Texas border effort gets $495 million boost after GOP leaders tap federal COVID-19 aid, shift funds

AUSTIN — Texas is scrambling to give you almost a half-billion {dollars} to pay the rising tab for its determination to submit Nationwide Guard troopers on the southern border.

As foreshadowed by a prime aide to Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month, Texas will liberate general-purpose state income that lawmakers beforehand budgeted for salaries of state staff by tapping federal coronavirus aid cash.

That may enable GOP state leaders to hurry $465.3 million to the Texas Army Division, whose prime chief has stated he’ll run out of cash on the finish of this month for the ten,000 troops who’re supporting Abbott’s Operation Lone Star. Different state businesses concerned with the border effort will share within the switch of one other $30 million.

On Friday, Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dade Phelan, Senate Finance Committee Chairwoman Joan Huffman and Home Appropriations Committee Chairman Greg Bonnen signed a letter to the heads of six state businesses approving the fund shifts. The letter didn’t acknowledge use of federal pandemic-relief funds, as an alternative focusing solely on the simultaneous reassignment of state general-purpose income {dollars}.

“These transfers are supposed to assist the deployment of the Nationwide Guard with $465.3 million and to assist border safety surge operations in different state businesses with $30 million,” the leaders wrote. “We perceive the Fiscal Years 2020-2021 appropriations would in any other case lapse and be unavailable to your businesses, and that the Fiscal 12 months 2022 appropriations have been absolutely funded with different sources, thus this switch is not going to have an effect on any company or program perform.”

In a joint information launch, the state GOP leaders blasted President Joe Biden for what Phelan referred to as “irresponsible” dealing with of immigration coverage.

The six businesses will fork over $248.8 million of state basic income from the fiscal 12 months that ended Aug. 31, and simply over $246.5 million from the present 12 months’s funds.

The cash goes to Abbott’s catastrophe fund, from which he’s been repeatedly transmitting cash for the Texas Nationwide Guard and Texas State Guard’s assist of the Republican governor’s immigration dragnet on the border with Mexico, in keeping with information obtained by The Dallas Morning Information utilizing the state’s open-records legislation.

Whereas some Democrats have fretted that Texas could also be misusing federal COVID-19 aid assist to assist finance Operation Lone Star, Abbott and prime GOP lawmakers have denied that. The Biden administration hasn’t objected, nor has anybody taken Texas to courtroom over its cash maneuvers.

The sequence of payments Congress handed through the pandemic, signed by each Biden and former President Donald Trump, allowed states to make use of their federal funds for salaries of state public well being and public security workers.

In early April, Sarah Hicks, director of coverage and funds in Abbott’s workplace, advised the Senate Committee on Border Safety the state may make up for shortfalls within the border safety effort through the use of as much as $600 million of the federal {dollars} to backfill salaries at well being, legislation enforcement and jail businesses, after which switch the freed-up state discretionary {dollars} to the border effort.

Federal ‘clawback’ worries

It’s a transfer that strikes some as misuse and one they fear may put the cash vulnerable to being clawed again by the federal authorities.

On April 8, although, Phelan, a Beaumont Republican who’s the Home’s presiding officer, stated his chamber “will take an extended, exhausting, deep dive in how we’re spending {dollars} and we’ll … make sure the federal clawback is [in the] entrance of our thoughts.”

The issue arose as a result of final 12 months, at the same time as they had been greater than quadrupling the state’s stage of spending on border safety, lawmakers gave the Texas Army Division solely $412 million for the present two-year cycle. In simply the primary 12 months of the cycle alone, it’s costing no less than $1.3 billion to maintain a number of thousand troopers on the border and hundreds of others in assist roles elsewhere.

If that’s repeated within the fiscal 12 months that begins Sept. 1, the state’s tab for border safety will soar previous $5 billion, from $800 million final cycle.

Of their letter Friday, Abbott and the 4 prime GOP legislative leaders stated the state general-purpose income that the six businesses had been providing has “been absolutely funded with different sources.” They didn’t elaborate.

Of their previous letters providing to yield the cash, company heads appointed by Abbott used variations of a theme acknowledged this week by Division of Public Security director Col. Steve McCraw, in his newest request to surrender cash.

“It’s vital that the Catastrophe Fund [in Abbott’s office] have enough monies out there to reply shortly and make sure the security of Texans,” McCraw wrote. “I can verify the company and its applications is not going to be negatively affected by this switch.”

After a January switch of $480.5 million from businesses that run state prisons and carry out legislation enforcement capabilities, to pay for the Nationwide Guard deployment, the brand new head of the Guard, Maj. Gen. Thomas Suelzer, advised senators earlier this month that cash would run out on the finish of April. He wanted $531 million extra to fund the Guard’s a part of Operation Lone Star via Aug. 31, Suelzer testified.

Since then, apparently, the Guard’s shortfall has shrunk barely.

Yielding the cash had been the Well being and Human Providers Fee, $210.7 million; Division of Public Security, $159.3 million; Texas Division of Felony Justice, $53.6 million; Division of State Well being Providers, $36.1 million; Texas Juvenile Justice Division, $31.3 million; and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Fee, $4.3 million.

Within the first few months of the Guard’s border mission, experiences emerged of issues with pay, a scarcity of kit and a string of suicides inside the ranks. In response, the army division issued a morale survey and pledged to deal with the problems.

This week, Abbott downplayed the issues.

“The criticisms had been overblown,” he advised Man Benson of Fox Information Radio. “Had been there some pay points? Sure, however they had been extraordinarily small in quantity.”

Abbott attributed Guard glitches to a surge of 14,000 Haitian migrants to Del Rio in September – a circumstance he says he couldn’t enable to be repeated.

“I stated that we can not have one other Haitian disaster like that ever happen,” he stated. “And so there needed to be an awfully fast deployment that led to, let’s say, a much less environment friendly rollout than what you’ll usually see.”