Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has proposed using several billion dollars from the state’s Economic Stabilization Fund, commonly known as the ‘Rainy Day Fund’ to help with the recovery from Hurricane Harvey, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Patrick fought hard in the Special Session in July against using Rainy Day Fund money to help fund schools, but political analyst Alan Saxe of U.T. Arlington says he is not surprised that the state’s leading conservative is an advocate of dipping into the state’s savings account.
“I think it is a very good likelihood, as the expenses grow, and usually, at the very first glimpse, when they talk about money, it is usually, strangely enough, on the conservative side.”
Lawmakers have been reticent to dip too far into the Rainy Day Fund, which is replenished by the state’s oil and gas revenue, because lower oil prices have depressed the income the state is receiving from drilling.
But Saxe says Hurricane Harvey is exactly the type of emergency that the Rainy Day Fund was designed to help.
“I believe that the hurricane is one of those emergencies,” he said. “They are not going to take all of it, there are billions and billions of dollars in there, but this would be a very good reason to go into it.”
The $10 billion in the Economic Stabilization Fund will be just a drop in the bucket of the estimated $180 billion damage caused by Hurricane Harvey to the Corpus Christi, Houston, and Beaumont areas, but lawmakers say it is important that the state move quickly to help deal with the most serious damage.
Approving spending from the Rainy Day Fund would require a two thirds vote of both the House and Senate, presumably in an emergency session.