AUSTIN, Texas — With no fanfare, five of Texas’ top Republican leaders late last month moved nearly a half-billion dollars from three law enforcement-related state agencies to pay for the mounting costs of keeping thousands of National Guard soldiers deployed at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Leaders of the three money-yielding agencies — which run prisons and the state police and regulate bars — signed letters affirming their departments and programs wouldn’t be “negatively affected” by the transfers of about $480 million.
In a letter on Gov. Greg Abbott’s stationery granting approval on Jan. 26, he and four top legislative Republicans sought to underscore the point made by agency chiefs that the money transfers — funneled through a disaster fund in Abbott’s office to the Texas Military Department — wouldn’t harm law enforcement efforts but actually would augment preservation of law and order, given a migrant surge.
“We understand these were appropriations that would have otherwise lapsed at the end of fiscal year 2021, and thus this transfer will not affect any agency or program function,” Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dade Phelan and top budget writers Sen. Joan Huffman and Rep. Greg Bonnen wrote the three department heads.
Using the Texas Public Information Act, The Dallas Morning News has amassed letters and internal emails confirming what it reported in early January — that the $412 million that lawmakers approved for the National Guard’s part of Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” wasn’t nearly enough and that the cost could well be as much as $2 billion a year.
On Friday, Col. Rita Holton of the military department acknowledged that the latest cash infusion for the National Guard’s mission supporting Department of Public Safety officers at the border would last until the end of spring, at best. While Holton stressed that mission objectives and scope could change, she confirmed that, if nothing changes, $2 billion a year would be the cost.
Though the state’s coffers currently are brimming with dollars, Abbott’s border push, which he says is needed to make up for shortcomings in President Joe Biden’s approach to immigration, has sprung some public-relations leaks.
Some of the soldiers involved have complained of poor conditions, while others say they fear nonstop deployments may cause widespread retirements from the Guard. Late last month, 51 Democratic state representatives asked two federal agencies to investigate Operation Lone Star, saying among other things that it’s usurping federal powers, hassling innocent border residents and creating for unauthorized immigrants “a series of due process transgressions which warrant immediate review.”
Last week, several civil rights groups also called for a federal review of Abbott’s program of arresting migrants on state trespassing charges. The Texas Civil Rights Project, ACLU of Texas, Texas Fair Defense Project and other groups said Kinney County officials, who may have played a key role in formulating the state’s strategy, are in partnership with a private vigilante group of anti-immigrant activists.
The behind-the-scenes money transfers in Austin, known to only a handful of people, also illustrated a trend in which ever-fewer lawmakers are consulted in the interim between sessions about budget tweaks, some of which are turning out to be big tweaks never voted on by the Legislature’s full membership. Last summer, GOP leaders also used a five-signature letter to shift funds to make sure legislative staff members got paid, after Abbott vetoed the Legislature’s money during an elections-bill fight with Democrats.
On Friday, Dallas Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchía said the big cost overruns are troubling.
“Abbott’s primary border stunt has been incompetent and wasteful,” said Anchía, who is chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, which organized the Democratic lawmakers’ call for a probe of Operation Lone Star by the U.S. Justice Department and federal Department of Homeland Security. He was referring to Tuesday’s GOP gubernatorial primary, in which Abbott faces challengers from his right who’ve castigated as too timid his response to the border situation.
“First, he stiffed our soldiers without pay and now the whole operation is massively over budget,” Anchía said in a written statement.
Holton, the spokeswoman for the military department, said it has approximately 10,000 personnel assigned to the mission across the state and along the border. She highlighted a Thursday news release, issued in response to a unionization drive amid Guard soldiers, that said “78% of more than 1,100 hardship requests have been approved” and 90% of pay-discrepancy complaints have been resolved. Housing conditions also are improving at the border, said the department, releasing a video that shows new dormitory-style buildings installed near Laredo that will bunk four soldiers per room. Holton said the modular housing is expected to cost “less than current accommodations.”
Holton confirmed that, “at our current mission size and scope, this operation is going to cost about $2 billion per year.”
The $480 million of disaster-grant money that the military department just received “is anticipated to last through mid- to late spring,” Holton said in an email. The department “will request new tranches from the Office of the Governor as necessary to meet payroll needs and mission objectives.”
A spokeswoman for Abbott did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment on the National Guard deployment’s galloping cost.
According to letters and emails obtained by The News, the recent funds shuffle started with a Jan. 20 letter by Col. Steve McCraw, who heads the Department of Public Safety, which itself has deployed thousands of officers to the border since last March.
Offering $40 million of state revenue to the disaster fund maintained by Abbott’s office, McCraw said “the surge of individuals unlawfully crossing the Texas-Mexico border posed an ongoing and imminent threat of disaster for a number of Texas counties and for all state agencies affected by this disaster.”
McCraw also cited Abbott’s ongoing proclamations declaring COVID-19 “an imminent threat of disaster” statewide. DPS didn’t need the $40 million for its operations, he wrote Jerry McGinty, director of the Legislative Budget Board, and Sarah Hicks, Abbott’s director of budget and policy.
“It is critical that the Disaster Fund have sufficient monies available to respond quickly and ensure the safety of Texans,” McCraw said. “As these are appropriations that would otherwise lapse when Fiscal Year 2021 ended, I can confirm the agency and its programs will not be negatively affected by this transfer.”
Emails and documents released by McGinty’s agency show that the military department needed $50 million by Jan. 24 in order to meet “state active duty” payroll. By Jan. 28, it needed $205.5 million for “base camp renewals,” the temporary housing near Del Rio and Laredo, for February, March and April. And by Jan. 31, the military department needed an additional $224.17 million for state active duty payroll, “equipment, automation, supplies, materials, lodging and travel,” according to an attachment to a Jan. 25 email from Theresa Boland, chief financial officer in Abbott’s office.
In addition to the $40 million yielded by DPS, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which runs prisons, said in correspondence by its executive director, Bryan Collier, that it wanted to transfer to Abbott nearly $426.9 million. “I can confirm the agency and its programs will not be negatively affected by this transfer,” Collier wrote McGinty and Hicks on Jan. 25.
Brigadier General Bentley Nettles, who runs the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, used identical language to Collier’s in offering $13.6 million from his agency.
The state currently has a fat enough wallet to keep Operation Lone Star going through Aug. 31, 2023, the end of the current two-year budget cycle.
That’s mostly because the state’s economy bounced back fast from the COVID-19 pandemic’s dampening effects. Comptroller Glenn Hegar has estimated that $12 billion of unspent discretionary state revenue will pile up by the cycle’s end. However, according to a recent Legislative Budget Board summary, lawmakers would have to vote to bust a constitutional spending cap to draw down more than $4.4 billion of it.
When lawmakers convene again next January, they also could tap “rainy day” fund money. Hegar projects $12.6 billion of that will be unspent unless the Legislature draws down more.
Part of the reason the general state revenue fund balance, or “surplus,” is likely to be so big is that lawmakers swapped billions in federal COVID-19 relief aid for payroll costs at many state agencies, freeing up the state funds.
State lawmakers didn’t create as much new spending on programs as Congress, in passing stimulus bills in 2020 and 2021, hoped. Also, as they usually do, state lawmakers underfunded the state-federal Medicaid health insurance program for the poor and disabled — to the tune of $3.5 billion, by some estimates.
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