Gambling disussion may be revived

Eiland: Gambling disussion may be revived By Kelly Hawes Correspondent GALVESTON — State Rep. Craig Eiland predicts that casino gambling might return to the table if the Legislature finds itself in a second special session seeking to resolve issues related to school funding. “We’ll just have to wait and see,” he told those gathered Thursday morning for a legislative breakfast sponsored by the Galveston Chamber of Commerce. Eiland, a Galveston Democrat, had been scheduled to share the platform with state Sen. Kyle Janek, a Houston Republican, but Janek got tied up in Austin where the Senate was working to push through its own school finance plan. The fight at the moment, Eiland said, is among Republicans as leaders in the two houses wrestle with ways to fund public education while providing broad property tax relief. The House Ways and Means Committee last week approved a measure that would reduce the cap on school property tax rates by 25 percent over the next two years. That revenue would be replaced by expanding the corporate franchise tax to more businesses and by boosting the state sales tax by a penny to 7.25 cents on the dollar. The sales tax, which would be the highest in the nation, would also be expanded to take in repairs on vehicles and computers in addition to bottled water. “So what we’d be doing is increasing the sales tax, which you can’t deduct from your federal income taxes, and decreasing the property tax, which you can deduct,” Eiland said. The Senate, though, has indicated no support for such a large increase, pushing instead for an increase of half a cent. Gov. Rick Perry, meanwhile, is roughly halfway in between with a proposed sales tax increase of seven-tenths of a cent. Eiland indicated the governor and his re-election hopes would be at the center of any discussion about funding for education. He suggested that the absence of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison from the Republican gubernatorial primary might make it easier for Perry to get behind gambling as a possible revenue source. “He had already come out in favor of gambling at the horse and dog tracks,” Eiland said, “and as long as she was in the picture, he really couldn’t move off of that because that was the one issue where she was to the right of him. Now that she’s not running, he might be free to look at more options.” For Eiland and other Galveston County lawmakers, any gambling proposal would have to go beyond horse and dog tracks. “My issue has always been that Galveston has to be able to have it,” Eiland said. He noted that the Galveston City Council had come out in favor of legislation that would provide for a local referendum on gambling, but he said getting such a measure through the Legislature won’t be easy. “While we’re down here saying we want a local referendum, other cities are saying they don’t want it,” Eiland said. He mentioned interests in downtown Dallas, where backers of casino gambling fear that a local referendum might be defeated through a campaign financed by the racetracks. In the meantime, two local campuses await word on funding for major capital projects. Eiland said the measure now moving through the Legislature includes the authorization to issue the bonds needed to help pay for a biocontainment laboratory now under construction at the University of Texas Medical Branch. It does not, however, contain the same authorization for a new science building at Texas A&M University’s Galveston campus. Eiland said he wasn’t sure what was standing in the way of the TAMUG project. “The project is at the top of the priority list for Texas A&M, and we have an Aggie in the governor’s office,” he said. “You’d think we could get that passed.” One possibility, he said, is that funding for the Galveston project has ended up being earmarked for other projects. “One thing I’ll give the speaker credit for is he has learned to count, and he has learned to get the votes to the number he needs to get something passed,” Eiland said. He contended that four lawmakers from El Paso had been persuaded to support the Republican version of the school finance plan in exchange for a promise of funding for a new Texas Tech medical school in their city. The bill needed 75 votes to pass. It got 77. “I don’t know whether that has anything to do with the funding for Texas A&M’s science building or not,” Eiland said.