In just a few days, a new Republican-controlled House and Senate convene to govern our country alongside a Democratic president. Frankly, there is not likely to be much governing going on in D.C. but there will be plenty of hot air to warm a chill winter.

Alas, the themes of the next Presidential election will be running through all conversations, governing and actions. Presidential candidates are emerging and Hillary Clinton will have to confirm or deny her plans to enter the race. For in the world of campaigns, the 2016 election is rapidly approaching.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Texas, the Legislature will convene very soon. As we like to say, “No person’s life, liberty or wallet or safe when the Legislature is in Session.” That is, of course, why the founders of this great state thought the Legislature should meet every other year for 140 days. Initially, everyone was excited that the recent oil and economic growth in Texas might create a less budget strapped Session. Yet in just a matter of days, the price of oil is rapidly dropping and it may cause already strained budgets to be more closely reviewed.

In the state’s largest urban area and the 4th largest city in America, a Mayoral race will dominate the scenery. Literally, once the campaign signs start rising from the ground. A pool of candidates have announced their intentions to run and others are likely to come forward. It will be a crowded field seeking to govern the metropolis. There will also be 4 open seats for City Council and several contested races against incumbents as well as a new City Controller will be chosen. We’ll be tracking all the action here on the blog so stay tuned. Just track these categories: Hou Mayor 2015 and 2015 City of Houston Elections.

Happy Political New Year! Let’s rumble.

Meanwhile, Texas Governor Rick Perry laid out his State of the State speech before the Texas Legislature.  After 13 years of serving as Governor, he shared with us that he will “scrub the budget” and look for ways to refund taxes to Texans.  Personally, I found it fascinating that there is still more budget to be scrubbed.  Governor Perry has had 13 years to clean up the budget and the Legislature has been completely controlled by Republicans since 2002.  The budget ought to be fairly well scrubbed.

Meanwhile, he also suggested using a portion of the Rainy Day funds for the state’s water plan.  This is a truly critical policy issue for the State of Texas.  In the early 1990’s, then Lt. Governor Bullock told me that “Water, Nancy, it’s going to be all about water next century”.  And that has proven so very true.  Texas must address our complex water management issues.  Apparently, the still “in need of being scrubbed” budget, cannot find any additional funds for water management so they will use Rainy Day funds.  Doesn’t matter to me – just do something!

The Governor also mentioned infrastructure and charged the Legislature to fund improvements.  Thank goodness.  With all of Texas’ growth, our roads and infrastructure are not keeping up.  I hope they can scrub the budget and find more money to fund highways.

Perry  touched on education policy without going into too much detail on funding.  Most attributed this to the pending lawsuit against the state by a number of school districts.  It is expected that the Legislature may have to address funding in a Special Session after the court rules.  School-choice remains a hot topic for the Session as well as testing reforms.

Governor Perry, I do want some money back.  How about providing more education funding so my local property taxes decrease?  For all the budget “scrubbing” over the last few years, more costs have been passed to local governments.  This has caused significant local tax increases.  If the state could figure out how to help solve that problem, most Texans will benefit.  Hey, we don’t have a income tax in Texas but if you own property, you pay serious taxes.

Interestingly, the Governor did not address immigration reform.  He’s leaving that one to the feds but plenty of legislators have ideas, including how to separate Texas from federal “mandates”.

It’s going to be a fun year!

The Texas Constitution, as you probably know, states that the Texas Legislature will meet once every two years for 140 days. Isn’t it amazing that Texas can run the business of a 20+ million population state for a few months every other year? Yes, it is amazing. And frankly, may be a good part of the reason that our economy thrives while other states face tougher economic recoveries.

When the legislators convene in 2013, they will still have to face many tough issues. The state’s population and accompanying demands continue to grow. We must educate an ever-expanding number of children. We must maintain roads for the ever-expanding population. We must provide public safety and prisons to protect the people. We need to address excessive health care demands and changing federal policy. And, there are a few other issues that need to be evaluated as well – access to higher education, state parks, tort reform or not, and the thousands of tweaks to antiquated laws to keep Texas functioning.

Hey, don’t you want this job? It pays $7200 a year and you can live in Austin part of the time, working nearly 24 hours a day. What? You can’t live in two locations, work like a maniac and take care of your family on that salary? Neither can most. Thus, those that can are who represent us. Keep that in mind.

This year’s legislative session promises to be full of excitement, intrigue and debate over state’s rights versus federal mandates. The economic picture is rosier than in the past but education and other issues must be budgeted.

