Texas House Dis-Appointments

Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen released his much anticipated committee appointments on January 23rd for the 86th session of the legislature. Even after a disappointing general election for Republicans, where they saw their numbers dwindle in the House, there was still some optimism going into this session simply because of two factors. 1. Republicans still controlled the House and 2. Speaker Straus was no longer in charge. The latter was famous for putting in place committee chairs that would thwart any real conservative legislation getting through to the House floor. People across the State heard Speaker Bonnen say, the Republican Legislative Priorities were his Priorities and he would be more fair to let members control what goes on in the House.

So lets take a look at how the committee's fared. Out of 34 committee's, 22 have Republican Chairs, and 17 Vice Chairs. Only four committee's had both a Republican Chair and Vice Chair. Of the 22 Republican Chairs, they have a combined negative -.17 score on the 2017 Liberal-Conservative Score composed by Mark Jones of Rice University. This means, as a combined group, they are less conservative than 1/3 of the Republicans in the House. A score of .02 according to the study means you are more conservative than half your peers.

I also looked at the combined scores of the Committee Chairs from the Fiscal Responsibility Index by Empower Texans. That average score was 56 out of 100.  Of the four most important committees in my opinion, State Affairs, Homeland Security, Ways & Means, and Calendars, the average Lib-Con score is -.51, with a far left Democrat, Pancho Neveraz chairing Homeland Security. This committee usually sees gun rights issues come up. Even the makeup of these four committee's do not lend confidence in any conservative policies coming to the floor.

It is hard to see how any of the Texas GOP Legislative priorities will see daylight in this session with these committee makeups. Property Tax Reform and School Finance Reform might come in some form but they probably won't be anything conservatives will like. Gun rights and Abortion issues will probably be dead in the water. I won't be holding my breath.

The 86th begins without the fireworks

Last Tuesday, January 8th was the first day of the new legislative session in Texas. The biggest and most notable difference was that Joe Straus was no longer in attendance. Gone are the days of favoritism, lobby controlled legislation winding its way through committees, and stopping ones that would benefit the conservative cause. Tuesday, saw a new speaker sworn in to office for the first time in 10 years. Dennis Bonnen, a representative from Angleton, Tx., assumed the mantle of Speaker of the House for the 86th session. Speaker Bonnen was elected by unanimous vote of the entire body and perhaps more importantly, nominated unanimously by the House Republican Caucus earlier in December. You can see his acceptance speech Here starting at the 1:16:00 mark

The only other item of business for the week was the passing of the House Rules for this session. After last year, where the Rules debate became quite contentious and lasted several hours, this years debate barely lasted an hour and the fireworks were mostly duds. Only two amendments drew the ire of some activist across Texas. The first was an amendment by Rep. Matt Schaefer, (read here) from Tyler, which sought to increase staff budgets during the period between sessions, to the same amount they get during the session. It failed, but he and many members of the Freedom Caucus received criticism for it, due to it being perceived as not being fiscally conservative. The second amendment that drew some flak was by Rep. Jonathan Stickland, from Bedford. (read here) He proposed that constituents should be able to register their opinions, for/against a bill, at House District offices, rather than having to drive to Austin to do so. This amendment also failed but with mixed support from Freedom Caucus members. This particular amendment received the greatest amount of backlash from conservative activist around the state.

For some context, in the 85th session, during the rules debate, there were many amendments brought forth that tried to increase the transparency in which the House conducted its business. For instance, Rep Tony Tinderholt tried to pass rules that required the Calendars Committee to publish a record vote when that committee decided to pull a particular bill from reaching the floor. Many people, were expecting for this session to see the same types of rule changes proposed. Rep. Stickland's amendment, which he proposed in the 85th, was the only attempt this year at some resemblance of requiring the House to be more transparent. This author reached out, to several representatives from East Texas, in order to get a better understanding of why this rule was defeated so easily. Only Matt Schaefer and Cole Hefner responded. The biggest concern for each of them was that this rule change would have put some undo pressure in the district offices, which are already understaffed and underpaid. They also said the process and implementation of the rule change hadn't been completely vetted and properly studied in regards to fiscal issues. See Matt Schaefer's comments.

One thing is for sure, transparency in the House is still lagging. The House may operate on a better tone and less divisiveness, now that a new Speaker is in charge, but until Texans start seeing actual changes to how the House operates, there will always be some skepticism.