Dave McNeely

State leaders are calling for spending $150 million to deal with dysfunctional programs for foster kids, and other problems at Child Protective Services.

This follows the call of new Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Commissioner Hank Whitman for $142 million to cut workers' caseloads and speed response time.

The emergency money would go to hire 829 employees, including 550 caseworkers and investigators. It would also give $12,000 annual pay raises to existing workers, to cut down on their rapid turnover rate.

State leaders should be applauded for working to solve this problem of previous neglect.

The proposal now must be approved by the Legislative Budget Board, made up of House Speaker Joe Straus and four House members, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the presiding officer of the Texas Senate, and four senators.

Meanwhile, Patrick has spent a good bit of his time pursuing a transgender bathroom bill.

Hold your applause.

It would force public schools to limit transgender students to using the bathroom of the sex designated on their birth certificates, rather than the sex with which they identify.

Back in May, Patrick went to Fort Worth to call for the resignation of Fort Worth Independent School District Superintendent Kent Scribner, for saying the school district would comply with a federal order to allow students to use the bathroom of the sex with which they identify.

Since then, a Texas federal judge in August paused enforcement of the Obama administration's transgender bathroom mandate while the courts around the country wrangle over whether the administration had the power to issue the mandate.

Patrick says he wants to protect females from having males come in the women's bathroom under the guise of identifying as females. He calls his proposal the "Women's Privacy Act."

He designated it among his top legislative priorities, deserving of a low Senate bill number –SB 6 -- high on the list of bill numbers reserved for Patrick's political pets.

Defending what many observers consider a proposed solution for a nonexistent problem, Patrick told the Houston Chroniclein April that the legislation is still necessary.

"Transgender people have been going into the ladies room for a long time, and there hasn't been an issue that I know of," Patrick acknowledged.

"But if laws are passed by cities and counties and school districts to allow men to go into a women's bathroom because of the way they feel, we won't be able be able to stop sexual predators from taking advantage of that law, like sexual predators take advantage of the internet."

Although some observers note that there are already laws that deal with sexual predators, Patrick's concern may prevail in the Senate, where he has several ideological fellow travelers. Tougher sledding is expected in the more mainstream House.

“This isn’t the most urgent concern of mine,” House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, said at a Nov. 29 Texas Tribune pre-session legislative conference.

Straus's coolness toward Patrick's ideological pet is underlined by the Texas Association of Business, the state's chamber of commerce.

In a statement, the TAB estimated Patrick's bathroom ban for transgenders would cost Texas $8.5 billion and 185,000 jobs, from cancellations of events like Austin's South by Southwest festival, NCAA championships, decreased tourism, and groups and businesses boycotting the state.

After North Carolina passed its anti-transgender bathroom bill, the state experienced a significant loss in convention business, tourism, and music shows canceled by performers such as New Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen.

Several NCAA college basketball championship games were moved, and the National Basketball Association cancelled its All Star Game set for February.

The Atlantic Coast Conference shifted its women's college basketball tournament and college football championship game out of state, plus some other events.

The NCAA basketball Final Four is scheduled in San Antonio in 2018. Straus doesn't want Texas to risk the same fate as North Carolina.

“If it creates a situation like North Carolina went through, my enthusiasm would not be high for that,” Straus said.

"The thought that the NCAA or anyone else would boycott Texas because of this is ridiculous," Patrick insisted to the Houston Chronicle back in April. "It's more than offensive."

Patrick announced back then that he was joining a handful of other states in pushing for the bathroom bill. He said he was willing to risk potential political cost to himself.

“I think the handwriting is on the bathroom wall: Stay out of the ladies’ room if you’re a man,” Patrick said then.

“If it costs me an election, if it costs me a lot of grief, then so be it," he said. "If we can’t fight for something this basic, then we’ve lost our country.”

Guess we'll see.

Contact Dave McNeely at davemcneely111@gmail.com or 512-458-2963.