The budget will be the overriding theme of this session.

So hold on tight as the Legislature is coming in just a few short weeks.

Providing speakers from the national, state and local level, we addressed how the federal government is refusing to act, the state government overreacts and the local government pays the bill.

Our federal relations speaker, Neil Dhillon of MSLGroup D.C., focused his comments on sequestration and the idea that Congress may fail to act on critical budget issues. If this happens, all government agencies will receive an automatic budget cut, currently projected to be in the range of 8%. It will also seriously affect the country’s credit rating. Neil further discussed energy policy, health care, and more. In the end, he projects that if Romney wins, Congress may get moving again but if Obama is re-elected, we are likely to see continued gridlock in D.C.

John Pitts of the Texas Star Alliance presented on the upcoming 2013 Legislative Session in Texas. His comments focused on the budget and the challenges the state faces in funding everything from education to prisons to health care. He indicated that the Legislature is facing very difficult decisions. He also discussed the impact of the State rejecting participation in federal programs such as health care and education.

Yours truly provided the local perspective and reminded the participants that no matter what happens in the lofty environs of D.C. or Austin, kids still go to school, criminals are still arrested, roads are still driven on and health care is still provided. The local government does not have the option of ignoring these issues. We also discussed the $2.7 billion worth of bonds on the November ballot in the region and how they might bolster business if adopted.

We topped off our day with a light-hearted point of view provided by White House reporter for Sirrius XM’s P.OT.U.S radio program, Julie Mason. Julie is also a former reporter for the Houston Chronicle. She regaled the audience with humorous, but serious perspectives of the people and players in Washington D.C. While the audience had the opportunity to laugh out loud at some of her tales, we also learned how the level of cynicism effects policy discussions.

Overall, a great opportunity to view policy from all levels of government and prepare ourselves for the coming year ahead.

This past weekend, the Texas Tribune held a festival – to discuss politics and policy. I was privileged to attend with my co-worker. From the opening night sparring of Trib editor, Evan Smith, with Governor Rick Perry to the closing panel of national journalists discussing the Presidential election, it was an amazing event.

From Friday night through Sunday afternoon, I attended panels on transportation, environment/energy, education, healthcare, race and immigration and more. We mingled with everyone from Governor Rick Perry to agency heads to Legislators from across the state to policy advocates and students.

My personal favorite panel was a discussion on a variety of topics between San Antonio Mayor and Democratic National Convention keynote speaker, Julian Castro and Republican U.S. Senate nominee, Ted Cruz. Trib editor, Evan Smith, hosted the panel and they discussed a variety of topics while providing humorous and contrasting points of view. Both come from humble beginnings to earn Harvard Law degrees. Most in the audience believed that they represent the future of Texas.

Overall, it was just an amazing event. They plan to have one again next year. If you are at all interested in policy, pencil it in on your schedule.

Visit my Twitter feed, @nancylsims, to recap the sessions I attended.

Citizens all across Texas are feeling the pain of the last Legislative Session. If you have children in public schools, you know the affect of cuts on school programs. Our highways are in serious need of repairs and expansion all across the state.

In fairness, “low taxes” continue to attract businesses to our State and are helping Texas to be one of the most successful economies in the nation. Our urban centers are thriving and attracting more people.

The only problem is that more people create more needs – more roads, more schools and educational investment, and more overall infrastructure.

It is a bit of a dichotomy that this state will need to face. Gridlock will make Texas less appealing. Failing public schools will cause business to locate elsewhere.

Governor Perry – let’s innovate new solutions to meet our challenges. The same message of slash and burn will ultimately make Texas less competitive.

My classmates reminded me that everyone cares about the issues we most often discuss on this blog. What is the future of education for Texas? Among my classmates, there were people far more qualified to answer that question than me. Yet, we all agreed that there is no clear answer. Even as we sat among the stunning beauty of the mountains, we contemplated how our educational system will provide the critical learning tools of the 21st century to an ever-increasing body of students without additional funding. The educators among us indicated that they must adapt and do the best they can for the students…. for they have no other choice.

We also pondered other topical issues of the day such as immigration, health care, criminal justice, mental health and more.

We reflected our city in diversity and in partisanship. Yet, we were able to pull together and get every person up a mountaintop. We put our differences aside to face a tough challenge.

