I'm Stephanie Wolf with a brief look at the latest news in Texas politics and
policy from the Texas Tribune. The US Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden's
student debt forgiveness plan last week. That, coupled with the end of COVID
related relief, means Texans with college loans will be expected to resume or begin
payments later this year. Texans have the second highest amount of student debt in
the country, behind Californians, and the High Court's decision affects one point four
million of those Texas borrowers who had already been approved for forgiveness of student loan
debt. There are, however, other changes in the works that could ease
their financial load, such as the Saving on a Valuable Education Plan or save
It's, an update to the revised pay as You Earn Plan, a large
federal program that calculates payments based on one's income. Under the current iteration,
borrowers pay ten percent of their discretionary income each year aka the part of their
earnings that exceeds one hundred and twenty five percent of the poverty guideline. In
a number of cases, the payments calculated with this method end up lower than
the monthly interest. The unpaid interest gets added to the overall debt, meaning
borrowers, despite compliance, see their debt go up. With the SAVE update,
this will no longer happen, and any remaining debt after twenty years of
on time payments would be canceled. Borrowers might also be eligible for the pay
as you earn plan, the Income based Repayment Plan, and the Income Contingent
Repayment Plan. The updated SAVE program doesn't go into effect until this time next
year, though several aspects of it are slated to kick in before the October
deadline for borrowers to resume their monthly payments. That includes changing the definition of
discretionary income, ending a cruel of unpaid interest, and allowing married borrowers to
file separate tax returns for income calculation purposes. Less than twenty percent of Texas
borrowers are on income driven repayment plans. Groups that advocate for affordable higher education
say many don't know these plans even exist. Roughly one hundred Houston area criminal
appeals were recently found after essentially being lost for the last decade plus. Judges
and attorneys have been scratching their heads over how this could have happened and whether
anything can be done to address the legal questions raised in the appeals. A
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals judge labeled them the Lost and Found cases. They
were discovered last year, according to a county district Clerk's office. In a
statement, the office said judges found dozens appending cases in which people were challenging
the constitutionality of their convictions or sentences. They were all filed in or before
twenty thirteen. A procedural rule change in twenty thirteen mandated district clerks to send
such cases to the state's Court of Criminal Appeals within six months after filing.
Officials say the cases have since been forwarded to the state's highest criminal court,
but offered no explanation as to why there were years long delays in the first
place. It's unknown how many other criminal appeals went unheard, and it's also
not clear whether the approximately one hundred recently discovered cases will get their day in
court. A University of Texas criminal law professor says the passage of time will
also complicate a fair adjudication, and adds that it will ultimately fall on the
Court of Criminal Appeals to determine the course of action. Check for updates to
any of these stories at Texas Tribune dot org, and follow the Brief podcast
for daily news updates wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stephanie Wolf with the
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