End of Session—Well, the Regular Session Anyway

The Texas 88^th Legislative Session ended May 31. And the first Special Session started the next morning, so it feels like it hasn’t ended. And we’re told there will be multiple special sessions this year. So it seems never ending.

The Texas Capitol, in Austin
from a visit in 2018

The idea, I think, was to limit the legislature to part time, just January through May every other year. But someone is not clear on the concept.

I’ve been making a bill list—a list of bills to follow and do citizen lobbying on—for six sessions now. Each time my list is both larger and more focused on specific priorities. And each time I feel as though I am woefully unaware of actual good bills and what is possible to get done. Some of this is, I’m sure, my trying to have a life beyond being a citizen lobbyist. But some of it is the sheer size of the challenge.

This session there were 9,114 total bills filed: a record 5.301 by the House,  and 2,565 by the Senate.

The Bills

The bill list that I set up for our local Tea Party to follow (and lobby for) included 137 bills. These were based mainly on the list of SREC approved bills. The SREC is the State Republican Executive Committee; it is made up of two committee members (generally one man and one woman) from each senatorial district in the state. Theirs, and mine, categorized the bills according to the legislative priorities chosen by the delegates at last year’s Republican Party of Texas committee. These included:

o   Protect Our Elections.

o   Secure the Border and Protect Texans

o   Ban Gender Modification of Children.

o   Stop Sexualizing our Kids

o   Ban Democrat Chairs.

o   Abolish Abortion in Texas.

o   Defend our Gun Rights

o   Parental Rights and Educational Freedom

I also added on a sort of miscellaneous category called Platform Issues—Not Legislative Priorities. These were things that showed up in the state party platform but didn’t make it onto the list of legislative priorities. The SREC also had such a list, here, although I didn’t include all of theirs.

Of the 137 bills I tracked throughout the session, 11 passed. And we’ll spend a bit of time covering what those were. Here’s the basic list:

Election Integrity bills that passed

·        HB 1243, Hefner: criminal penalty for illegal voting. Effective 9-1-2023.

·        SB 1750, Bettencourt: return responsibility for elections to elected officials. Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

·        SB 1933, Bettencourt: greater AG oversight of elections officials. Border Security Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

·        SB 1403, Parker: interstate compact for border security. Effective 9-1-2023.

Ban Gender Modification of Children bills that passed

·        SB 14 Campbell: Lt. Gov. priority, ban gender modification. Effective 9-1-2023.

Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids bills that passed

·        HB 900, Patterson, Shaheen, et al: READER Act, restricts sexually explicit books in school libraries. Effective 9-1-2023.

·        SB 12 Hughes: restricting sexual performances on public property or in presence of child. New to the list. Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

Abolish Abortion—no priority bills passed

Defend Gun Rights—no priority bills passed

Parental Rights

·        SB 17 Creighton, Kolkhorst, et al.: Limiting DEI in public education and higher education. Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

Platform Issues—Not Legislative Priorities 

·        HB 1666, Capriglione: no commingling of funds by digital asset service providers. Effective 9-1-2023.

·        SB 15, Middleton, Bettencourt, et al: Lt. Gov. priority, protect women in college sports. Sent to Governor 5-29-2023.

·        SB 29, Birdwell: no vaccine or mask mandates, no school or business shutdowns for COVID. Effective 9-1-2023.

Rep. Tom Oliverson reviews the TX legislative session
at the Cypress Texas Tea Party, June 15, 2023
screenshot from here

 

Key Wins

Key win in Election Integrity, SB 1750, which gets rid of the position of Election Administrator in large counties. This was aimed at Harris County, which has had one botched election after another since the Commissioners’ Court invented the position, taking it away from the joint work of the County Clerk and County Tax Assessor. As it stands, those positions are currently occupied by Democrats, but at least they’re elected and answerable to the people, instead of these (purposely?) incompetent appointees.

Key win in Ban Gender Modification in Children is SB 14, which took some doing to get passed. It makes you wonder what kind of world we live in when there’s opposition to preventing mutilation of children, predictably ruining their health and their lives—while failing to address the underlying issue of gender dysphoria.

