End of Session

The biannual 140-day legislative session in the State of Texas ended last Monday, May 31^st (yes, on a holiday, and they worked Sunday as well). So it’s probably timely to go over what got done, and what didn’t.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick gavels the close of the 87th Texas Legislative Session,
screenshot from KVUE news video

Last summer, at the state Republican convention, the delegates chose eight legislative priorities. This was done in a creative way, which actually worked out OK with the convention converted to online. During the committee working days, in person, ahead of the convention, the Legislative Priorities Committee took input from around the state and narrowed that down to (as I recall) 16. The delegates then prioritized their top 8, and weighted their votes accordingly, letting the math come up with the final 8 priorities.

The Republican Party of Texas convention is bigger than the national GOP convention. Bigger than any other state convention. This was input from over 7,000 people around the entire state of Texas, declaring what they wanted the legislature to work on.

These are the eight, each of which had wording to clarify:

1.      Election Integrity: Require citizenship verification of each voter, and felony penalties for Election Code violations that threaten election integrity.

2.      Religious Freedom: Restore the rights of individuals, organizations and businesses, to exercise their sincerely held religious beliefs by prohibiting local ordinances, state laws, or executive orders that violate those rights.

3.      Children and Gender Modification: Abolish the following practices for minors: intervention to prevent natural progression of puberty; administration of opposite sex hormones; and performance of any type of gender reassignment surgery.

4.      Abolition of Abortion: Abolish abortion by ensuring the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization.

5.      Constitutional Carry: Restore legal Texas firearms owners’ rights to carry them openly or concealed without a permit, while maintaining the option of a permit for reciprocity purposes.

6.      Monument Protection: All monuments or markers in our state shall be protected by law from being removed, defaced, destroyed, or otherwise dishonored. In particular, specific protection shall be given to the Alamo Cenotaph which shall not be removed from its current location off the Alamo Battlefield footprint.

7.      School Choice: Empower parents and guardians to choose from public, private, charter, or homeschool options for their children’s education using tax credits or exemptions without government restraint or intrusion.

8.      Ban Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying: Abolish all forms of taxpayer-funded lobbying.

This is all in addition to the state Republican Party Platform, which is also used to tell legislators what to work on—but it is bigger, with around 340 planks, categorized by senatorial committee titles, and a lot of detail, but without priorities. Except that, at the front of the platform document is a list of ten permanent guiding principles of the party:

Principles at the beginning of the Republican Party of Texas 2020 Platform

We Texans are in a state where the Republican Party controls the majority in the House, the Senate, and the Governor—along with Lt. Governor, Attorney General, and any other statewide office. This has been the case for beyond the past two decades.

So you would think it would occur to lawmakers to consider the will of the people who elected them.

Rotunda at the Texas State Capitol, from 2018

But one thing we learned this legislative session—in which we had more grassroots support, more awareness, more participation than in any past session—is that the legislative staffs are woefully uninformed about the will of the people. We can understand, maybe, a Democrat legislator’s staff not knowing where to find the Republican Party Platform and Legislative Priorities. We have a hard time understanding why a Republican legislator’s staff would not only be unfamiliar with the platform, but unaware that such a thing as Legislative Priorities existed, let alone where to find such priorities.

They were familiar with the Governor’s list of priorities. And they were aware of their own legislator’s priorities, if such a list had been made. That was the extent of the knowledge in far too many offices.

Going forward, educating staff ahead of the session will be an additional task Republicans will have to undertake in order to be heard and not dismissed as just those pesky demanding grassroots whose votes can be taken for granted.

I’ll take the priorities in order and say what was and wasn’t accomplished with each.

ELECTION INTEGRITY

Of the bills I followed, two passed: SB 1113 on cleaning voter rolls, authored by my state senator, Paul Bettencourt, and also Sen. Lois Kolkhorst just to the north of here; and HB 574 making certain election offenses criminal offenses. Both were useful.

But the bill that we really needed was SB 7 which was an omnibus election integrity bill, containing multiple improvements, many of them reinforcing current law that was flouted during the past election season, using the pandemic as a pretext for the lawlessness.

It passed in the Senate and then the House, with amendments. There was a reconciliation committee, and the Senate approved the committee’s reconciliation. Late at night, on the last day to legally finish business, the House Democrats were instructed by text to discretely leave the chamber, denying a quorum so that a final vote could not be taken in the House on the reconciliation.

There’s argument about who to blame. Certainly the Democrats who participated in the walkout. But the House Speaker, Republican Dade Phelan, could have called the Sergeant-at-Arms to bring them back into the chamber. He didn’t. And there’s speculation about his indicating to them ahead of time that he wouldn’t.

Phelan replaces a Republican House Speaker who was caught making deals against Republicans. We were hopeful that we would finally have a better session. I’m sure we’re going to be told it was better. But, seriously, Republicans seem to be unable to wield power, and instead seem overly eager to conspire with the enemies of freedom against the free people of Texas.

