Houston Chronicle by Jeremy Blackman May 9, 2019
Two bills that would begin overhauling Texas’s massive public school endowment have moved a step closer to becoming law, with further reforms possible on the horizon.
The bipartisan legislation, led by Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, addresses concerns raised by the Sunset Advisory Commission and a yearlong Chronicle investigation, which found widespread mismanagement of the Permanent School Fund and dwindling payments to schools.
Both bills heavily target the School Land Board, which oversees nearly a quarter of the $44 billion endowment and has been criticized for investing billions of dollars with companies run by friends, business associates and campaign donors. One bill would expand the board in an effort to reduce conflicts, while the other would require it to disclose fees to outside consultants and relinquish part of its portfolio to the State Board of Education, which manages the rest of the fund’s investments.
Watson had originally sought to strip the land board’s investment authority entirely, but agreed to less restrictive changes after talks with the governor’s office, he told lawmakers last week. Some of those changes would end in fiscal year 2021, however, with the intent that more lasting reforms are enacted next legislative session.
“After much back and forth, we’ve arrived at a bill that, for now, it addresses the symptoms of the problem while we work through the bigger fundamental issues over the interim,†Watson said.
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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Efforts-to-fix-broken-Permanent-School-Fund-move-13832702.php