Another related key win, which I categorized as a Platform Issue, was SB 15, protecting women in college sports from having to compete with biological males. We got a similar bill through last session, but it only applied to K-12 schools. Now women in college sports are also protected. And enough other states have passed similar legislation that the NCAA can no longer discriminate against schools with this policy.

A key win in Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids was HB 900, called the READER Act (Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources), which restricts sexually explicit books in school libraries. The mechanism is a requirement for publishers to identify level based on content, and only certain materials can be included in libraries. It goes into effect September 1, 2023, so it will be in place this coming school year.

The bills that pass are few. And this year, because so little got accomplished (stonewalling by the Republican-led House, backed completely by Democrats) means multiple special sessions to address the Governor’s priorities, which might occasionally happen to align with ours. And the Governor has been on a vetoing spree, aimed, it appears, mainly at my State Senator Bettencourt’s bills—bills that got through the entire legislative process and passed in both houses, but will have to now go through that all again. 

The Governor is pressuring the Senate to go along with his version of property tax relief. There are two plans, one supported by each chamber; Governor Abbott supports the House version, while Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, along with leaders like Senator Bettencourt, support the other plan. The House plan is based on lowering taxes through compression. The Senate bill aims at maintaining the Homestead Exemption. I don’t understand taxing systems well enough to explain either one, or even know which one to prefer. Both, I’m told, would indeed lower property taxes. Maybe there’s a compromise that will use both ways. I don’t know. But I resent a Governor seeming to think he has dictatorial powers, which he’s glad to use against his own party if he doesn’t get his way. (I used to think so highly of Greg Abbott.)

I looked up the bills being vetoed, and so far it looks like the ones on our list are not vetoed, although a few of ours are also not yet signed by the Governor.

Senator Paul Bettencourt review the TX legislative session
at Cypress Texas Tea Party, June 15, 2023
screenshot from here

 

Other Post-Session Reviews

There are a lot of people doing reviews of the legislative session. The thing that kind of overwhelms me is the number of really good bills I was basically unaware of—both that passed and that didn’t.

The SREC wrote their summary here. 

There’s an excellent list of “48 Conservative Bills the Texas House Killed This Session” by Luke Macias for Texas Scorecard. I only had 10 of his 48 on my list. Macias also did a podcast on the good bills that passed, here. 

We had both Representative Tom Oliverson and Senator Paul Bettencourt speak at Cypress Texas Tea Party last Thursday. I’ve posted the videos, which I’ll link below.

Rep. Oliverson did a pretty thorough review of legislation he had his eye on. Oliverson, a physician, was a key figure in the passing of SB 14 to ban gender transition surgery in minors. He had a number of bills I never had on my radar. I think you can see his presentation well enough in the video, so I won’t list them here.

A concern I’d had was that some bills might have gotten shut down because of the Paxton impeachment hearing just before end of session. But Rep. Oliverson assured me that the House had already completed their conference committees (that's where they work out differences when the second chamber makes amendments to the bill as it came out of the first chamber), so I can set aside that frustration at least.

Sen. Bettencourt is nicknamed the Taxman, from his years as Harris County Tax Assessor, where he had a reputation for helping people get the lowest rates, often by helping them challenge their property assessments. He’s also nicknamed Uncle Paul, I'm not sure why; maybe because so many think of him as their favorite “uncle.” I should add that he seems satisfied with what he’s doing in this position, without any need for political climbing. He’s influential in the legislature, and his constituency is bigger than a US congressional district. (There are 38 US congressional districts in Texas and only 31 state senatorial districts, so there are more constituents in an SD than in a CD.) He highlighted a few more bills—many of them the bills he passed that got vetoed.

In the video, after Sen. Bettencourt’s presentation, he and Rep. Oliverson both handled Q&A together. Here are both of those recordings (apologies for lighting; it’s whatever I can manage on my phone):

·        Rep. Tom Oliverson speaks at Cypress Texas Tea Party June 15, 2023 

·        Sen. Paul Bettencourt speaks at Cypress Texas Tea Party June 15, 2023 

So there’s more to be done. We’re promised that at some point this year, we’ll get school choice. I’ve been looking for that for a long time.

