How Things Really Work

If Republicans increase the number of seats they now hold in the United States Senate by seven, they become the majority party for the first time in eight years. They just might do that.

An equation developed by two political scientists who have studied the Presidential and Congressional elections held since World War II predicts a Democratic loss of between four and seven seats.

There are now 56 Democrats and 44 Republicans in the Senate. Senators will be elected to 21 seats now held by Democrats and 13 now held by Republicans between now and January. (The successor to David Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma, will be picked early in 1995.) A shift of seven seats would therefore give the Republicans a majority.

The equation is one of several developed by Michael S. Lewis-Beck and Tom W. Rice and published in their 1992 book Forecasting Elections. Political scientists have long shied away from forecasting the outcome of individual U. S. Senate races and certainly from predicting overall changes. But Lewis-Beck and Rice have tackled the job successfully.

Their equation considers three factors: the President’s popularity in the June Gallup Poll, the number of seats of the Presidential party that are being voted on, and the party of the Presidency. These three factors account for 83 percent of the shifts in Senate seats since 1948. The average error in the formula since 1948 has been 1.68.

The calculation (done by me, not the developers of the equation) comes out to -5.58. (The minus sign means a loss to the Presidential party). Applying the average error, the calculation works out to a loss of between 3.9 and 7.26 seats. The calculations assume that the relative importance of the factors remain the same as their 1948-to-date average.

The data that lie behind the equation show some interesting relationships, not all of them what you might think:

 The performance of the economy, a strong factor in Presidential elections and congressional elections in Presidential years, is not so important in mid-term elections. In fact, the formula only considers the economy in Presidential years.

 Eight Presidential popularity points in the June Gallup poll are worth about one Senate seat.

 It doesn’t matter very much which party won the Senate seat six years before.

 Democratic seats are somewhat more secure than Republican seats.

The equation for forecasting Presidential elections has correctly predicted all but one of the elections since World War II. The one incorrect prediction was the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election. The Presidential model contains two more variables than the Senate model: party strength (the number of House seats the incumbent party lost in the last midterm election), and candidate appeal (how well did the candidate do in the primaries?)

In this equation, the only polling number used is the popularity number for the July before the election. That number here is more important than at mid-term. One Gallup point is worth .86 percent of the electoral college, or 4.6 electoral votes. A one percent improvement in the economy in the last six months is worth 7.76 percent, or 41.5 electoral votes.

Again, the data show an unexpected result: the July popularity poll (four months before the election) is a more accurate predictor of the electoral vote than the poll one month before the election. The model developed by the authors is more accurate than Gallup estimates based on day before election data.

The statistical techniques Lewis-Beck and Rice have developed are very impressive in analyzing past elections. I can’t wait to see how accurate they will prove in predicting the changes in the 34 U. S. Senate that will be decided by next year.

It will be even more fun in 1996 to analyze the Presidential model.

As we near an election and another legislative session, we will hear a great deal about things Texas does badly.

Let’s discuss an area where Texas leads the nation–state research funds for colleges and universities.

Texas is the only state in the nation that funds competitively awarded, peer-reviewed grants for basic research and advanced technology. Two funds, the Advanced Research Program and the Advanced Technology Program, provide $60 million in grants every two years.

It is a credit to our state leaders that they have kept financing for these funds secure despite the many demands for state dollars.

It was a wise move, because research is a close cousin to economic development. Many of the innovations developed through the Texas funds have lured investment dollars and created jobs.

For example: a new Austin company, DTM Corporation, uses a technique called solid freeform fabrication, a three-dimensional copying process. This technology, which uses lasers and computers to produce complex parts without milling or machining, is being used by GM, Kodak and Pratt & Whitney. DTM has more than 70 employees and a sizeable investment from BF Goodrich.

Solid freeform fabrication was developed with a grant from the Advanced Research and Technology Programs.

These programs were born in adversity. We had some hard times about eight years ago when the price of oil hit rock bottom. We had gotten a wake-up call. Because of declining production and uncertain prices, Texas prosperity no longer depended on petroleum.

There was an urgent need to diversify our economy–to depend less on what came out of the ground and more on what came out of human brains.

At the same time, business leaders were increasingly concerned with international competition, particularly from Japan and Germany, nations that spend more of their GNP on research and development than we do.

In two words, Bobby Ray Inman, then chief executive officer of Microelectronics and Computer Corporation, told state leaders what they could do to become competitive: fund research.

The result was the Advanced Research Program and the Advanced Technology Program, established originally as one fund in 1987.

The programs are peer reviewed. Only one application in eight gets a grant from the panels of scientists and engineers who choose about 400 research projects every two years.

The first round of grants resulted in 110 patents or licensing arrangements, eight new businesses, $103 million in matching funds and more than 185 corporate sponsors

When the fund was evaluated in 1991 by a team from by the National Academy of Science’s Industry-University-Government Roundtable, it was described as “so innovative and distinctive in character that we commend the state of Texas for their introduction.”

“They can well serve as models for many other states in the nation,” the report said.

The team also praised the technology fund for successfully transferring key discoveries and inventions to Texas industry. Here are some examples:

* Kathleen Hennessey at Texas Tech University developed a way to inspect semiconductors using a personal computer and an imaging system, replacing the onerous process by which employees inspected chips by microscope. Texas Instruments is already using the process at plants in Lubbock and Sherman.

* Tony Gorry, now vice-president for information systems at Rice University, developed a virtual notebook system for keeping medical records. His corporation, the Forefront Group, is already marketing a number of applications for this software.

* Alan Sams and Sarah Birkhold at the Texas Agriculture Experiment Station came up with a faster, cheaper way to debone poultry. It could save the Texas poultry industry $34 million in time and energy costs.

