Austin (WBAP/KLIF News) — The Texas Legislature is wrestling with a budget problem never anticipated. When lawmakers decided in 2009 to offer free college tuition to the children of many military veterans they did the math and figured there would be about 880 beneficiaries by 2014. The math was wrong. In fact, five years later the number of “legacy” students receiving free tuition had ballooned to 18,599 and is still growing.
This week two Texas House committees held discussions about how to slow the growth of the program without knowing how much it will cost a few years from now. Four years ago the Legislative Budget Board predicted that it would cost $380 million by 2019. The Texas Tribune reports another estimate was nonspecific but much lower and that the cost will level off as the number of living veterans declines.