I’m trying not to be too discouraged. The battle must continue. What is the alternative? Succumbing to tyranny? But it is frustrating that, not only do we have to face the other party’s opposition, but a whole lot of our own party. My view might be skewed, because of the people I associate with. But from my perspective most of the grassroots are constitutional conservatives. It’s not about party or people; it’s about restoring our nation—and our state and local governments—to the limited government promised to us in our covenant, our US Constitution. It’s up to us—as Benjamin Franklin put it, “if we can keep it.”

E Pluribus Unum

Out of many, one. 

That’s what our national motto means. And it describes the sense we felt on this day 18 years ago.

The unthinkable had happened. To some specific 3000 people, and to others nearby, and more still who were near and dear to all those lost and affected. And we felt that it had happened to all of us.

On the day after, we felt that we were one.

We weren’t divided by political party, ethnic heritage, sex, or race. We were all one.

Paul Bettencourt, my Texas State Senator, posted a photo from the weekend after 9/11/01. He attended an Aggie football game (Texas A&M University), and the people in the stadium were dressed in red, white, and blue, according to which tier of the stadium they were in. That must have included fans from both teams, because it’s the whole stadium. We were together, then, as one.

Aggie Stadium (Kyle Field), the weekend after 9/11/01
photo from Senator Paul Bettencourt's Facebook page 9/11/2019

I don’t ever want to see another 9/11. That was a life changing moment, the way Pearl Harbor was for my dad’s generation. But the combined sense of mission and oneness is something Americans tend to show after such an event.

Here in Houston we recognize something: when God wants to unify the people of the Gulf Coast, he sends hurricanes and floods. Katrina. Rita. Ike. Harvey. (That’s not a complete list.) At these times, regular people face the challenge and step up to help. The desire to care for one another overrides everything else. We don’t worry about religion, ethnicity, language, race. We just see each other as people in need and people who are there to help those in need.

In our country today, the sense of division is at dangerous levels. I don’t say it’s the worst ever, because we’ve had a civil war. But the divisions cut pretty deep. You can’t compromise with people who want to wield power over you—to deprive you of your religious beliefs, your desire to protect your life, liberty, and property. There’s only standing up against such tyrants. That’s true even of would-be tyrants among us.

I saw this several times on Facebook this week.
I don't know the original source, but I agree.

But there are people who are not meaning to be tyrants, but are simply misinformed, giving in to emotional string-pulling, and a mix of fear and covetousness. Those people can be one with us if they tune out the controlling propaganda and come to see us as people.

I’d like to see that happen organically, by choice. I don’t want some catastrophe to fall upon any of us just to get our attention and force us to see that caring for one another is paramount. But I do know that, in the past, catastrophe has resulted in greater unity. And if God is giving us time to reunite by natural choice and we fail to take the opportunity, allowing a disaster to bring about healing is not out of the realm of possibility. Because that unity is important to the Father of us all.

Recently in our church reading assignment, we covered Paul’s first letter to the saints in Corinth. In chapter 12, he uses the image of the body to represent the saints together in a body—made up of many members, but all important, all able to do their particular assignments. It comes after a section talking about various gifts we all have; no one has them all, so we benefit one another by being together. Here are a few of these verses:

12 For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ….

14 For the body is not one member, but many.

15 If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

16 And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

17 If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?...

25 That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.

26 And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.

We suffer together when we must. Wouldn’t we rather rejoice together?

President John F. Kennedy saying "Ich bin ein Berliner."
screenshot from here

There was a time when JFK stood at the Berlin Wall and said, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” meaning that, on that day, he (and we Americans whom he represented) stood in solidarity with the free people of Berlin—which should have included them all—because we stood with the good, the right: the free.

After 9/11, not only were all Americans proudly saying, “I am an American!” but much of the world was saying that with us.

I wish the unity had lasted longer. I wish it had not so badly deteriorated this past decade. I wish for healing into unity by choice, rather than by another life-changing tragedy. I want us to feel the caring for one another that we felt on 9/12/2001—without the calamity that led to it.

E pluribus unum.

