02/23/23 Chapter 6- Voting, Campaigns, and Elections

handicaps
Consideration of thousands of bills and resolutions each session means the legislative
work-
The load is very heavy. Very few of these proposals are substantively important, and
many are trivial matters that could more easily be left to administrative agencies.
Nevertheless, in the short 140-day session, legislators must acquaint themselves with
the proposals, try to push their own legislative programs, attend to a heavy burden of
casework, spend countless hours in committee work, meet with hometown and
interest-group representatives, and hear the professional views of state administrators
who implement programs. Although some legisla-tors are personally wealthy, those
who are not must also try to avoid going into debt because their salaries are inadequate
and their personal businesses or professions cannot be attended to when the legislature
is in session.

The legislators’ frustrations are especially evident when the biennial budget is
considered. Appropriations are the major battleground of legislative sessions. There
are always more programs seeking support than there is money available to support
them. Power struggles over money continue because each individual who promotes a
program—be it for highways, public schools, utilities rates, environmental protection,
lending rates, tort reform, law enforcement, or welfare administration—believes in
either its moral rightness or its economic justification. Who wins the struggle is
determined not only by the power and effectiveness of the groups backing a program,
but also by the political preferences of the legislators. Furthermore, the winners largely
determine public policy for the state because few government programs can operate
without substantial amounts of money. Chapter 12 examines the politics of the
budgetary process in detail. Lack of public understanding and support is another
handicap for legislators.

Changing alignments
Recent sessions of the legislature have been especially interesting because of shifting
alliances. While the lineup of interests for each party that we discussed in Chapter 4
holds most of the time, for most issues, the constant maneuvering of individuals and
groups can result in some surprising temporary coalitions. The situation that we
discussed earlier in this chapter, in which the Republican speaker of the house, Joe
Straus, was kept in his office for five legisla-tive sessions by Democratic votes, is an
example of the way that short-term maneuvering can sometimes cut across long-term
agreements. There is an old saying that sums up this view of the governing process:
“Politics makes strange bedfellows.”
Governor The governor is involved in lawmaking in two ways. First, by presenting
messages to the legislature giving actual recommendations on legislation, the governor
influences its outcome. The governor may also rally the support of political cronies
and lobbyists for or against a bill. Besides vetoing bills, the governor can threaten to
veto and so force changes in appropriations and other bills.

Administration In addition to the governor and lieutenant governor, the state

executive
The branch includes four other elected executives and two elected state boards. There
also are doz-ens of policy making boards and their staff. As noted earlier, the
administration (or bureau-cracy) has a tremendous effect on how legislation is carried
out. Because statutes are written in rather general terms to avoid unnecessary rigidity
and specificity, administrative policies, rules, and regulations are a must. Each board
policy made and each staff rule or regulation written supplement the statutes enacted
by the legislature and constitute lawmaking.

Courts The judiciary, too, has a role in lawmaking. The courts are frequently asked to
deter- mine whether a statute is in conflict with higher law. Both federal and state
courts can review legislative acts that have been challenged on the grounds of
unconstitutionality. In 2014, for example, the federal courts invalidated the state’s ban
on same-sex marriages. Federal and state judges also spend considerable time hearing
challenges to administrative interpreta-tions of laws. In fact, most of the civil dockets
of the courts are taken up with administrative matters—for example, whether an
agency has jurisdiction over the matter at hand or whether an administrative
interpretation is correct.Criticisms Extensive efforts to revamp state legislative
structures have been made by orga-nizations such as the National Legislative
Conference, the Council of State Governments, the Citizens Conference on State
Legislatures, and the National Municipal League. This last organization even produced
a Model State Constitution as a “companion piece” for its Model City Charter. But
state legislatures have been universally non-innovative. As Alexander Heard observed,
“State legislatures may be our most extreme example of institutional lag. In their for-
mal qualities, they are largely 19th-century organizations, and they must, or should,
address themselves to 20th- [and now 21st-] century problems.”23 Although that
sentence was written in 1966, state legislatures in general, and Texas’ in particular,
have changed surprisingly little since Heard made his analysis.
Criticism efforts to revamp state legislative structures have been made by orga-
nizations such as the National Legislative Conference, the Council of State
Governments, the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures, and the National
Municipal League. This last organization even produced a Model State Constitution as
a “companion piece” for its Model City Charter. But state legislatures have been
universally non-innovative.
Legislative process has also received its share of criticisms from public-spirited
observers.
The two most frequent criticisms are of the number of legislative committees and the
domi-nance of lobbyists. For example, in the senate, during the 2019 legislature, a
mere thirty-one members had to serve on sixteen standing committees. Overwhelmed
by the number of issues with which they must deal, and the constricted amount of time
with which they must think about those issues, senators frequently turn to lobbyists for
advice and information. During a session, the bill that survives may be one drafted and
urged by lobbyists, not one carefully crafted by a legislator. The short session, the
volume of legislation, and the dependence on lobbyists often make representatives and
senators less a reflection of the democratic ideal of representativeness and more a
demonstration of the practical reality of getting legislative work done.

