Innovations: Balancing the State Budget

Bill McKenzie, editorial columnist, The Dallas Morning News

[EMAIL: wmckenzie@dallasnews.com; WEB: http://www.DallasNews.com]

With Texas facing a $10 billion budget deficit, and some Texas Republicans threatening to eliminate it all through cuts that would end up gutting health programs for the poor and elderly, The Dallas Morning News Editorial Board decided to respond. We didn't want to just sit and carp as Texas' 2003 Legislature unfolded. We wanted to show legislators how they could balance the budget in a fair, responsible manner.

For two weeks this spring, I poured over the state's budget, talked to policy experts and legislators, and designed a 50/50 Plan. It included about $5 billion in specific cuts in health, education and social services. And it included about $5 billion in tax hikes. We even advocated a change in the tax code that would lead to our parent company paying a new tax, a concept our parent company didn't oppose, so long as the new tax was levied fairly across the entire industry sector. We published the plan in detail one Sunday. And we also put it on-line. where we included even greater detail, line by line, state agency by state agency. We gave readers a chance to respond, too. More than 1,500 respondents voted on different elements of the 50/50 Plan. The vast majority supported our overall proposal. We took those results and included them in another editorial on the budget.

We wish we could say the Legislature went our way. Legislators ended up with too many deep cuts and some dubious accounting tricks. Still, we tried to show, not just tell, legislators what to do. We felt that was our duty. If we were going to tell lawmakers to correct such a big problem, we believed we should show them how.

9/22/03