* Two University of Houston mechanical engineers, Stan Kleis and Richard Bannerol, discovered how to use solar pond technology in raising redfish. Redfish, which you probably know in the blackened form, have been pretty much fished out in the Gulf, and they are very hard to farm raise because they are sensitive to cold. Redfish Unlimited at Palacios is using the new method with some success.

Some of the romance has gone from research. Federal funds for academic research have declined from about $70 billion in 1973 to about $56 billion last year. Universities are revising curricula, improving undergraduate education, recruiting minority faculty and students and many other worthwhile endeavors, but sometimes at the expense of research.

University research is more important than ever. Many major corporations that once financed comprehensive research and development efforts are decentralizing and de-emphasizing those efforts. The transformation of Bell Lab to Bellcore is one example. More than ever, industry looks to higher education for the basic research that generates the big discoveries.

(This column was adapted from a presentation to the Southern Regional Education Board).

It’s summer in central Texas. The temperature has been in the upper 90’s for weeks. It hasn’t rained in a month.

Just as in every other hot, dry summer, the level of the Edwards Aquifer is sinking. The headlines are ominous: “The Water Crisis–Judgment Time in San Antonio”, “Federal Judge Poised to Take Over Aquifer”, “Rain Only Hope of Dampening Need for Conservation”.

San Antonio’s municipal pride is injured. The U.S. Senate has taken a stand. The feds are taking a serious bashing, some of it deserved. The Endangered Species Act is endangered.

As often happens, the real issue is lost in the fog of the rhetoric.

The Edwards is one of Texas’ great resources, a giant underground pool of water underlying a part of South Central Texas often short of rain. Where it surfaces it provides the clear green water of San Marcos and Comal Springs, feeding the San Marcos River. It irrigates the farms of Medina and Uvalde Counties. It is San Antonio’s only source of water.

The Texas Hill Country being a desirable place to live, population has increased rapidly in the six counties over the Edwards Aquifer. So has the amount of water pumped out of the aquifer. In 1934, wells brought up about 100,000 acre-feet a year. It is now more than 540,000 acre-feet and projected to reach 850,000 acre-feet by 2020.

The aquifer is being depleted. It is recharged by rainwater, and more water is being pumped out than is seeping through from the surface. Experts disagree about how long the aquifer will last at the present depletion rate, but one thing is clear. The loss of this aquifer will be devastating for Texas.

The issue isn’t fountain darters, salamanders and Texas wild rice. The endangered species in Comal and San Marcos Springs were the cue that brought Federal Judge Lucius Bunton on stage. Judge Bunton’s order forced the Texas Legislature to confront the real issue, an impending water shortage, and that is a good thing.

There are no villains in this story. Everyone from the farmers in Uvalde to the Mayor of San Antonio is acting in a rational economic way. If you own the land, groundwater is there for the taking. All you need is a pump. San Antonio has very large pumps.

What we have here is a classic case of bad economics making bad public policy. The water from the aquifer is not only undervalued, it’s free. No one is responsible for the aquifer. An undervalued resource for which no one is responsible will soon be plundered or destroyed.

Garret Hardin, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara, would call this the “tragedy of the commons.” In old England and the British colonies, a commons was pastureland open to all, open range. Every herdsman wanted to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. The more animals, the more gain, since the resource is free to all. The problem is that as one owner increases his herd, his neighbors follow suit.

The land is overgrazed. Erosion begins, hardier weeds supplant the grass. The cattle lose weight and the resource is destroyed.

The same thing happens now on public grazing lands. They are undervalued and overgrazed. The fish in the oceans belong to everyone, and they are being fished to extinction. Our national forests are available at bargain prices, and they are being depleted.

People acting as rational economic creatures can create a lot of havoc. The City of San Antonio never developed an alternative source of water because it never had good reason. Dallas and Houston, hit hard in the 1950s drought, spent the next few decades, developing good surface water sources, putting their tax dollars on the line. San Antonio voters turned down similar proposals.

It is ironic that current efforts to better manage water resources depend on some odd spring critters and not on good sense.

We should be grateful to the fountain darters, salamanders and gambusia because they have made some good things happen:

* The Legislature last year passed Senate Bill 1477. Like most compromises, it isn’t perfect, but it would reduce pumping to 450,000 acre-feet a year and then to 400,000 by the year 2008. (In a classic federal case of right hand not paying attention to left hand, the U.S. Justice Department determined that S.B. 1477 violated the Voting Rights Act and suspended its enforcement).

* On August 13, San Antonio voters will again get a chance to vote on Applewhite Reservoir, which they turned down in 1991 after work had been underway six months. The reservoir will reduce San Antonio’s dependence on underground water. The 2050 Water Plan, as Applewhite has been renamed, also includes projects to boost recharge of the aquifer, reuse water from sewage treatment plants, as many cities already do, and buy water rights from those willing to sell.

* Farmers who pump water from the aquifer are actually beginning to think about ways to save water, either through more efficient irrigation systems or crops better suited to dry land farming.

None of these efforts is guaranteed to work, but they represent giant steps forward. Despite the blaming and bashing, we might yet avoid the tragedy of the commons.

(This column was prepared with the help of Shana Norton, a student at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.)

For about 75 years, Shanghai was the leading port in Asia. When the Chinese Communists took the city over in 1949, they wanted to maintain Shanghai’s flourishing economy as a model of Communist prosperity.

