Tag Archives: Texas Legislature

HISD Plays Chicken with Texas Legislature

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The Texas Tribune details the Hobson’s Choice facing voters residing within the Houston Independent School.  Under the “Robin Hood” plan HISD is due to send $165 million to poorer school districts subject to voter approval.  The voters can turn down the plan, but then the district faces the prospect of having some of its most expensive real estate figuratively moved to another close-by poorer district.  That is, if the voters say ‘no’ to the incredibly poorly worded proposition on the November ballot, then the state can take some expensive real property off of the HISD rolls and instead assign it to another district to boost its property tax base.  Locals bigwigs are lining up behind the “no” vote in the hopes that the Legislature will blink when faced with the proposition of telling the largest school district in the state that it is stripping away some $18 billion of its tax base.  And the kicker is, the obligation to pay the $165 million is still there – only to be paid by the smaller number of taxpayers.   Red envisions James Dean speeding towards the cliff and this time his sleeve gets caught in the door handle.

Texas Cities Under Attack by State Senate

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The Dallas Morning News reports that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Tea Party dominated Texas Senate are working diligently to restrict local governments from straying too far from his conservative vision – the will of the local voters be damned.

The read out: Many of the Legislature’s most conservative members don’t like what they see.

On Monday, a Senate panel heard accusations that city governments abusively have tried to squelch ballot initiatives and complaints that school districts and other local taxing entities too often aren’t candid when they ask voters to approve bond issues.

It was a preview of more fights to come in next year’s legislative session over bonded indebtedness and local control on issues that include transgender people in bathrooms, red-light cameras and fluoride in the drinking water.

Last fall, Patrick asked the Senate Intergovernmental Relations Committee to study whether more information about proposed local borrowing should be provided to citizens in the voting booth and whether about 300 “home rule” cities have too much leeway in flicking off unwelcome referendum petitions.

As suspected, Texas conservatives are all for smaller and more local government – except that is when they disagree with the outcome.  Then big state government has to come into play to enforce Tea Party ideological purity.  And next to the word “hypocrite” in the dictionary – big picture of your Lt. Gov.

Texas Allows Guns in Mental Hospitals

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Please don’t claim that you are surprised to find out that a State Mental Hospital cannot ban visitors from bringing guns into the facility.  Hospital officials, however, were taken off guard when they recently discovered that under Texas law the longstanding practice of prohibiting handguns at the ten state psychiatric hospitals was illegal – and had been for years.

“Patients in our facilities are a danger to themselves or others,” Cathy Campbell, a policy coordinator for the state hospitals, wrote in a December email. “It seems inconceivable that we would require visitors to store box cutters but allow them to bring a gun on campus.”  But despite Campbell’s concerns, the law in Texas does not allow the state-run hospitals to ban handguns.

Tom Benning of the Dallas Morning News has the whole sad story of how the Texas Legislature failed to foresee the consequences in their zeal to promote more guns in the state.

Lawmakers who passed gun carry laws in the 1990s don’t appear to have contemplated the scenario. Carve-outs in the law and later legislative tweaks fuzzed things. At some point, “no guns” signs were posted at those hospitals. And until last year, the setup went largely unnoticed.

Officials with the Department of State Health Services have now taken steps to mitigate the risk of a patient accessing a gun – posting signs, for example, that ask visitors to voluntarily keep guns away.

But at least one facility, Austin State Hospital, has been slow to put up the new signs — which remain difficult to notice. And though there’s optimism that lawmakers will address the issue next year, the state remains in somewhat uncharted territory.

“It defies comprehension,” Dorthy Floyd, superintendent at Terrell State Hospital, wrote in an email in January. The News obtained the emails under the state’s open-records law after the gun policy earned international attention in January.

State-run psychiatric hospitals are just one of several government institutions re-evaluating their firearms policies these days. Private mental hospitals continue to have the right to bar guns on their property.

Today in Texas History – April 22

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From the Annals of the Police State –  In 1873, the Texas state legislature – once again in the hands of the then reactionary and racist Democratic Party –  repealed the law that had authorized the State Police.  The TSP had been formed during the administration of Governor Edmund J. Davis to combat crime during Reconstruction and the force worked primarily against racially based crimes.  Even worse for the unreconstructed Texans was the fact that the force included black police officers.  The TSP were replaced by the reformed Texas Rangers.  The state would not have another police force until the creation of the Texas Department of Public Safety in 1935.  The DPS would not have a black trooper until Adolph Thomas graduated from the DPS Academy in 1969.

Entire 5th Circuit to Decide Fate of Texas Voter ID Law

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The Texan Republican Party’s Voter ID law passed by the Legislature still has some life.  A U.S. District Court in Corpus Christi ruled that the law (known as Senate Bill 14) was in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and that decisions was upheld by a 3 judge panel of the Fifth Circuit.  Now the entire Court has decided to hear the case – which is likely an ominous sign for the voters of Texas.  The notoriously conservative court of appeals is likely to uphold the discriminatory law whose only purpose is to suppress voter turnout for poor, elderly and non-white citizens.

At trial, the burden was on the law’s opponents to show discriminatory impact and the plaintiffs succeeded.  Unfortunately, the State does not have the burden to establish a rationale basis for the law.  Unfortunate, because it would be impossible to do so.  There is no in person voter fraud in Texas that has ever affected the outcome on an election – at least not on the part of the voters.  Texas has been unable to point to more than one or two reported instances of in person voter fraud.  Everyone who knows anything about elections knows that all the potential electoral hanky-panky occurs with the mail in ballots.  And the Voter ID law does nothing to prevent that.  This has always been about Republicans attempting to suppress the vote and nothing more.  Shame on the GOP for promoting this farce.