Suggested reforms Interest in changing the structure of the Texas legislature has
centered
on sessions, size and salaries, and terms. The focus of process change is on the number
of
committees and uncontrolled lobbying. In reality, none of these elements is likely to
change.

Sessions The institution of annual legislative sessions has been a major reform
proposal
in all recent constitutional revision efforts. Annual sessions would allow legislators
time to
familiarize themselves with complex legislation, permitting them, for example, to
bring a lit-tle more knowledge to the chaotic guessing game that produces the state’s
biennial budget. Annual sessions would virtually eliminate the need for special
sessions when a crisis arises between regular sessions. They would allow time for the
continual introduction of all those special resolutions, such as declaring chili the
official state dish, that have negligible impor-tance for the general public, but take up
so much valuable legislative time. They also would provide an opportunity for
legislative oversight of the state bureaucracy. Coupled with ade-quate staff support,
annual sessions would allow legislators to engage in more long-range planning of
public policy.

Size Some advocates of reform have recommended that the Texas house be reduced in
size
to 100 members. Others have suggested that, because both houses are now elected on
the basis of population distribution, one house should be eliminated altogether and a
unicameral leg-islature adopted. But tradition strongly militates against such a change.
the state poses another risk to reducing the size of the legislature. As population and
thus dis-trict size continue to grow, citizens will increasingly lose contact with their
representatives. A reduction in the number of legislators would be a trade-off between
legislative efficiency and representativeness. Although efficiency is important to
citizens, so is being represented by someone from a small enough geographic and
population area to understand the needs of the people in the district.

Salaries More serious are recommendations for salary increases. The $7,200 salary is
insuf-ficient to allow legislators to devote their full energies to state business. A salary
in the range of the average among the nine other largest states—about $68,000—
would not, of course,guarantee that legislators would be honest and conscientious and
devote all of their working time to the business of the state.24 A decent salary level,
however, would ensure that those who wished to could spend most of their time on
state business. Moreover, it might also eliminate the retainer fees, consultant fees, and
legal fees now paid to many legislators. In addition, it would guard against the popular
suspicion that only the rich or the corrupt are able to run for public office.

Terms If senate members had staggered six-year terms and house members had
staggered four-year terms, legislators could be assured of having time to develop
expertise in both proce-dures and substantive policy.

Committees The senate managed to operate with only nine standing committees from
1973 until 1985, but now has sixteen. These numbers do not count subcommittees or
select committees in either house. Thus, both houses need to be wary of further
committee expansion. Having substantially fewer committees would result in less
ambiguity over committee jurisdiction.
Uncontrolled Lobbying Until legislators are able to declare their independence from
lobby-ists and state administrators, it will be impossible for the legislature to be truly
independent of all interests but the public interest. Such a change depends on many
factors: citizen attitudes, such as public willingness to allow adequate legislative
sessions, pay, and staff support for leg-islators; public financing of election campaigns;
and a commitment on the part of legislators to give up the social and economic
advantages of strong ties to the lobby.

Legislators are handicapped by having too many bills and resolutions to consider in a
short, bien-nial session, aggressive lobbying, little public support, and the need to
campaign continuously. They have to contend with constantly shifting political
alignments in the legislature and with the pol-icy preferences and edicts of other
branches of government. Better salaries, an annual session, fewer committees, and
increased staffing are among suggestions for improving the effectiveness of the Texas
legislature.

In both houses, passing a piece of legislation involves these steps: introduction,

committee action, and floor action. The two houses often disagree on major bills,
making a conference committee necessary. Once enacted, the legislation goes to the
governor who can sign it, veto it, or let it become a law without his or her signature.

Both the house of representatives and the senate are dominated by the presiding
officers—the speaker of the house and the president of the senate (lieutenant governor)
—who also control the committees and chair the boards overseeing staff agencies.
Although the speaker and lieutenant governor are the most important actors in any
session, lobbyists, the news media, campaign contribu-tors, public opinion, individual
representatives, and committee chairs can be crucially influential in a given set of
circumstances. Structurally, the committee system is crucial to the substance and flow
of legislation.