Not surprisingly, they could not do so. The flight to Hong Kong of the big trading houses, shipping companies, and banks began. Shanghai is still the largest city in China, but the glory days are gone. Today, Hong Kong is the crown jewel of Asia–maybe the world’s most prosperous city. Shanghai, once the New York City of Asia is now the Atlantic City–down at the heels, a little seedy looking, remembering a more prosperous time.

In just three years, the Chinese Communists will take over Hong Kong, now a British Crown Colony. Will the result be the same? Will Hong Kong, like Shanghai, become one of China’s once-great cities? To be replaced by Singapore or Vancouver as a Pacific Rim financial capital?

Maybe not.

Like all viruses that come under attack, the virus of Chinese Communism has changed and developed. It is no longer the militantly collectivist virus it was in the days of Chou-en Lai. No longer does the Chinese government shackle the efforts of its citizens–at least not as much as 20 years ago. Today China vigorously seeks Western investment. China is an entrepreneurial nation.

Moreover, the transfer of sovereignty to China comes at a different moment in China’s history. China’s economy has been booming as the power of the central government has waned in recent years and the power of the provincial governments has increased.

The reign of the second Emperor of the Communist Dynasty, is coming to a close. An aging Deng Xiaophing is in his last years and shows some of the same signs that Mao Tze Dung, the first Communist Emperor, did at the end of his reign. Chairman Mao’s reign ended in chaos, confusion, corruption, and a collapsed economy. China’s geriatric leadership seems out of touch, much like an older person that just can’t quite hear what’s going on around him much anymore.

Deng’s regime is sliding down the same slippery slope. Corruption is rife. Repression is unabated.

In short, Shanghai was taken over by young, vigorous, foolish, true believers. Hong Kong, on the other hand, will not be absorbed by a country with vigorous leadership, but by a feebly led nation whose economy is by no means as robust as that of Hong Kong.

Whatever happens when Hong Kong comes under Chinese rule, China will be changed as much or more than Hong Kong. My speculation, of course, assumes that Deng Xiaoping’s current government, however inept, will not repeat the disasters of the end of the Mao era.

China is a bustling place. Buildings are being built, mostly with foreign money. Chinese investors are largely investing in Hong Kong and overseas. Richard Hornik wondered recently in the Asian Wall Street Journal why foreigners are so eager to invest in China when Chinese are not. He believes the Chinese economic bubble will burst because of corruption and ineptness.

Repression in China is probably worse than, if not so obvious as, it was at Tiananmen Square five years ago. Police eavesdropping on conversations in the square are now so obvious and obtrusive as to be ludicrous. A Chinese citizen who translates one of the “big letter” posters prepared by dissidents can be prosecuted for “revealing state secrets.”

Dissidents arrested before the fifth anniversary last June of the Tiananmen massacre have been told to expect long detentions. Hundreds of people were killed in those protests.

The Chinese government blacked out CNN coverage of the fifth anniversary of the massacre. CNN is seen in China almost exclusively by foreign travelers in their hotels.

The house rules of a hotel in Wuhan, China, prohibit “illegal activities such as prostitution, drug taking, gambling, speculation or profiteering.”

How ironic that Communist China is a bustling, booming, entrepreneurial nation while Russia, where Communism has been overthrown, is an economic disaster.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal worried that Texas was in the “thrall of tax-and-spend politicians.”

Much as we appreciate advice from New York City about how this state should be run, we must suggest that they not worry their little heads with this.

The Journal, relying on numbers from the ultra-conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, is concerned that spending and state debt in Texas have been rising faster than the national average.

The Foundation found that Texas spending increased 56 percent between 1980 and 1991, compared to 48 percent for the average state. They reported that interest on state debt rose 203 percent.

Of course, a number of other things in Texas, now the second largest state in the nation, have risen faster than the national average, like health care costs which tripled and the number of prison inmates which rose 177 percent.

We have more poor people than the average state, more immigrants (three out of 10 Texans were born outside the state) and more teenage births.

This is a dynamic, growing state with a thriving economy. In each of the last three years, Texas led the nation in the number of jobs created–209,800 just last year.

More people create demands on government, but that is not the main reason spending has grown. Texas budget increases are largely the result of forces outside state government’s control.

State spending increased 37.2 percent in real dollars since 1980. Even so, state government expenditures per capita ranked dead last, number 50, among the states in 1992, the last date for which Bureau of Census data is available.

State debt, which the Texas Public Policy Foundation worries is increasing so rapidly, is still very conservative. Texas ranks 49th among the states in long-term state debt per capita.

Let’s look at the reasons why Texas is spending more: federal mandates and court orders. An excellent new report from the Legislative Budget Board indicates federal mandates accounted for 45 percent of the increase in the last two Texas budgets.

About one-third of the Texas budget is controlled by some judge. Federal court orders on prisons, mental health and mental retardation account for much of the $3.5 billion the state is spending this biennium on unfunded federal mandates.

The biggest increase is Medicaid. Why? Federal expansions signed into law by those tax-and-spend politicians, President Reagan and President Bush.

Unlike other large states, Texas had a Medicaid program that was as stingy as the feds would allow. So when the Republican Presidents and a Democratic Congress said more benefits had to be provided, it cost Texas more to provide them.

Even so, Texas ranks 48th in average expenditure per person on Medicaid.

Spending more on Medicaid has had a number of very good results. More pregnant women and small children got health care, which may have prevented even more costly problems. And it brought it more federal dollars, because Medicaid is financed 36 percent by the state and 64 percent by the federal government.

The next biggest spending increase was for prisons. A federal court told Texas it couldn’t overcrowd prisons. Another court said that state prisoners could not be kept indefinitely in county jails. Voters overwhelmingly supported $2 billion in bonds to build more prisons.

