By Sherry Koonce

The News staff writer

BEAUMONT — Hurricane Ike recovery will dominate the Texas 81st legislative session, state lawmakers said Thursday.

State Senator Tommy Williams, R - The Woodlands, and state Representative Allan Ritter, D - Nederland, spoke during a Legislative Luncheon in Beaumont.

Hosted by Chamber of Commerces from Port Arthur, Orange and Beaumont, and the Southeast Texas Chapter of the Texas Association of Business, the quarterly luncheon also featured keynote speaker Paul Burka, senior executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine.

William’s said the state was haggling with FEMA right now over reimbursement of hurricane recovery costs.

“FEMA does not want to reimburse Texas 100 percent right now because we are setting on a big surplus,” Williams said.

Though Texas has $12.5 billion in the bank, the surplus doesn’t even amount to 10 percent of the current budget. A little more than half that amount, $7 billion, is earmarked for school finance reform, he said.

Texas is also gearing up for an expected influx of 160,000 to 180,000 new public school students across the state, according to population increase projections.

Williams said it will cost the state an estimated $2 billion to add those students.

At that rate, it will not take long for the $12.5 billion to be depleted, Williams said.

Finding alternate methods to fund the state’s transportation needs is another important issue state legislators will consider during the 2009 session.

Ritter said the upcoming session would be different from any he has seen because of the economy.

“This time we are going into a session where we have an economic downturn, not as bad as the rest of the country, but we are seeing some little signs,” Ritter said.

In other Hurricane Ike related matters, Ritter said the Southeast Texas state politicians were 100 percent behind keeping University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.