they passed a bill to secure the ballot box from voter fraud, but they will be able to say they did not blink in the face of a relentless campaign to kill it. Bottom line, though: Voter ID, SB 362 from Sen. Troy Fraser (Horseshoe Bay), died. Some want Perry to include this on the call for a special, but that could mean a much longer session than Perry appears to want.

Gambling was not expanded either by way of destination resort casino gambling legalization, poker game regulation, or by slot machines at racetracks, all of which were proposed in legislation at the start of the session. The sunset bill for the Racing Commission didn’t even survive.

The Legislature has commissioned a study, however, on economic development in the state that will look at the social benefits and social costs of certain forms of legalized gambling in the state.

The Budget. It’s balanced, and the Rainy Day Fund was not tapped. But the use of stimulus moneys in the budget could leave a ten-figure hole for the next biennium (LSR June 12).

In other fiscal news, Perry signed a bill to increase the exemption from the business tax, to include enterprises making less than $1 million per year. It is expected to affect about 40,000 small businesses in the state.

Property Taxes. Believe it or not, some measures actually got sent to the governor this session that may rein in entities with property taxing authority. For more on that, see this week’s article on page 8.

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