During this process, I was reflecting on the great partisan divide. I pondered if Democrats and Republicans today could even climb a mountain together. One group would be pulling to the left and the other to the right? Could they even manage to head in the same direction to achieve a common goal?

Currently, this seems to be the most important question in our democracy. Can we establish a common goal among our leaders and create a path to get there? Would it be possible to simply focus on one problem and look for quality solutions?

It is my greatest wish to take top Legislators from both parties and set them on a path to achieve a common goal. Separate them from the outside influences that seem to be driving the political process and encourage them to make decisions in the best interests of the citizens. By the way, maybe we could also help them to stop worrying about the next primary election and allow them to actually vote their conscious.

What a concept!

The reason – School Finance. Now the rhetoric moves to a whole new level of noise. The decibels are increasing by the moment.

Some claim that the reason they are back in Session today is because a Democratic Senator, Wendy Davis, killed debate with a filibuster in the final hours. In fairness, she didn’t have to talk long because the Senate didn’t take up the item until 10:30 p.m. before a midnight deadline.

There is plenty of finger-pointing to go around but the bottom line is that they failed to pass school finance legislation.

Usually, a Governor will allow the Legislature a few days off before calling them back into Session. At this point, these folks have worked throughout the holiday weekend and most of the weekends in May. They are physically and emotionally exhausted. As well, it wouldn’t hurt them to return home and talk to real people for a few days.

Now, in this condition, they will tackle again the topic of how schools should be financed in Texas. To be fair, the Senate and House Republicans have been having a hard time finding a compromise and both approached the issue differently.

Over the next few days, they will hopefully find a way to hammer out a compromise. Then, we citizens can find out how much our property taxes will increase to cover the cuts issued on districts and how much schools will suffer – directly and indirectly.

Texans are tired, too. This Legislative Session of intraparty bickering and name calling has been unproductive in the minds of most.

Maybe the Legislature can take the next few days to prove that they really do represent the people, solve education funding and come home to tell their constituents what it all means.

What is our excuse in Texas? Every single statewide office is held by Republicans. The State House of Representatives has a super-majority of Republicans and the Senate has a solid majority. Granted, the Senate mostly adheres to a two-thirds rule and likes to build agreement among even their Democratic members. However, they will suspend the rules when necessary to avoid gridlock and they have the votes to do so.

So, what is the problem? Why can’t they solve the state’s problems? It is becoming obvious that even absolute control cannot guarantee widespread agreement on complex policy issues. To get the Texas House and Senate to agree on issues this Legislative Session has been extremely challenging.

Every time it appears that they have agreed upon something, the delicate compromise will fall apart as the two chambers try to approve it.

Granted, House Democrats (though few in numbers) have been especially adept at using Rules of Order to create chaos in the process but even they know they are only postponing the inevitable.

Generally, it is puzzling to this observer how agreement cannot be reached when one party controls everything.

Is our federal government better off with partisan divide? Does it force deeper debate and compromise? I had never thought so until witnessing this Texas Legislative session.

The great experiment of democracy continues. Which system do you think creates the best public policy?

We truly do have your best interests at heart. We know you are the future of Texas and we want the very best for you.

Part of growing up is learning how to survive in tough times. Many of your families have faced economic challenges over the last few years. We know that you have sacrificed as a result of this.

Because your families faced challenges, your government is facing challenges too. We don’t have enough money to meet all the demand for services that we must provide.

Our number one concern is to maintain safety. We have to ensure that you are safe! Sometimes, a care giver or family member might lose their temper and harm you. We must make sure you have an opportunity to leave that situation. Unfortunately, budget cuts have caused us to be slower in responding to these needs but know that we are passionate about our care for you. It just may take us awhile to resolve the problem.

We are also committed to ensuring that you have access to education. We don’t have quite enough money to keep our guarantee but we are doing our best. Some of your teachers won’t return next year and you will probably have more playmates in your classes. Just think of all the new friends you will make when two classes merge together!

By the way, we know you love swimming pools and recreation too! Summer is such fun. Alas, we have had to trim the swimming pool budgets in most cities and cut back on those summer programs. Have you ever played in a sprinkler or danced in the rain? It can be great fun. Since we aren’t able to provide as many summer programs for you, maybe one of your parents or care givers can stay home with you more and teach you the simple joys of summer.

While it is not all good news for your next couple of years, we promise it will get better. You will be stronger for this difficult time you endured.

Just remember that your government really does care about you and your future!

Your Elected Leadership – State, Local and Federal