Texas Special Session

Here in Texas, the legislature meets mid-January to early June every other year, so we finished up last month. But the Governor can call the legislature back any time for a limited time. Usually this happens shortly after the end of the regular session, when the governor wanted something to happen that didn’t happen during the session. That’s the case now.

Governor Abbott has scheduled the special session to begin July 18^th, and he has listed twenty items for the legislature to deal with. That’s a lot of items. Among them are some bigger priorities. (The full list can be found here.) 

There’s a main reason that these things didn’t get handled in the special session: Speaker of the House Joe Strauss is not on the same side as Governor Abbott. He’s the same party. But the way the speaker is chosen now is slanted toward the liberal side, at least when the Republicans are in power.

The speaker comes from the majority party, but the Democrats in the House will support whichever candidate is most aligned with them. So the speaker gets 100% of the Democrat vote. Then the speaker just needs a relatively small percentage of Republicans.

He can totally ignore the strong conservative masses that have elected Republicans to every statewide office, and a robust majority in the House; he can curry favor with the more “moderate,” i.e., less conservative, House members, offer them their choice of committees and chairmanships, and he locks up the vote. And he’ll get some of the conservative votes too, because anyone who opposes him gets relegated to committees where they can do the least good for their constituents.

So, until we figure out a way to have Republicans do the electing of the House Speaker (as in the US House, where a caucus of each party chooses a speaker, and the one chosen by the majority party wins—so the minority party doesn’t do the choosing), we’re stuck with this roadblock to important legislation.

This past Saturday at the local Tea Party meeting, we heard from State Senator Paul Bettencourt and State Representative Mike Schofield, to talk about the upcoming special session.

Senator Paul Bettencourt

Sen. Bettencourt says there are three possibilities for how the session will go:

1)      The legislature will pass the sunset legislation and go home.

2)      The legislature will pass sunset plus a few items, but leave the big ones undone.

3)      The legislature will handle pretty much the whole list.

The sunset bill is to keep some state agencies from shutting down; it’s assumed to be necessary.

Option 1 would start a House meltdown. There are risks to failing to do what they’re supposed to do. If they do the bare minimum and vote to go home, that will lead to a roll call vote. That puts everyone on record as going against the Governor or not. It won’t go well for them at re-election time if they claim to be conservative but flout the governor’s agenda. Option 2 would be minimal, but still might lead to yet another special session.

There are three main issues among those twenty items:

·         Property tax relief.

·         School choice.

·         Privacy protection.

Property Tax Relief

The bills are not always written the same as for the regular session; sometimes we’ll get something that considers what failed in the regular session, but sometimes we’ll get something better.

Senator Bettencourt has been working for property tax reform. During the session he was asking for a cap of 3% plus inflation; during the special session the cap is lowered to 1% plus inflation. And in the special session he’ll only need 16 or 30 senators to pass it, (50% plus 1) instead of 20 (2/3 of the Senate).

There’s a swath of the state from Dallas-Ft. Worth to San Antonio (not including Austin, this time) with ridiculous property tax hikes. The current cap has been a percentage of home value plus inflation plus economic growth. Since the term “economic growth” is unmeasurable and totally meaningless, caps have been meaningless.

Chip and Joanna Gaines, of HGTV's Fixer Upper
image from here

Senator Bettencourt gave an example of why a real cap is needed. You know the HGTV show Fixer-Upper, with Chip and Joanna Gaines, of Waco, Texas? They take the worst house in the best neighborhood, and they turn it into the buyers’ dream home, right? Well, bureaucrats who assess property values have been following the show and purposely reassessing the value of the fixed-up homes. Homes have had as high as 1000% increases in their property taxes.

People are being punished for using their resources to make their homes nicer to live in; they’re being taxed for creativity and hard work. Those obscene property tax increases can put the cost of living in a house beyond the budget of those buyers—who were making a positive contribution to their neighborhood. That’s not the Texas way.

School Choice

Neither Senator Bettencourt and Representative Schofield were optimistic about school choice—even though they both favor the Educational Savings Account idea. Rep. Schofield says, “There’s too much fear of competition.” That’s fear among teachers unions—which have much more interest in wages for their union members that in education for children. 