Even with the biggest prison construction program in the history of the world, the Legislative Budget Board had to take $30 million from other state agencies to finance emergency housing for jail inmates this summer.

Prison construction largely accounts for the increase in debt payments.

Education spending increased because Texas has been trying to comply with a state court order to equalize school funding or close the schools. Ask the teachers. They haven’t gotten a pay raise.

State spending per pupil in constant dollars has zoomed all the way from $1,509 in 1984 to $1,508 in 1992.

To finance the increases in health care, prisons and education, the Legislature cut other programs. During the last four years state spending on general government and natural resources has declined by $400 million.

Higher education has been squeezed as well. Per student spending, adjusted for inflation, decreased 9 percent between 1985 and 1992. Texas spends 3 1/2 times as much keeping an inmate in prison for a year as it does educating a student at a state university.

Texas leaders might have kept spending lower if they had defied the courts, the federal government and the wishes of the voters. Instead, they acted responsibly and tried to meet not only the mandates, but the needs of a dynamic, growing state.

Just to keep things in perspective, in those years when Texas spending was rising, the price of a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal tripled from $39,817.92 to $118,956.48. The cost of a year’s subscription went up 2.8 times from $53 to $149. The single copy price went up 2.1 times from 35 cents to 75 cents.

Early in May a sewer line in Tijuana, Mexico, broke and dumped 12,000,000 gallons a day of untreated waste into the Pacific Ocean, polluting beaches as far up the coast as San Diego, California.

That pollution was an accident.

For about a decade Carbon I, a 1200-megawatt coal-fired power generating plant in Coahuila in northern Mexico, has been belching forth sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and dust, polluting the air in Coahuila and West Texas. The plant, 20 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, has no scrubbers or other devices to control harmful emissions.

That pollution is no accident. It is planned, deliberate, and ongoing. The Mexican government is planning first to double, triple that pollution. Carbon II is about to come onstream. Carbon III is being planned.

Carbon II and Carbon I will cough out about 200,000 tons of sulphur dioxide a year.

The National Park Service estimates that Carbon II will reduce visibility at the Big Bend National Park by 60 percent during the 8 to 11 months when winds blow from Rio Escondido, 130 miles away. Already, much of the time there is a thin, gray haze at Big Bend, compromising the once crystal-clear air. It could reduce visibility as far away as the Grand Canyon, where the view is already smudged by power plants on the U.S. side.

Carbon II could also harm the McDonald Observatory at Mt. Locke in Jeff Davis County. One of the great assets of the observatory is its clear, dark sky with an absence of light and other pollution.

Frank Bash, director of the Observatory, recently pointed out in letters to the Governor and the Ambassador to Mexico, that Carbon II will have a significant effect on the clarity of sky at McDonald.

Just as disturbing is the damage acid emissions can do to the telescope mirrors and other delicate equipment at the observatory.

Mexico needs the power that will be generated from Carbon II, just as it needs the jobs that the power plant and coal mine will produce.

It makes sense for Mexico to fuel the plant from its 500 million tons of coal reserves. (The demand for coal at Carbon II has also generated a permit request for a coal mine on the U.S. side of the border near Eagle Pass. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department opposes the mine permit because it would reduce the riparian thorn scrub that is habitat for the endangered ocelot and jaguarondi.)

Before the North American Free Trade Agreement, there wouldn’t have been much hope for a solution that would provide power while protecting the natural and scientific resources of the Big Bend area.

Now it’s in the best interest of both countries to keep border air pollution from getting worse, either by installing scrubbers at Carbon I and II or by co-firing with cleaner-burning natural gas.

During the past year, Texas twice has responded to Mexico’s concerns about proposed toxic waste dumps near the Rio Grande River. Texas denied a permit for a radioactive dump in Kinney County. In a current case, the staff of the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission opposes an application by Chemical Waste Management, Inc., to put a hazardous waste dump in Terrell County.

Governor Richards recently pointed out to Mexican trade officials that Carbon II is viewed by environmental groups as the “single most important test of our two countries’ promise to improve the environment”.

“Installing appropriate technology or making other operational adjustments to reduce air pollution would provide dramatic and early proof that Mexico is committed to addressing difficult environmental problems that affect the United States.

“Reducing pollution from the plant will support my position that the NAFTA agreement is our best hope for cleaning up the border environment,” she wrote to Dr. Herminio Blanco, Undersecretary of Unidad de Negociacion del Tratado de Libre Comercio.

One of the expected benefits of NAFTA is prosperity for the border region as goods move freely between markets. That prosperity must include a commitment to a cleaner border environment.

A coal plant without scrubbers is like a dog that’s not housebroken. Let’s hope Carbon II becomes a symbol of both countries’ commitment, not an emblem of failure.

Experience government at any level for a time and you may come to believe that it operates according to the rule of unintended results–or by a corollary, that no good deed goes unpunished.

The current debate over Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for our poorest citizens, is a classic example.

A look at the national media could convince you that Medicaid is the monster devouring many state treasuries. In this election year, Medicaid and the welfare system that begat it are taking the blame for the lion’s share of governmental problems.

It’s true that spending for Medicaid has grown. In Texas, for example, state and federal dollars for Medicaid jumped from $2 billion in fiscal 1987 to an estimated $8.7 billion this fiscal year.

Lt. Governor Bob Bullock points out that, since 1991, Medicaid has become the fastest growing part of the Texas budget, rising at almost double the rate of prison spending and quadruple the rate of public school spending.

It’s also true that Medicaid doesn’t rank high on the public popularity list, like highways or prison building.

Let’s look at the reasons why Medicaid has grown. The primary reason is federal mandates.

