Dewhurst using Enron math on school finance issue

By Patricia Kilday Hart

Published 08:11 p.m., Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a successful Houston businessman, prides himself on his fluency with numbers. When it comes to Texas public schools, however, Dewhurst mangles the one question that should come effortlessly to a good CEO: What's the bottom line?

In Houston recently to campaign for the U.S. Senate, Dewhurst claimed the state of Texas this year appropriated more money for public education than ever before in its history. It's technically true, in the way that Enron was technically a viable company. So here's the real bottom line, summing up the entire financial picture: Texas public schools now have less money than ever to educate our school-children. Saying otherwise is just "balderdash," says Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston.

"When I read that he said that, I thought, 'There he goes again,'" said Coleman, expressing the collective exasperation of Texas' education community. Like an improbable urban myth that just won't die, the claim that schools didn't really take a financial hit this budget cycle keeps circulating.

Speaking to the Houston Republican Jewish Coalition last week, Dewhurst assured his audience that our schools were flush with cash. "We appropriated more money for public education than we have ever appropriated in the state of Texas," he asserted. People complaining about public school funding "have a problem with math. The facts are the facts."

But, as any Houstonian can tell you, there's math, and then there's Enron Math. Here, Dewhurst is engaging in Enron Math, spotlighting one number from the state appropriations bill that doesn't tell the whole story - just as Enron looked profitable if you didn't know about those pesky off-balance-sheet losses.

Texas public schools get money from three major revenue streams, and the state's contribution ebbs and flows with changes in federal and local dollars. Dewhurst makes his claim by comparing the amount from only one state bank account - General Revenue - that went to public education in the last two budget cycles.

Case of amnesia

Which might make sense, if it weren't for the little trick the Legislature played with federal stimulus dollars in the previous budget. That session, lawmakers put $3.3 billion in federal money toward public education, then diverted an equal amount in General Revenue dollars to pay for other things. To compare the General Revenue spent on education in the two budgets amounts to a massive case of amnesia about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Former Rep. Paul Colbert, D-Houston, explains it this way: Your boss gets a big windfall insurance settlement, and decides to pay 10 percent of your salary with it, instead of taking your entire pay out of company operating expenses. You don't care - it's the same amount of money. But the next year, he tells you he will pay you exactly the amount of dollars out of the operating account that he did last year. Without the one-time insurance money, your salary just took a 10 percent hit. "That's the game they are playing," Colbert says.

'Pants on fire!'

Dewhurst isn't the only politician out there trying to fudge the numbers. Rep. Myra Crownover, R-Denton, recently earned a shameful "Pants on Fire!" call from the no-nonsense "Politifact" column. The analysis by the Austin American-Statesman also noted that even Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, chairman of the House Education Committee, estimated that funding would decline by at least 4 percent to 5 percent, which he deemed as insignificant.

But Colbert warns the picture is even worse for school finance if all methods of finance are scrutinized. In 2006, the Legislature ordered local property tax relief and promised to make up for the loss of revenue to schools. That hasn't happened. And the Legislature hasn't come close to fully funding schools since 2003, when a new accounting trick masked the true impact of explosive enrollment growth.

$600 less per student

Surely someone knows the true financial condition of our schools. According to Colbert, the Texas Education Agency keeps a running track of the "sum certain" paid by the state to Texas school districts per student. It's actual money spent by the state, divided by the actual number of students. By that calculation, the state will spend more than $600 less per student this year than it did last year.

In the middle of last session, Dewhurst promised school superintendents that he would make sure schools didn't suffer in the budget. He joked that some of them offered to cut his grass every weekend if he kept that promise.

As he noted then, he lives in a high-rise. A good thing, because it's not likely Texas school superintendents are lining up to tend his lawn while he's out spreading this fertilizer on the campaign trail.