Governor Abbott has declared he will take action in response to these shenanigans:

·       He plans to have a special session to handle this bill. It is unknown whether that will be soon or in the fall when the redistricting special session will happen. So far he hasn’t scheduled it.

·       He has promised to veto Article 10 of the budget, to deny funding to pay legislators until they fulfill their obligations. (As far as I know, he hasn’t yet followed through on this threat.)

You can view Lt. Governor Dan Patrick on Fox News talking about this event, here. Senator Paul Bettencourt comments on what happened here. 

It seems to me, if there’s a will to pass a bill, it passes. If there isn’t, it doesn’t. But there’s always plenty of cover—that there wasn’t time, that there was too much opposition. This is what frustrates so many of us.

 

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

There were several minor religious freedom bills that passed. That’s good, but they mostly reiterated freedoms already guaranteed to us in our state and federal constitutions. These are:

 

·       SB 581 Bettencourt: HOAs must allow homeowners to have religious displays.

·       HB 525 Shaheen: Protect religious organizations.

·       SB 797 Hughes: The national motto is to be displayed in schools and institutes of higher education.

·       HCR 1  Stephenson: Support Prayer at public gatherings.

·       HB 1239 Sanford: Prohibit suspension of religious freedom. (This is in relation to the pandemic response.)

·       SJR 27 Hancock: Proposing a constitutional amendment to prohibit limiting religious service. 

 

GENDER MODIFICATION

This priority was an abject failure. SB 1646 would have changed the definition of child abuse to include permanent gender modification. It passed in the Senate and was assigned to the House Public Health Committee but did not receive a hearing—where the committee is chaired by Republican Stephanie Klick. SB 1311 went about the issue through an insurance angle. It passed in the Senate and was eventually assigned—late, but seemed to be given a deadline exception—again, to the House Public Health Committee, but did not receive a hearing. 

There’s a case in Texas, a boy named James, a twin, whose mother treats him as a girl and wants to permanently transition him, but he claims to be a boy with his father and doesn’t want to be a girl. (I wrote about this here and here.) This is a very confused child—and it appears to me the confusion is caused by a mother I would consider abusive. James is not safe from this permanent mutilation, nor are other confused Texas children. And now it will be another two years before there’s an opportunity for the legislature to deal with the issue.

 

ABORTION

A couple of relatively positive abortion bills passed. SB 8 prevents abortion after the heartbeat is detected. Similar bills in other states have so far failed to prevent abortions, due to lawsuits and skirting the law. (An ultrasound technician admits that it’s possible to find or not find a heartbeat at will, at least up to a point.) The Texas bill has the innovation that individual civilians can file suit against an abortion provider, rather than depending on a district attorney to decide to prosecute.

HB 1280 is called a trigger bill, meaning it comes into play, abolishing abortion in Texas, if/when Roe v. Wade is reversed in the US Supreme Court.

We had a good bill to actually abolish abortion, HB 3326. It didn’t even get a hearing in the supposedly Republican-led House; this was, once again, the committee led by Rep. Stephanie Klick.

 

CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY

This is being hailed as the brightest success of this legislative session. HB 1927 passed and has been sent to the Governor for signature.

This isn’t as clean a win as you would suppose. The original bill, passed in the House without amendment, had numerous serious issues. These ranged from minor (repetition, and contradiction between sections within the bill) to major (eliminating illegal carry for violent gang members age 21 or over, and some probable cause issues). The Senate attempted to correct the problems. One solution was an entirely new bill; that didn’t fly, so they had to amend. 

The amendments were a pretty reasonable attempt to solve the issues. But they were met with cries of “attempted sabotage” and "poison pill amendments" from the writers of the bill and supporting organizations (mainly GOA Texas). Nevertheless, the Senate passed the amended bill, which meant there would be a committee to reconcile. This meant ending up with an OK-for-the-most-part bill. It ends up granting the ability for felons legitimately convicted of illegal carry to have their records expunged. Not good. But we can hope the remaining problems can be dealt with in courts. 

The lesson here is, read the bill. Most of those crying their strong support hadn’t read the actual wording or considered the legitimate issues law enforcement has to face. A constitutional carry bill in the free state of Texas shouldn’t have caused that kind of rift in the party that is soundly pro-Second Amendment.

 

MONUMENT PROTECTION

There was a minor victory in this priority. HB 3584 to protect monuments and markers by the Texas Historical Commission was able to pass.

Then there was a bill directing the General Land Office to maintain the Alamo that didn’t pass.

 

ASIDE

Meanwhile, the General Land Commissioner, George P. Bush (yes, a relative of that family) is leaving that job. He was much maligned for his attempts to protect and improve the Alamo site—much of which I thought was good, but which included relocating the Cenotaph to another location in the compound; that got a lot of people very upset—but he was nevertheless qualified by education and background to be Land Commissioner. He has announced he is running for Attorney General, a position I don’t see that he is qualified for, and it’s against a Republican incumbent, Ken Paxton, who may not be as stellar as Governor Abbott had previously been in that position, but who is generally well regarded.

