Texas House and Senate leaders say a budget deal is near. That’s good news — and we commend lawmakers for their commitment to rein in spending.

But there are some troubling details in both versions of the proposed budget.

First, let’s be careful about what we call a “tax break.” Legislators who are using budgetary tricks like “property tax cuts” and revisions to rollback rules aren’t being honest. State politicians can’t cut property taxes because they don’t levy property taxes. And any policy change at the state level is really just a transfer — what we used to call “unfunded mandates.” In other words, state lawmakers are proposing to give taxpayers a break — with someone else’s money.

Second, lowering the threshold for rollback elections is a bad policy for two reasons. It punishes fiscally conservative cities like Tyler, because when you run a tight ship, your margins are tight, as well. Lowering the rollback threshold from 8 percent to 4 percent means that at Tyler’s low tax rate, virtually any movement in appraised values could throw the city into a contentious rollback situation.

Another reason lowering the threshold is a bad idea is the principle of local control. It’s Austin making policy for local entities, when local entities are much more answerable to the voters. Any policy change should be gauged by whether it moves power away from us and toward Austin, or moves power closer to us. Local control is best.

The Legislature’s urge to “return money to the taxpayers” isn’t the truly conservative thing to do here. Sure, it’s popular with short-sighted conservatives. But the fiscally responsible thing to do is to pay down the debt — racked up not by the “tax-and-spend Democrats,” as state Rep. Bryan Hughes once noted, but by the “borrow-and-spend Republicans.”

And there’s plenty of debt, not to mention unfunded obligations such as the Teacher Retirement System.

State Sen. Kevin Eltife has gotten some heat from ultra-conservative Empower Texans for his fiscally responsible position — that debt is too expensive to ignore, and only gets more so. But who has more impeccable conservative credentials, with Tyler as the ultimate model of fiscal sanity?

Some lawmakers argue that putting money in the hands of taxpayers will act as an economic stimulus. Where have we heard that before? A government stimulus, ultimately financed by debt, is not conservative.

The Senate’s version is a $211.4 billion biennial budget. The House version is $209.8. The differences are broader than the numbers would make it appear.

The House version has some reimbursement rate increases for doctors who see Medicaid patients. Those rate hikes are necessary; without them, we’ll see even fewer doctors accepting new Medicaid patients.

Both versions add new funding for schools; the Senate increases education funding by $1.2 billion, compared to the House’s $3 billion. Because this is the budget that will be in effect when the federal school finance lawsuit is eventually decided, it would be wise to err on the high side here — chances are, we’ll need it.

Texas remains the model for the rest of the nation. If lawmakers in Austin could conjure the political courage to practice real conservative policies, such as those enacted in Tyler, there is no limit to what our state could achieve.