We don’t know yet how the bills will read exactly, but the likelihood is that the ESA bill will be aimed at special needs students. While I’d prefer more market forces in every aspect of education, it’s tough to argue against meeting the needs of special needs students at lower cost per student. [Among several PragerU videos on school choice, is "Why Special Needs Students Want School Choice."]

The way it is working in Arizona, the family of the student is given a sum that is something like 90% of the cost of educating that student. It can be used only for education purposes (sort of like how a health savings account is used only for healthcare purposes), but the parents get to decide what is best for their child.

This is different from a voucher, which is a ticket, essentially, that can be spent as a whole at one alternative education place, such as a private school. The ESA can be used in part for a chosen form of therapy, in part for a tutor, in part for a block of a school week at a public or private school, or in part for homeschool curriculum—or any combination.

As they start looking for options, the market responds. And the market always eventually responds with better quality and lower prices.

If the family gets their student’s needs met without spending all the money in a given year, that money stays in the account for use in a later year, when maybe a more expensive program might be needed. If the money doesn’t get spent by high school graduation, the student can use it toward higher education. 

The program is optional, so no students would be forced into it. Any family can choose to stay in public school.

So ESAs are a win-win for special ed students and their families, and for school districts, which have trouble meeting the needs of these students anyway. And that 10% that the family doesn’t get stays in the school budget.

But the public school monolith sees it as the camel’s nose under the tent. If that camel is competition, then it is just barely the nose, but wouldn’t it be great if we had that whole camel in the education tent?

They absolutely don’t want competition. They want a public school monopoly, subsidized by people so frustrated that they pay out of pocket to meet their children’s needs elsewhere.

Opponents are misnaming the ESA option, lumping it in with vouchers, a term that causes a knee-jerk reaction in educators who get their information mainly from their unions.

Anyone who really knows about ESAs would likely vote for this bill, but fear of the overbearing unions will probably block it this time, leaving the special ed students with their critical needs unmet.

Privacy

The third big issue, privacy, is what we sometimes refer to as the bathroom bill, and which the media mischaracterizes as transphobic.

As Rep. Schofield said, “We didn’t make an issue of it; Anise Parker did.” Transgendered people have been quietly using whatever restroom made them comfortable, from the invention of public restrooms up until 2015, when Houston’s mayor decided to make it an issue by forcing it on the city—including not just public city buildings, but private business properties. She tried to thwart the will of the people by throwing out their petitions, and she really stepped over the line when she tried to subpoena every speech or communication given by churches, so she could search through them for things she might find objectionable.

image found here

Once the courts slapped her down—several times—the people got their say, and this very urban, majority-liberal city, which had twice elected a lesbian mayor, soundly voted against her proposal.

Then Obama got on the bandwagon and decided, by fiat, to force a private space rule on the whole country. To be clear, he said high schools (and of course other facilities with locker rooms, bathrooms, or dressing rooms) must, because of his insistence only, allow any anatomical male who wants to say he is a female (for any purpose—can’t be questioned for actual intent; and note that a male claiming to be transgendered to female is still likely to be sexually attracted to females) to shower naked in front of and with female high school students. No regard for the discomfort this would cause high school girls or their parents would be considered. End of subject. Anyone who objects would be labeled a bigoted, transphobic troglodyte who should be publicly shamed, fired, and never allowed to work or function in society again.

Compromises, such as private showers or bathrooms for transgendered students, were dismissed as insensitive to the transgendered—meanwhile, overruled as not worth considering are the sensitivities of the 99.7% majority.

Obama’s overreaching executive order has been repealed, but many school districts and businesses around the country have kept the rule change to appear “tolerant.” That is why Texas is taking the step of protecting citizens by returning to separate gender private spaces as a rule of law.

I think the bill will pass, because this is Texas, and we don’t like fools telling us we have no right to privacy in our private places. If Strauss fails to bring it for a vote again, it will mean coming back for another special session.

During this special session, expect the media to do its thing against anything good for freedom, prosperity, and civilization. But, if the people send their support to their representatives in Austin, we might get the work done that should have already gotten done.