During the last decade, core Medicaid coverage which every state must provide to stay in the program has been expanded. In addition to recipients of Aid to Families of Dependent Children and Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid must cover pregnant women and children up to age six with income up to 133 percent of the poverty level ($15,814 a year for a family of three).

Also covered are children born after September 30, 1983 with family income up to 100 percent of poverty ($11,890 a year for a family of three).

Other mandates greatly expanded the list of services for children and required higher payments to nursing homes and hospitals. Congress also extended Medicaid coverage to legalized aliens and immigrants with emergency conditions, including labor and delivery.

No intentions could have been better. All children deserve a healthy start in life. Furthermore, pre-natal care, immunizations and early detection and treatment are likely to save dollars spent on premature births, complications of disease and developmental disabilities.

And how can we in good conscience deny life-saving care because someone suffered an accident on the wrong side of the border?

No wonder then that these health care expansions were bipartisan efforts, bills signed into law by President Reagan and President Bush.

The unintended result was to ratchet up the expenditures on Medicaid, both the 64 percent the federal government pays in Texas and the 36 percent paid by the state. But even with these expansions, Texans still spend less per person on Medicaid than most other states. We rank 43rd.

Still, the caseload for mandated Medicaid coverage will jump from 890 million Texans in 1991 to an estimated 2.3 million in 1993. About 44 percent of all births in this state are now paid for by Medicaid.

It is part of the law of unintended results that when Congress extends free health care to more children, the result may be higher property taxes in your school district. Why? Because the state has to put more dollars into Medicaid to keep federal aid coming and its only options are to cut other programs (like public schools, higher education and prisons) or to raise taxes.

The punishment, as in no good deed goes unpunished, is the political blame for cutting public school budgets, raising local property taxes, raising state taxes, under funding higher education and turning criminals loose on the streets.

No wonder then, that Lt. Governor Bullock has asked the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to examine Medicaid spending and recommend steps that can be taken now to curb the rate of growth.

Other states have tried the same thing. Oregon rations medical services. Tennessee has begun a bold experiment with a statewide managed care program for the uninsured, using federal Medicaid dollars without federal requirements and rigmarole.

But anyone who thinks Texas can battle the Medicaid monster and win has read too many David and Goliath stories. The factors driving costs are mostly beyond the state’s control. Texas has more than 2 million people on Medicaid because it has a high rate of poverty (18.8 percent), a high birth rate and a higher percentage of citizens (25.7 percent) without health insurance.

And the costs of Medicaid are high because health care inflation, fed by the doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, pharmaceutical companies and hosts of other providers, has been running two to three times the general inflation rate for two decades.

The only real solution to Medicaid rests in national health care reform, whether it is President Clinton’s plan or another that provides universal health insurance coverage. Only a national plan can address the system’s current inequities and have some hope of meaningful cost control.

When President Clinton gave his State of the Union address recently, he made a reference to a key aspect of the peace dividend–the highly-trained men and women mustering out of the military.

He emphasized his earlier proposal that gives incentives to veterans who seek jobs where they are needed most, in our police departments and in our classrooms.

Many of our veterans were instructors in the service, often training young recruits in the complex workings of highly sophisticated military technology. And what better match for the increasingly hazardous duty in public schools than Uncle Sam’s finest, already trained for combat?

Led by Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, Congress in 1992 added veterans’ benefits for veterans who took up their second career in law enforcement, teaching or public health. The National Defense Reauthorization Act of 1992 contains these provisions.

The Texas Legislature in 1993 allowed veterans who become teachers to buy into in the Teacher Retirement System for more of the time spent in the service. Rep. Steve Ogden of College Station shepherded that legislation through.

The foundation for this transition has been laid, and we’re already seeing results in Texas.

The Texas Military Initiative was created by an agreement between Governor Ann Richards and the Secretaries of the Department of the Army and of the Department of Education in March, 1992, to assist qualified veterans to enter teaching through the Texas Alternative Certification Program for Teachers.

This is the way the program works. Service members who meet the entry requirements take courses in the summer in basic teaching skills. In the fall, they begin classroom teaching as part of their internship, working closely with a mentor teacher.

During the evenings they continue their education to become certified teachers. It is a very demanding year.

Right now, 69 veterans are participating in the internship phase of the Alternative Certification Program (ACP) through three Army Posts in Texas. An additional 29 veterans are in the internship phases in various other ACP programs, including the 11 enrolled in special education at Southwest Texas State University.

Fort Hood in Killeen has agreements with the Education Service Center in Waco, the University of Mary Hardin Baylor and the University of Central Texas to provide on-post training to 24 service members or their spouses.

Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio is working with the local Education Service Center and Wayland Baptist University. Those courses may begin in March.

Of the 69 participants, 20 are Hispanic, 12 are black, 2 are Asian and 17 are female.

A few vets are already on the job, notably Willie Castillo, a former Air Force major now teaching fourth grade at Bellaire Elementary School in San Antonio. You may have seen him featured in “Parade” magazine last month.

Meanwhile, a program the Army pioneered in San Antonio is going statewide. Careers for Army Personnel in Schools (CAPS) has enrolled 62 school districts who have listed 734 jobs with the system. The program serves as a job clearing house for military personnel looking for peacetime opportunities.

School districts have been receptive to this program. Personnel directors at Fort Worth and Dallas school districts have guaranteed positions to veterans qualified to enter the teacher training programs. Personnel in the Houston district have pledged to work with veterans on a case-by-case basis.

Weslaco plans to hire vets through the University of Texas–Pan American program.

This is one of those rare government programs without a downside. Texas schools need teachers, and a good many veterans need jobs. The cost is minimal, certainly a lot cheaper than unemployment benefits. But delay has already excluded some veterans from the program.

