Texas Legislative Watch

Well, the 86th Texas Legislative Session starts this Tuesday.  The GOP lost some numbers but still has full control  And, with new leadership provided by Dennis Bonnen, there is actually MORE hope for a productive session than the last one.  What will be our top priorities?

1. Property tax REFORM that leads to FAR slower growth:  This is different than a ‘tax cut’.  A cut is a single-point of impact; it can quickly overrun by effective tax rate growth in just a couple year. We had a small case of that 2 sessions ago via the increase in homestead exemption- that was immediately swamped by appraisal growth.
2. Public education refinancing to put Robin Hood on the path of elimination: Austin gives up $500 million/yr, Plano $209 million/ yr. to other districts- and has no say in HOW those funds are used. Including, in one case, both building & maintaining a school water park. State funds must DIRECTLY be provided the needy districts- with ASSURANCES it is spent on CLASSROOM needs.Fully elimination of Robin Hood in 1-2 years is likely not fiscally possible but it should be doable in 3-6 years.
3. Vote Integrity, especially elimination of dual votes & non-citizen voting. First, they need to permit matching of court summons reply claiming non-citizen status to voting records, Then they need to permit matching of folks with multiple addresses (like college students) and check for voting in multiple locations. State-run University residence records should be made available, for example, as should voting at residences where the owners do NOT claim homestead exemptions.
4. Increasing E-Verification usage & keeping citizenship designation on driver licenses: Every effort should be made to assure that money that the state has control over does NOT go to employ illegal aliens. That include SUB-contracted labor. Every state site should have EVERYONE drawing pay be E-Verified.
5. Franchise Tax on direct path elimination, emphasizing small businesses first: this tax has high compliance costs on businesses and needs to be eliminated over the next 3-4 years.

The circus called the Texas Legislature comes to Austin in a few days & will run for at least 5 months.  What can people expect? A pretty different environment than for the last couple

1. The new Speaker of the Texas House Dennis Bonnen will mean different House Leadership.  Many of the moves Rep. Bonnen has made so far have been positive ones to reduce backroom & lobbyist control of the House that predominated the Straus tenure. But, once the heat comes, we’ll see how that holds up.  Dennis is a man of strong will & opinion. which will most assuredly prove to be both a feature AND a bug in his Speakership. Bus, as someone whose first introduction to Dennis was having him try to verbally beat my views on tax relief into submission for 20 minutes when I spoke before his committee, I actually have hope that he’ll be a far better Speaker than Straus.
2. A New speaker means new Committee Chairs- ones that will NOT have to ‘kiss the ring of Democrat lobbyist Gordon Johnson to get the position, as they did with Straus. Also, a number of ‘problems’ retired- most notably Byron Cook.  There is great hope that Rep. Bonnen will be far faster in getting Chairs in place to get to work.  Last session, Straus took 35 days; hopefully, Bonnen will take less than half that time.
3. The election left us with 12 less GOP Texas House members and 1 less GOP Senator.  The GOP still holds solid majorities, but not as solid. The practical impact of that is an expectation that the most controversial fights will be less likely to occur. Frankly, there is little taste for revisiting the ‘bathroom bill’ kerfuffle, except those that live to gen up division. More critical issues of education funding reorganization and property tax reform will be the main focus. The Dems will push hard on a number of issues, most involving lots more spending.
4. The Senate will be slightly less conservative with the loss of Konnie Burton & Don Huffines, with the addition of Pete Flores. However, with Bonnen’s public commitment to try to work with the Senate and the initial unity of the GOP Caucus- something we have NOT had for many sessions- there are opportunities for conservative advancement.
5. But one thing is constant.  There are large & powerful forces in the Professional Political Class that got that way by fostering division & discord and will try to undo ANY attempts at unity.  Dennis Bonnen has been at this long enough, I’m sure he is aware of this & hopefully he’ll fight those forces to some degree.
6. We’ll see how it all comes together. We’ll be reporting as much blow by blow as we can manage. Stay tuned.

There is no application more important to a state level citizen advocate to become comfortable with than Texas Legislature Online (TLO).  While we’ve heard others have put together tutorials, I haven’t seen any freely available online. So, here is our TLO Tutorial, Version 1; make use of it as you will. Really can’t go into complete detail because the session has not begun Committees need to be assigned (hopefully, before Feb.1) and bills assigned to committees before things get rolling.