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.

What is a Speaker?

While most voters are focused on the midterm elections, taking place on Nov 6, 2018, there is another election that quite possibly may be of bigger significance for Texas residents.

On December 1, members of the Texas House Republican Caucus will meet to decide among themselves, who they want to be their choice as the next Speaker of the Texas House. With the retirement of Rep. Joe Straus, a Republican, who has held the position since 2009, a new Speaker will be chosen when the 86th Legislative session begins in January. For historical purposes, Speaker Straus won the speaker race in 2009 by garnering all 74 votes from the Democrat party along with 11 Republicans. In the preceding sessions, he continued to receive all democrat votes and a handful of Republican votes until 2017 when he received 100% from both sides. In 2017, he ran unopposed.

Ever since Rep. Straus took the speaker position, there has been a growing concern that many conservative bills were not being passed. There were many that believed conservative legislation, involving but not limited to policies such as gun rights, abortion and property taxes were not being passed, or even heard and passed out of committee's, while Straus was the speaker. The House Speaker has, among some of its duties, the responsibility to  appoint committee chairs and assigning bills to respective committee's. In 2017, Republicans controlled the House 95-55. Of the 40 main committee's in the House, only 9 had a Republican Chair and Vice Chair, two committee's had a Democrat Chair and Vice Chair. Overall, Speaker Straus appointed Democrats to chair 14 committee's, and Republicans to chair just 26. 

Because of the groundswell of voices throughout Texas, Republican Caucus chairman Tan Parker appointed a working group, that included our own Chris Paddie, HD9, to come up with a legal and enforceable procedure whereby the Texas House Republican Caucus selected the next speaker. The full report can be seen here. This group said among other things, 'there is no legal restrictions on the Republican caucus selecting or otherwise endorsing a nominee'. They also suggested that a Speaker candidate be selected from a majority of votes by the caucus. If there are more than 3 candidates and none of the candidates receive a majority of votes, then voting continues with the person receiving the least amount of votes eliminated, until one person receives the required majority.

In the March 2018 primaries, Texas Republicans voted overwhelmingly in favor of House Republicans selecting their speaker nominee and in June at the Texas GOP State convention, delegates said in their platform,  "Republicans in the Texas House should select their Speaker nominee by secret ballot in a binding caucus without Democrat influence". There are currently six confirmed individuals that have declared their intention to be speaker. It has also been reported that some of those six are recruiting democrat support ahead of the Dec 1 vote.

Will Texas House Republicans keep to what Texas Republicans want and elect a speaker candidate without Democrat influence? Will they reject any candidate that claims Democrat support? And will all Texas House Republicans stick to the candidate that comes out of the caucus? Voters should call or write their representative and tell them to only elect a candidate that is not courting Democrat votes and to stick with the plan to support the Republican Speaker nominee.

Jan 8, 2019 is the first day of the 86th legislative session and when a new speaker will be confirmed.