A sister bill to the school finance bill is also likely headed for House chambers this week.
HB 3 proposes major property tax cuts, supplemented by other taxes. It's a plan that was on the fast track last week as members of the House Ways and Means Committee signed off on it.
But now the effort to lower your property taxes may be slowed down.
If adopted as it read last week, HB 3 would raise state sales taxes from 6.25 percent per dollar spent to 7.2 percent, making the sales tax in Texas higher than any other state in the country.
It would also put additional taxes on car repairs, car washes, bottled water and cigarettes. Smokers would feel the biggest burn at $1 more per pack.
The taxes raised would be, not for schools, as had been expected, but rather to pay for property tax cuts totaling $11 billion.
But that's before lawmakers discovered a big discrepancy. The House Ways and Means Committee had already signed off on HB 3 to be considered next by the full House of Representatives.
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Billion-dollar mistake
HB 3 promises more property tax relief than is possible with existing state money and with the proposed tax increases.
 
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Come to find out, the bill promised more property tax relief than is possible with existing state money and with the proposed tax increases.
"When they got out it out committee there were some mistakes in it, things that they had voted for that didn't get in the printing and then the Comptroller's office gave us less fiscal dollars than we thought, less money, so we had to correct that," House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, said.
Correcting the money difference is easier said than done, especially when you're talking about more than $1 billion still to be raised, if Republicans want to keep their $11 billion property tax cut promise.
Democrats say they have a better alternative to the property tax relief spelled out in HB 3.
They have yet to figure out how they would pay for that idea, but they say 135 out of 150 districts in the state would get greater savings from it.