The law which authorizes the veterans benefits required an implementing directive. The terms are clear:

*Vets must have at least six years of continuous active duty service with an honorable discharge.

* Vets can apply up to one year after discharge.

* Those who apply must teach five years in a school eligible for Chapter 1 aid, which means a high concentration of low-income families.

* Non-degreed veterans have five years to get a degree and apply for the stipend to become a teacher.

* School districts who hire veterans may be eligible to receive grants up to $50,000 over a five year period.

Unfortunately, the implementing directive was not signed until January 19–almost two years after Congress passed the law. So none of the 69 veterans now enrolled in the programs qualify for the additional benefits. The stipends are only available to those mustering out after January 19, and school districts can’t receive grants for those now in the classroom.

So a number of good men and women weren’t included in the incentives the program was intended to provide. With the law now in effect, we’ll hope that a good many more decide their future lies in the classroom. Never have we needed them more.

During what was once referred to as the Christmas season, there was a sign across from my office at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. It said: “Happy Winter Holiday of Your Choice.”

It was witty. It was cheerful. It was politically correct.

Those of us who have long since mastered the terms that accommodate both Christmas and Hanukkah must remember that there are those who celebrate the Winter Solstice.

The great debate over political correctness is interesting. It stirs strong emotions on both sides. My concern is not who is right and who is wrong. It’s how to keep up.

It is not clear in today’s lexicon whether one says Afro-American or person of color or Black. Is it Hispanic, Mexican-American or Latino? Or are all the above hopelessly passé?

Is Native American still OK?

Developmentally Disabled is preferable to mentally retarded, but proper usage requires one to say “people with developmental disabilities”. Handicap may refer to golf, polo or horse racing but not to people.

People can be retired persons or senior citizens or elderly, but calling someone aged is bad form.

There was a bill in the Texas legislature last session that sought to end job discrimination against overweight people (Other-sized People? People with overweight?)

There are vast areas of linguistic fuzziness. Fortunately, there are courses which are not just available but mandatory in many government agencies.

I’m just not sure whether I need Diversity Training or Cultural Competence or Cultural Literacy. Perhaps Cultural Literacy is the pre-requisite for Cultural Competence.

One of these courses notes that the Golden Rule is no longer sufficient. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is not adequately other-oriented. The Platinum rule requires that we do unto others as they would have us do.

The problem is knowing what that is. It requires new powers of perception.

Nevertheless, there is much to be said for what author Robert Hughes calls America’s “sugary taste for euphemism”. Language wounds as surely as blows. Offensive words, racial slurs and ethnic epithets have no place in civilized conversation.

Good manners have always decreed attention to the feelings of others, regardless of race, religion or sexual persuasion.

But there is a need for some tolerance for those of us who may not have gotten the latest word.

Russell Baker notes in one of his columns that the goal of political correctness is high-minded–ridding the national mind of evil ways of thinking.

“It assumes,” he said,” that the national mind can be purified by revising the vocabulary with which its thinking is expressed.”

It may or may not. My complaint is that the vocabulary changes too fast. There is also the concern that the extremes have severely damaged the language. Most of us can live with waitstaffs and chairpersons but it’s hard to find a suitable substitute for craftsman like and statesman.

Judging from current usage, females who act want to be called actors rather than the perfectly good feminine version of that word. Or do they?

Robert Hughes’ book, “Culture of Complaint”, aims a number of barbs at political correctness, along with Republican rhetoric, family values and whiners of all descriptions.

He also points out that “This has always been a heterogeneous country and its cohesion, whatever cohesion it has, can only be based on mutual respect. There never was a core America in which everyone looked the same, spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods and believed the same things.

“Even before the Europeans arrived, American Indians were constantly at one another’s throats. America is a construction of mind, not of race or inherited class or ancestral territory.”

Political correctness has excised some offensive and erroneous stereotypes from our history books. It has created an awareness that certain words are not permissible in polite society.

If political correctness builds respect for others, more power to it. Just grant me a little patience while I catch up.

These three questions frame an issue that is older than the Republic of Texas and as current as the most recent court decision or the last speech in the governor’s race. The questions of who controls and who pays for public education are linked in a surprising way; the issue of whether the answers to the first two questions really matter is also surprisingly complex. At the base of the problem is a Texas tradition of confusing good intentions with good policy.

Who Runs Them? A History of Governance

When Texicans revolted against Mexico in 1836, they cited their grievances in their Declaration of Independence. One of the complaints was that Mexico had failed to establish a system of public education. But when the Texicans won their independence, they proved to be no better educators than the Mexicans. To be sure, the Texas Constitution of 1836 declared that “It shall be the duty of Congress, as soon as circumstances permit (emphasis added), to provide, by law, a general system of education.” Despite this formal declaration of the importance of education, it was not until many years later that Texas began to develop a system of public schools.

In fact, there exists no clear evidence that the Republic of Texas ever wanted a state-supported and state-controlled system of schools; the congress merely provided an endowment to each county and then left to parents the maintenance and support of schools. In keeping with practice in the United States, the Constitution of 1836 did not prohibit private or denominational schools from receiving public aid, and several private academies received assistance through land grants. In other words, to the extent that the Republic did anything at all about education, it provided a voucher system and not a very generous one, since the allotment per student in 1854 was 62 cents per year.

After Texas became a state in 1845, the First Texas Legislature adopted a policy that would result in a state system of public schools six decades later. The policy allowed incorporated cities to establish and support public schools at local option. Voters in Corpus Christi refused to vote the tax upon themselves, and Galveston abandoned its education tax in 1848, even though voters had approved it. Thus, almost a century and a half ago, Texans first showed that they were willing to do almost anything for public education except pay for it.

