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.