Texas college shooting: Are Texas lawmakers now ready to act?

A shooting at a Texas community college shut down the Houston-area campus while legislators in Austin, Texas offered a plan allowing communities to tax themselves to pay for school security.

Texas voters could decide whether to tax themselves to pay for armed guards or other public school safety measures under a plan outlined Tuesday by three Houston-area state lawmakers. At the same time the legislators discussed this in Austin, the Texas capital, a Houston-area college was in lockdown after a shooting wounded at least three.

The Texas School District Safety Act is the latest attempt to beef up security at public schools after last month's mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. State Senator John Whitmire, one of the bill's sponsors, said that while the original plan was to include only public school districts, lawmakers could consider whether to expand it to include college and university campuses.

Schools typically pay for security measures out of their general budgets. The plan broadly outlined Tuesday by Whitmire, State Sen. Tommy Williams, and State Rep. Dan Huberty would allow local schools to set up special taxing districts — if approved by local voters — to raise the money. Williams and Huberty are Republicans; Whitmire is a Democrat.

Williams, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, called the plan "a Texas solution to save lives without sacrificing freedoms" or instituting new gun control measures.

The plan is separate from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's call to have the state pay for special weapons and tactical response training for teachers and other school workers.

The Texas PTA called the School District Safety Act a "promising" plan that will "hopefully serve to shift the focus away from arming teachers and principals in our schools, a strategy the Texas PTA does not support."

The three lawmakers said school districts would have a dedicated source of money to pay for school safety measures. But because it may levy new property or sales taxes, the plan may also require an amendment to the state constitution, Williams said.

If approved, Williams and Whitmire said they would encourage school districts to contract with local law enforcement for security rather than try to create new, independent police agencies.

"We're not looking for school districts to have SWAT teams and tanks," Williams said.