In 1856, the legislature declared all schools to be “public schools” for per capita distribution purposes. Since parents could send their children to a private school and draw the per capita apportionment, the voucher system was still in operation. Between 1856 and 1870, the most important institutions for learning in Texas existed outside of the public school system, which was virtually nonexistent outside of incorporated cities.

The Constitution of 1869 provided the framework for the most highly centralized public school system ever imposed in Texas. Among other things, the constitution included a strong state superintendent’s office, mandatory districting of counties, compulsory attendance, and an obligatory local property tax not to exceed $1.00 per $100.

The first state board of education was created in 1871. It consisted of the state superintendent, the governor, and the attorney general. It had absolute control over education, and state supervisors–not locally elected boards–appointed teachers.

In 1928, the legislature replaced the board defined by the constitution with a nine-member State Board of Education appointed by the governor. Twenty-one years later, the legislature decided that the board should consist of one member elected from each congressional district. By 1984, the board had once again become appointed, this time with fifteen members. In 1989, the legislature again changed its mind and decreed that each of the fifteen board members should be elected from a separate district. In 1990, the board’s power to appoint a commissioner of education was transferred to the governor. And so it is today.

In short, in the last century and a half, public education in Texas has been governed in just about any way imaginable. The state governing body has sometimes been constitutional, sometimes statutory. It has varied in size from three to twenty-four members. It has been appointed. It has been elected from districts of various sizes. In this period, public education in Texas has sometimes been governed by rigid systems of state control and at other times by rather decentralized systems.

Ironically, the current trend toward decentralization has led to a concentration of power in an individual to a degree unknown even in the days of the Republic. In 1991, the legislature granted the power to the commissioner of education to waive state law as well as State Board of Education rules and policies. The current commissioner has done so about 2,200 times. Concern about the role of the Texas Education Agency prompted the 73rd Legislature to create the Joint Select Committee to Review the Central Education Agency. That committee was charged with reviewing the structure of the agency and the regulations it has promulgated. In August 1994, the committee endorsed a “charter school” program, which would allow school districts, with voter approval, to design and run their own education programs within board performance standards.

Controversies about school governance are by no means confined to the roles of the state and the school districts. As we all know, there is now controversy over the roles of the school boards and the individual campuses. In the last ten years, the trend has been toward decentralized management. In 1984, House Bill 72 declared that the principal should be the academic leader of the campus. In 1991, the legislature decided that each campus should be run by a committee of parents and teachers, and that each school board should develop a plan for this site-based management. Both concepts are now set forth in state law, although statutory language sometimes appears to have little to do with what goes on in the classroom.

These shifts in governance have been aimed at improving the quality of public education. About once a generation, it appears, the public becomes sufficiently concerned about the quality of the public education to make major changes. In the late 1950’s, at the height of the Cold War, the Russians launched the first satellite. Sputnik made education a national security issue in the United States and resulted in increased federal funding for mathematics, science, and technology.

In the early 1980’s several national reports deplored the quality of public education. “A Nation at Risk” compared the American education system unfavorably to those of other major industrial democracies: Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan. That report questioned the ability of the United States to compete economically with those countries. It concluded that public education in this country was so poor that, if imposed on the United States by a foreign power, it would be an act of war. The call to action was heeded in Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and a few other states. House Bill 72 was Texas government’s response. The public response to the education reforms in that legislation was mixed. Despite widespread support for higher performance standards for both students and teachers, specific measures such as the “no pass no play” rule and statewide tests generated much resistance. The “no pass no play” rule took a heavy toll on hometown football teams. It was criticized as unduly harsh, discriminatory, and counterproductive.

Similarly, support for standardized testing breaks down when individual students or groups of students are adversely affected. The requirement that all students pass the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test in order to graduate from high school is generally accepted as a reasonable measure for ensuring that every student attain a minimum level of literacy before being awarded a diploma. But every spring, when the time comes for students to walk across the stage, we hear protests from some who failed to pass the test but who feel they deserve to take part in the ceremony, or from groups who insist that the test penalizes students from a given ethnic group or geographical location. It is beyond the scope of this article to analyze these arguments, but they illustrate the concern that the public’s commitment to quality education exists more in theory than in practice.

Who Pays?

Frontier Texans were willing to share the cost of the schoolteacher’s salary, often contributing land or goods. Taxes have been more problematical, as the experience in Corpus Christi and Galveston demonstrated. Now, in a far more complex society, we must consider not only who pays for public schools, but who pays for human services.

The two issues are related in a surprising way. When Congress raises Medicaid costs, it raises school property taxes. The process, which I call the siphon effect, works like this: In human services, the federal government (Congress and federal agencies) sets the rules, allowing limited state discretion, and pays about half the costs. In public education, the state government (the legislature and the Texas Education Agency) sets the rules, allowing limited local discretion, and pays about half the cost. When Congress expands eligibility for a human service program, the increased state share comes off the top. The states then have just that much less to spend on education, prisons, or anything else. That action by Congress did not decrease the demand for education, for prisons or other services, so states have two choices. Legislatures must either raise state taxes or cut expenses in areas not affected by federal requirements and shift more expenses to the school districts. In the current anti-tax climate, legislatures by default choose the latter course.

