Texas Casinos to Help Fund Education?

Should he be elected, the Texas gubernatorial candidate, Andrew White, has no doubts where his first line of action will be urgently aimed. White’s major goal is to improve the state’s public school system, having remarked that the current state of schooling in Texas is at an “educational emergency”; and he knows just how to do it.

White has a $9 million plan that should facilitate achieving this noble goal and that money could be, at least partly, covered by casino money. The spending package will be paid for by removing the commercial property tax breaks, which should “redirect $1 billion in border security funds and expanding gaming at horse tracks for $3 billion.” The budget issues most schools in Texas are facing could be covered by the gambling money. The Lone Star state has four venues for horse racing and some tribal casinos with slot machines.

White and his Democrat challenger Lupe Valdez are quite close in the polls, within 10% of the Republican, Gregg Abbott. The question of public education could entice some left-leaning voters to vote for White. Some of the minutiae of his general plan for public schools in Texas is to give all teachers the $5000 compensation or tuition bonus, increase the cost of living adjustment for retirees and hand out the $5000 scholarship to all high school students who graduate with a 3.0 GPA or higher.

His counter-candidate, Valdez, approves the measures for education but does not think that gambling is the answer to that, commenting: “I’m not sure that the good outweighs the bad. I can be convinced, though.”