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Gov. Greg Abbott’s freeze on state government hiring was among the items mentioned in his State of the State address Tuesday that deserve wide public support. It is simply the prudent course given the revenue projections reported to the Legislature. An oil and gas slump means less revenue while critical needs loom — public schools and the state’s child welfare system chief among them.

The governor urged the right actions on those last two items as well, even if he didn’t name them as emergency items.

“If you do nothing else this session, cast a vote to save the life of a child,” Abbott told legislators, referring to the child welfare system that a federal judge declared was bad for the state’s most vulnerable citizens.

To that point, the governor wisely exempted the Department of Family and Protective Services from the hiring freeze. Other waivers will be available on a “case by case” basis and when matters of public safety are at stake.

While he focused on his proposal on prekindergarten education, in prepared remarks, he said this on public education generally: “I think we can all agree it’s time to put school finance litigation behind us. It’s time to stop fighting about school finance and start fixing our schools.”

That’s absolutely correct. The litigation will stop when schools are adequately resourced. Unfortunately, fixing the state’s school financing methods was not among the five emergency action items he laid out for the Legislature. It should have been. And we view the governor’s support for school choice as harmful to public education generally.

His emergency items were early education, higher education research, transportation funding, paying for border security and ethics reform.

Four of these we actively support, though we differ on details. On ethics, for instance, the Legislature must tackle the issue of dark money. The state needs a requirement to disclose the sources of large contributions to political nonprofit groups.

And the state must make a better case than it has on border security. Early reports are that we’ve gotten too little for the infusion of state troopers along the border — and the governor wants to add 500.

Texans have a right to ponder the need for further state action at the border if only on a cost/benefit basis. Moreover, it appears, rightly or wrongly, that the Trump administration is making border security a priority, which prompts the question of whether this should also be a state priority.

And that is also a reason the Legislature should not heed the governor’s call for banning so-called sanctuary cities. It is also on the Trump radar. He has threatened to withhold federal funding from cities that refuse to cooperate with immigration authorities. One can dispute the need for this even on the federal level, but it calls into question the necessity for state action on the same issue.

The state’s budget should be about addressing the state’s critical needs. Banning sanctuary cities is not among them, as most Texas jails already honor immigration requests on detaining possible deportees, and police acting as immigration agents will chill relations between the immigrant community and police. Crimes will not be reported, witnesses will not be forthcoming, and an already vulnerable population will be made more so.

The governor’s budget proposes $4 billion a year to build more roads, the money coming from Proposition 1 funding approved by voters; a ban on diverting highway funds for any other purpose; and dedicating one-half of the motor vehicle sales tax to roads.

We support all these strategies but urge some recognition that the state cannot build its way out of this problem. Alternative transportation — mass transit and light rail, for instance — must also be in the mix. Local governments can always use more help on these.

But we return to school financing and the state’s inadequate child welfare system. They belong on the top of any list of legislative priorities this session.

It’s true; the state has many needs. The Legislature must keep its eye on the most critical of these and not be distracted by far less important peripheral issues — a bathroom bill, a topic on which the governor was silent during his address, school choice and sanctuary cities chief among these.

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