In effect, then, when Congress expands eligibility for a Medicaid program providing health care to poor children, it raises local school property taxes. And it raises property taxes the most in states like Texas that rely most heavily on property taxes to pay for public schools. In Texas, the impact of rising Medicaid and prison costs has been a shrinking state share of public school costs. In 1985, the state provided 52.2 percent of the revenue. In fiscal 1995, it is 44.7 percent. The percentage other states contribute to the education budget varies. National Education Association reports show that Michigan, on the low end, contributed 37.8 percent while local governments contribute 62.2 percent. In North Carolina, the state pays about 71.8 percent of the cost of public education, compared to 28.2 percent from local governments.

A problem of longer duration is inequity in financing schools. The poorest 26 school districts, 2.5 percent of the 1,048 districts, have average taxable value per pupil of $38,624. The richest 143 districts, 13.6 percent, have average taxable value per pupil of $553,866. The contrast is even more pronounced when you compare the taxable value of the poorest school district, Edgewood, at $33,522 per pupil, with that of the wealthiest, Laureles, at $17,878,539 per pupil, a 533 percent difference.

How does this great difference come about? The richest districts have great wealth and few students. That great wealth is usually oil and gas reserves or refineries, petrochemical plants, or nuclear power plants. Some such districts have fewer than a dozen students. Hence the high ratios. Many of these high-wealth districts were created to protect property from high taxation. Poor districts typically have little valuable property, often only residential, and many students.

As long as there are such artificially large differences in per student wealth, there will be artificially large differences (87:1) in the amount of money poor and rich districts can raise for each penny of property tax. For as long as Texas pays most of its school costs with property taxes, there will be big differences in per pupil expenditures between rich and poor districts.

This is the problem that the Texas Legislature and the Supreme Courts of the United States and Texas have wrestled with for the last twenty-five years. The U.S. Supreme Court did not wrestle long. In its 1973 ruling in Rodriguez v. San Antonio ISD, it said that, although the Texas system of paying for public schools was inequitable, the Court was not going to intervene. The U.S. Constitution does not mention education. Many state constitutions make education a fundamental right. Since then, lawsuits challenging school finance systems have been filed in state courts in about half the states.

In 1989, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on a second lawsuit originating in San Antonio, Edgewood ISD v. Kirby. Contrary to the general impression, the court has never ordered that the same amount of money be spent on each public school student in Texas. What the Court has required in the Edgewood decision is “substantially equal access to similar revenue per student at similar levels of tax effort.”

In other words, school districts may continue to set their tax rates, and within limits, their tax revenue, and decide how much money they will spend on each student. The court required that, system wide, districts taxing at similar rates must be able to spend substantially the same amount per pupil.

Aye, there’s the rub.

In other words, districts taxing at relatively low rates have great incentive to raise tax rates, thereby earning more state aid. We have seen earlier how this system of “power equalizing” has raised taxes without, in fact, equalizing school district spending per pupil.

All over the country, property taxes have come under increasing attack. In many states, as in Texas, they have increased sharply. Because they are based on fixed assets and not income, they do not necessarily represent ability to pay. In the late 1970s, California voters passed Proposition 13, which placed a cap on the property tax rate and set in motion a series of similar tax revolts throughout the country. In 1982 Texans, by constitutional amendment, prohibited state property taxes.

In July 1993, the Michigan Legislature repealed all local school property taxes. Michigan, like Texas, had relied on such taxes for more than half the cost of public schools. School property taxes in Michigan raised $6.l8 billion a year. In December 1993, the Michigan Legislature put two alternatives before the voters: raising the state income tax or raising the sales tax. In March 1994 voters overwhelming chose to increase the sales tax. The new plan reinstates a much smaller school property tax but shifts about 80 percent of the burden to state sales and business taxes.

Why should Texas not do the same? Were Texas to eliminate school property taxes and replace the revenue with state aid, Texas would have to raise the sales tax ten cents or impose an income tax of 6 to 7 percent of federal adjusted gross income. Hardly an appealing political prospect!

Does It Matter?

As I hope this brief account has demonstrated, the only certainty in public education is that the law will change again soon. It is not so much that we do not learn from history as that we continue to care about the quality of public education, and no particular system has proven to be inherently better than another. Every change in governance, every shift in tax burden that I have described, has been advocated by people who want to “reform” the system.

When someone wants to “reform” a system, put your hand firmly on your wallet. What that someone wants is to transfer money and power from one group to another. The affected groups may be teachers, parents, school administrators, football coaches, plaintiffs, defendants, water users, farmers, city dwellers, bay shrimpers, Gulf shrimpers, commercial fishermen, sports fishermen, sales taxpayers, income taxpayers, property taxpayers, oil and gas producers, medical doctors, nurses, optometrists, age groups, felons, males, females, black, Hispanics, gay, or whatever.

There is nothing wrong with that. It is a factor of democracy and diversity of interests. Legislatures, congresses, parliaments, commissioners’ courts, city councils, and school boards meet periodically to make the transfers of power and money dictated by the politics of the times. That process in known as “responsive government,”

Unfortunately, responsiveness and meaningful reform do not necessarily go hand in hand. The path from good intentions to good education is paved with difficult choices and hard cash. Historically, Texans have meant well but have been unable to move as far down the path as they intended. Most would agree that it does matter who pays for our schools and who runs them; the question that remains is, when will we choose to move forward?

[1] Earnest Wallace, ed., Documents of Texas History (Austin: Steck Company, 1963), p. 98.
[2] T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star (New York: Collier Books, 1968), p.303.
[3] Central Education Agency is the name given by the constitution to the state’s education system; the administrative agency is known as the Texas Education Agency.
[4]National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform: A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education, Washington, D.C., 1983.
[5] Fehrenbach, Lone Star, p. 303.
[6] Texas Legislative Budget Board, Fiscal Size Up: 1994-1995 Biennium, Texas State Services (Austin, 1994), p. 4-9.