How Texas is paying for border security push under Operation Lone Star

AUSTIN — How is Texas paying for its border security initiative?

In the state’s current two-year budget cycle, the tab for Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star already has topped $4 billion.

With 11 months remaining in the cycle, it’s far from clear that state police and National Guard leaders have the wallet to keep operating at such a fever pitch.

To increase Texas’ spending on border enforcement fivefold, Abbott and the Legislature in part have used a standard approach, which is to fit the splurge into the two-year appropriations bill’s spending of state discretionary dollars — and come back and add more in a supplemental spending bill.

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But Abbott and four top Republican lawmakers also have resorted to unusual financial maneuvers since the Legislature, after three special sessions, went home for good last October.

Using disaster powers over the budget given to executive branch agencies under Abbott’s control, the GOP leaders pumped another $975.8 million into Operation Lone Star this year by recycling part of its bounty from federal COVID-19 relief packages to free up state discretionary dollars.

The money was shifted between agencies, with most covering shortfalls at the Texas Military Department. Until this summer, the department was deploying 10,000 people on missions related to border security.

Federal coronavirus relief money was a crucial part of the “matrix” of decisions that helped augment Operation Lone Star spending, Sarah Hicks, Abbott’s director of policy and budget, told House budget writers over the summer.

“If we didn’t have federal dollars, we would’ve had to make different decisions,” she told the Appropriations Committee on July 12.

Here’s a quick recap of the border security money moves:

2021 regular session

In last year’s regular session, lawmakers and Abbott increased spending to nearly $1.1 billion for the upcoming two-year cycle, compared with $800 million the previous one. This was out of state discretionary or “general revenue” funds.

August-September 2021 special session

In a special session that ended in early September, they added $1.8 billion more. This money was state discretionary money. Because the state was slow to spend all of the federal COVID-19 aid it received, even using some to “supplant” state general revenue spending, it became increasingly hard to say where the money was coming from.

November 2021

By the end of the year, Operation Lone Star needed money. The Legislature approved funding 2,500 state National Guard soldiers for one year. But Abbott was facing criticism from hard-right opponents in the GOP gubernatorial primary. He instead ordered four times as many soldiers and support staff to pitch in on the border mission. The 10,000-person deployment level was reached by November.

January 2022

The governor and the Legislative Budget Board, a 10-member group of key lawmakers that is co-chaired by the lieutenant governor and House speaker, may shift money in case of an emergency.

But for two Operation Lone Star transfers this year, Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dade Phelan, Senate Finance Committee Chairwoman Joan Huffman of Houston and House Appropriations Chairman Greg Bonnen of Friendswood went around the board. Citing disaster-related budget authority the Legislature passed in the 2019 session, they approved transfers from three state agencies on Jan. 26.

The prison system, the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said they were sitting on nearly half a billion dollars that would just “lapse” if not transferred, the result of the federal government reimbursing some of the state’s Coronavirus Relief Fund spending. In a move at odds with past practices, the additional federal money was applied retroactively to the prior cycle, replacing state dollars used for employee salaries.

Noting the border situation had been declared a disaster by Abbott, leaders of three state agencies asked if they could transfer money to a disaster fund in his office. The fund is being used, among other things, to help cover Operation Lone Star’s shortfalls.

April 2022

In April, seven state agencies offered up almost another half-billion dollars. It consisted of unspent money they had, in roughly even portions, from the 2020-21 budget cycle and the current one. Agency executives wrote that they were “fully funded” for the first year of the current cycle, which ended last month. Abbott and the quartet of GOP legislative leaders approved, again invoking the 2019 disaster provision.

Austin Rep. Donna Howard, the longest-serving Democrat on the House Appropriations committee, said at the July hearing she had to “really dig and search” to understand what GOP leaders had done.

“I’m just asking that these kinds of things be made more transparent,” Howard said. “If it’s not going to be through budget execution, then another way to make it transparent. Because it was a bunch of flip-flops in method of finance.”

On Monday, Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said Texas’ money moves were foreshadowed in leaders’ statements at news conferences and in news releases.

“All funding and appropriations for Texas’ border mission have been visible and above board,” Eze said in a written statement.

After applying Coronavirus Relief Fund money to hospital surge staffing and COVID-19 tests and therapeutic treatments, “we followed the same rules as every other state, city, and county, by using CRF to pay the salaries and benefits for public health and public safety state employees who were directly engaged in the state’s COVID response,” she said.

Where did the money go?

The January fund shift of $480.5 million went entirely toward National Guard costs.

Of the April transfer of $495.3 million, $465.3 million went to the military agency. Other state agencies involved in Operation Lone Star shared in the transfer of the other $30 million.

Future Operation Lone Star spending

More money will be needed soon, certainly for the National Guard and possibly also for DPS.

This week, the National Guard confirmed it’s devoting far fewer personnel to Operation Lone Star than it was just a few months ago — the result of “effective and efficient operations” that include more use of boats and unmanned aircraft and more roving patrols and construction of more border fence.

“We have expanded capabilities while allowing some service members to return home,” the state Military Department said in a written statement. It declined to put a precise number on current deployment levels, other than “over 5,000 service members.” Just to conclude the two-year cycle, which ends Aug. 31, 2023, the department will need more money. It’s unclear how much.

Can the state sustain an investment of $4 billion or $5 billion per cycle in border enforcement?

Texas has a large surplus. It’s very dependent on sales tax, though. If there’s a recession, border security will compete with traditional programs such as education, health care, prisons and public safety for scarce state general-revenue dollars. Elections can result in changes to both federal and state immigration and border security policy, making any guess fraught with uncertainty.