Disgruntled Democrats may grumble Bush only wanted political brownie points, that he was just copy-catting Gov. Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey or that he'll get the credit that belongs to the D's, who took his idea and made it a far, far better thing. Bush is still the man who got the deal off the dime, so good on him. The committee came up with the plan. The trouble with the Bush plan was it was pretty much a one-shot deal and would leave the Lege scrambling for money again in two years. We've known since the '60s that our public schools suffer from an overreliance on local property taxes.
Property taxes are stable and predictable, but they lag behind economic growth.
The Select Committee started with goals and worked backward from there. You can't cut property taxes that much without turning school finance upside down. Because the state is under court order to equalize school financing, the obvious solution was to broaden the school tax base as much as possible. They were surrounded by volumes and volumes sent over from the comptroller's office, detailing exemptions and loopholes. But the real snake's den is the corporate franchise tax, which corporations can evade by legally transmogrifying themselves into partnerships, and they have been doing so in ever-increasing numbers, with concomitant loss of income to the state.