Hold Your Horses – Literally

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A dispute amongst factions of the Texas GOP will result in a shut-down of Texas horse racing this week.  Although, the Texas racing industry has never taken off as envisaged in the 80’s, this internecine dispute will disrupt legal horse racing in Texas.  The Texas Racing Commission does not have funding to continue in operation and Texas law requires Racing Commission supervision at all tracks in the state.  The Houston Chronicle explains the root cause behind the shut down.

Texas Racing Commission officials have stopped signing off on new races and started warning that the agency will shutter by the end of the month unless the Legislative Budget Board approves a funding request.

“Absent the necessary approvals from the LBB, the agency will no longer be able to pay its employees or its rent and will close by the end of the day on August 31, 2015,” commission executive director Chuck Trout told a lawyer representing the tracks in a letter last Friday, adding that, “if the agency closes, all racing will also stop.”

Commission officials believe the board controlled by lawmakers will ultimately approve the money if they repeal a controversial new racing game, but the warning nevertheless has plunged Harris County’s Sam Houston Race Park and others around the state into unexpected uncertainty. State law requires commission staff to attend each race, so closure could leave the tracks unable to operate.

The tumult marks a dramatic escalation in a year-long battle between the commission and some lawmakers over the new game, known as “historical racing.”

Also known as “instant racing,” the game allows players to bet on previously-run races that have been stripped of identifications. It is seen by the tracks as a necessary innovation to help them to keep up with states where more betting is allowed, but it has drawn opposition from critics who say the terminals resemble slot machines and would expand gambling here while hurting charitable bingo groups.

The commission approved historical racing last summer over the objection of Senate Republicans, who sent a letter saying the agency did not have the authority to make such an authorization unilaterally.

Photo from www.bloodhorse.com

Representative Democracy Under Fire

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The Texas Election Law Blog  examines the possible destructive effect on American democracy should the Supreme Court rule in favor of the petitioners in Evenwel v. Abbott.

The plaintiff argues that Texas should not base state redistricting on the distribution of its population, but rather on the distribution of its voters. The motivation for the case is to strip power from urban areas in favor of the rural conservatives.

Central to the conservative argument is that apportionment of representation by population size “dilutes” the power afforded to voters by distributing representation based on both the voting population and all the other people (kids, foreigners, prisoners, non-voters) who happen to live in a state House or Senate district.

In other words, the plaintiff believes that government representatives do not serve all the people in their district. The plaintiff believes that government representatives serve only the people who vote, and everyone else can suck eggs.

The potential impact of this case dwarfs the recent decisions upholding the Affordable Care Act and legalizing same-sex marriage.  While those cases have sex-appeal to the general public, a case about apportionment of legislative seats must seem dull in contrast.  But, if the Supreme Court bites on the argument that only voters should count for apportionment purposes, there will be a fundamental shift in political power that will make the Republicans current gerrymandering of their way into entrenched legislative power seem like weak tea indeed.  There would be a massive shift of representation away from urban populations to rural areas and older white voters would exert an even more outsized influence on the body politic.  This could cement extreme right-wing control of state and federal legislative bodies for another 40 or 50 years.

 

Today in Texas History – July 13

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From the Annals of Unclaimed Prizes – In 1903, the Texas legislature chose to offer a $50,000 prize for discovery of a way to rid Texas of the boll weevil. The proclamation was made from the steps of the Capitol in Austin.  A Boll Weevil Commission was appointed by Gov. S.W.T. Lanham to evaluate the claims and claimants to the prize.  The prize offered by the legislature made both themselves and the boll weevil a figure of fun for newspapers throughout the nation, and this episode is sometimes found in civics or government texts as an illustration of the foolishness of lawmaking bodies.  No one ever came forth to make a claim for the prize – an enormous sum in its day.

Bring Your Textbooks, Notebook, LapTop, Pens and .38 Special

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The Texas Tribune reports that the conservative quest to have more guns on Texas campuses is still alive.  Despite repeated admonitions from university administrators across the board (except shamefully for John Sharp at Texas A&M), the Legislature is more interested in kowtowing to its extreme right wing than doing what is in the best interests of our state universities and their students.

Campus carry legislation lived to fight another day as a last-minute deal saved Senate Bill 11 just before a midnight deadline in the House to take initial votes on bills originating in the Senate.

The dramatic scene occurred close to 11:30 p.m. The House had just spent 30 minutes considering a point of order raised by San Antonio Democrat Trey Martinez Fischer. With about 100 filed amendments awaiting debate, many had already started writing the obituaries for the legislation that would require public colleges and universities to allow concealed handgun license holders to bring guns on campus.

 

Texas Takes Stumbling First Step Towards Legalization of Marijuana

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Gov. Greg Abbott has a choice to make.  Will he or will he not veto a bill that makes a very small first step towards legalization of medical marijuana in Texas.  If Abbot signs the new legislation, medical marijuana could be legal in Texas albeit in a very modified limited way. The Texas House has approved a Senate bill that would allow limited use of Cannabidiol oils, a marijuana derivative.  The new law might stand a chance of getting Abbott’s approval because it was sponsored by two Republicans.  The bill, crafted by Sen. Kevin Etlife and Rep. Stephanie Klick would legalize Cannabidiol oils, which don’t cause euphoria upon ingestion.  Marijuana reform, which is slowly creeping across the nation, may speed up if the reddest of the red states cracks open the door even slightly.
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