Perry proposes monthly payments to help poor buy health insurance

AUSTIN (AP) — Gov. Rick Perry wants to cut the number of uninsured Texans in half by giving low-income workers a monthly stipend to help them buy coverage through their employer or a private company.

Perry’s “Healthier Texans” plan, which he outlined Tuesday in his biennial State of the State speech, calls for spending about $625 million a year on monthly premium subsidies of up to $150 per person.

Lawmakers and advocates for doctors and the poor praised the governor for bringing attention to the growing problem of the uninsured. One in four Texans, or more than 5.5 million people, lack health insurance, according to a study released last week by the Texas Health Institute.

But many were hesitant to embrace the plan before seeing more details, especially on Perry’s proposal to partially pay for it by selling the state lottery.

Parolee set to die Wednesday for strangling of stepdaughters

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The handwritten note, signed by James Jackson and addressing his wife and two stepdaughters, lamented how he had no job and couldn’t care for them.

“I gave them back to God,” Jackson wrote. “He and they will understand.”

Jackson insisted it was a prayer left in a Bible study folder. Harris County district attorneys said it was confirmation of a confession he gave to police in which he acknowledged strangling the three nearly 10 years ago.

A jury believed the prosecutors, convicted him of capital murder after 30 minutes of deliberation, then decided he should be put to death for killing his stepdaughters.

The punishment for Jackson, 47, was set for Wednesday evening. The lethal injection would be the fourth this year in the nation’s busiest capital punishment state and the first of three scheduled for this month.

Texas issues first lease for geothermal development

AUSTIN (AP) — Texas has awarded the state’s first lease for geothermal energy production to a company planning to explore the renewable energy’s potential along seven Gulf Coast counties.

Ormat Technologies, Inc. paid $55,645, or $5 an acre, for the right to explore 11,129 acres for pockets of hot water and steam under the ocean floor, the General Land Office announced Tuesday.

The Texas Permanent School Fund, which helps funds the state’s public education, will get 10 percent of any energy revenues that Reno, Nev.-based Ormat produces on state land.