While we’re interrupting to mention job endings and political campaigns, just days after the close of session Republican Party of Texas Chair Allen West announced he will be stepping down—less than a year into his first term; he was elected at the state convention last July. West, I think, has been good at public messaging. He has been less good at the nitty-gritty duties of the party chair, which have in the past included working with the legislature. It’s a fundraising and administrative position. I don’t think that is what holds his interests. It’s unfortunate that his campaign ousted a chair who was particularly good at those things.

Speculation is that West will run for governor. Governor Abbott has already received the endorsement of Donald Trump. But he has upset a great many former supporters (myself included) this past year by failing to uphold our constitutional rights during the pandemic response. And he attempted (but failed) during the legislative session to institutionalize the executive powers he usurped during this past year. That makes him vulnerable, and West probably sees that. But, if West can’t do the administrative work of the party for even a year—and he’s pretty cavalier about leaving us in the lurch—why would we think he’d be good at administration of this very large state? We would probably speculate that he has his sites set on running for US president in 2026, with barely a term as governor under his belt, but the governor title would help him in such a campaign.

OK, the aside is over.

 

EDUCATION/SCHOOL CHOICE

We had one very excellent school choice bill: SB 1968 The Family Educational Relief Program, authored by my state senator, Sen. Paul Bettencourt. It allowed low-income families to be granted a portion of their child’s allotment to be used for educational purposes, with the parents as trustees over their child’s fund. It would have taken zero dollars from public schooling, and it added funding in a creative way, related to business insurance premium taxes, that actually added to the education budget.

Each of these legislative priorities had a statewide committee from the SREC (State Republican Executive Committee) to work on getting legislation passed. I was invited to help out with this one, as a citizen (I am not on the SREC, which has just one man and one woman from each senatorial district). Anyway, I got very familiar with this bill, and I’m extremely disappointed with its failure.

The bill was filed on the last possible day of filing. It got a committee hearing on nearly the last possible day, and got voted out of committee—where there was plenty of good pro-school choice testimony and no opposition testimony—at the last possible moment. There was still time for a floor vote, but it didn’t get one. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said it didn’t have the votes. We had one Democrat who voted for the bill in committee, but Sen. Perry, a Republican voted against, so I’m assuming he’s one of the four who indicated to Patrick that they would vote against. Others may know some of the other names, but I do not; when we find out, we should get the word out to get them primaried next year.

There was much opposition to school choice in the House—if it had gotten that far. This was displayed in a vote on the budget, which had an amendment slipped in to disallow any funding for any type of school choice of any kind whatsoever. The amendment passed with a vote of 115 to 29. That means a whole lot of Republicans voted with all the Democrats to keep low-income students in failing schools with no way out. And this was a policy amendment, which has no place in a budget; it circumvents the committee hearing process. I’ve kept the record of the vote so we know who to target in the primary. (Note: We were promised by senators on the conference committee that it would be removed during reconciliation. I’ve gone through the final budget, here, and it does appear this anti-school choice amendment was removed.)

In testimony on this amendment, Rep. Steve Toth brought up the polling data: all over Texas, among every demographic and party, no less than 70% approve of school choice. It’s one of our 8 legislative priorities; and it’s one of our 10 party principles. And yet a majority of Republican lawmakers—along with nearly all Democrat lawmakers, who claim compassion for the poor and underprivileged—refuse to support anything that would give families a way out of failing public schools. These lawmakers are sorely out of touch with the people of Texas. I imagine it’s because teacher’s unions are in touch with their campaign coffers.

One significant education bright spot is HB 3979, by Rep. Toth, requiring that civics teaching must include the moral, political, and educational foundations of America. It’s an anti-critical race theory law. And this is great news.

 

BAN TAXPAYER-FUNDED LOBBYING

This was another failed priority. The Senate passed SB 10, Senator Bettencourt’s bill to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying. It got sent to House State Affairs Committee, where it was voted favorably out of committee. But the House floor vote was postponed multiple times and ultimately did not get a vote. So, unless this is handled in a special session, we’ll go on paying tax money to have lobbyists go to Austin and lobby our elected officials to go against our will. The very idea rankles thinking Texans.

EXTRA OPINIONS

Here are some additional opinions on the wind up of the legislative session:

·       “Legislative Priorities Report 6.6.21” by Jill Glover, posted at the RPT website. 

·       “Did Lawmakers Really ‘Run Out of Time’?” by Jeramy Kitchen for Texas Scorecard, June 1, 2021. 

·       “Mediocre 87th Texas Legislature Gavels To Close; Special Session Coming” by admin at The Golden Hammer, Montgomery, TX, June 1, 2021.