The Texas Legislature has fulfilled its most important job -- creating a balanced budget to carry the state through the next two years.
Just about 48 hours before lawmakers are set to end the current legislative session, senators and representatives finally ironed out all their differences for now and slapped a stamp of approval on the bill, which totals about $338 billion dollars, all from the state's bank accounts to pay for roads, state employees and everything else.
The bill pays extra money for teacher salaries as well as property tax relief (including the continuation of property tax relief granted over the past six years) which will prompt the state to pay local school districts extra money to cover the lowering of property taxes, since property taxes are the way districts collect money to run schools, related programs and administrators.
The budget includes about $51 billion for property tax relief, including a proposition for voters this November that would increase homeowners' homestead exemption from $100,000 to $140,000, which could save homeowners an average of $500 a year.
The budget hopes to ease some of the growing burden held by the Texas Department of Public Safety, as state population increases, by putting aside $319 million to 467 state troopers, along with another $102 million for much-needed service improvements at drivers license services.
And there's expected to be a $10 billion budget for behavioral health services, including new money for research and prevention of mental health complications.
And also among medical services, there's more than $2 billion for increasing the wages of personal care attendants from $10.60 an hour to $13 an hour
The bill is considered Job One for legislators, and indeed the bills written to get together the money to pay for the state budget are Senate Bill 1 and House Bill 1.
But it's always a long process ironing out the differences between what legislators want to do, what lobbyists want them to do, and what Texas citizens want to be done, and in this case it's taken almost all of the legislative session to do it.