Opening Day!

For 30 years, I looked forward to the second Tuesday of January of every odd-numbered year – Opening Day of a new session of the Texas Legislature. But rarely does the session justify my enthusiasm.

(Welcome to another installment of Life Its Ownself. If you enjoy reading it, please let me know by 1) hitting the Like button at the bottom, 2) subscribing to this newsletter, and 3) recommending it to others. Also, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.)

January 10, 2023

         Today is the second Tuesday in January of an odd-numbered year. Just as lawyers across the land know that the first Monday in October is the beginning of the annual Supreme Court term, people interested in how Texas governs itself know that today is Opening Day of the Texas Legislature, in this case its 88th Regular Session.

         For 30 years, from 1989 to 2019, I lived by the conscious and unconscious rhythms of the Texas Legislature. Even before New Year’s Day, I was reading bills and bill proposals. I dreamt of urgent meetings in the Capitol Building, coming awake as some fancied conversation with a senator or governor faded in my mind. I would say goodbye to friends as if I were going on a five-month mission to the International Space Station. I even tried to get “in shape” for the duration, usually unsuccessfully.

         For most of those years, I was in the building during every day of the session. For ten of those years, as a gubernatorial or senate staffer, I had an office in the Capitol itself, which I considered – then and now – a great privilege. Every person I know who works or has worked in that building feels the same thrill.

         The first time I set foot in the Texas Capitol Building was in the spring of 1983. I was instantly enchanted with the grand old building. It is a thing of beauty and majesty and bold vision: in a word, magnificent. Even as office towers and residential condos have overshadowed it, it is still the most impressive and elegant building in town.

The Capitol, flanked by downtown Austin buildings, as seen from the Congress Avenue Ann Richards Bridge

         The largest state capital in these United States, it has 392 rooms, 924 windows and 404 doors, and that’s not including the gorgeous extension completed in 1997. Tall floors, elegant chambers from the House and Senate, floor-to-ceiling windows in many places. It is truly an architectural splendor.

The Capitol Dome, photographed from the Gallery of the Extension.

The North façade of the Capitol

         Here’s the amazing thing: in 1876, when the Capitol Building was commissioned, Texas was about the largest, most worthless slab of dirt you could imagine. 800 miles from top to bottom, 700 miles from east to west, much of it still unsettled and as yet controlled by Indians. Agriculture and ranching were big industries, but Texas was by no means a wealthy state. Only ten years earlier, General Philip Sheridan had famously told a Mobile newspaper, “If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell.”

         When the 1876 Constitution provided for the building of a Capitol, the Spindletop discovery was still 25 years in the future, and it would be 100 years before MCC and Sematech transformed Austin into the Silicon Hills. Yet the men who conjured up the majestic Capitol Building out of dirt and granite and wood and glass (and convict labor) had a vision of Texas that we still struggle to honor. It was their hope and audacity that set the template for how we Texans think of ourselves. Every time I look at the Capitol, I marvel at their optimism.

         Of course, our self-image and the reality we inhabit are far apart. We worship self-reliance and independence, and so have created a miserly government, failing to invest in the education and social welfare of our 30 million people. We honor equal justice under law, but our criminal justice system faces intractable problems of inequality and injustice. We enthuse about democracy, but have always made it hard for people to participate in elections, and even more so in recent years.

         The Capitol Building was “built for giants but inhabited by pygmies,” quipped then-state senator, later Congressman, Bob Eckhardt (father of current Austin-area senator Sarah Eckhardt) years ago. Although there have always been giants to call forth our better angels, pygmies clearly rule the roost now, as they always have.  

         Maybe that is why I still get a tingle of excitement today, even four years away from the Show. On Opening Day, optimism seems possible. Will some legislators use their lofty perch to punch down on transgender kids seeking medical care, or deny mental health services to people who are hanging on by a thread? Unfortunately, yes. Will we, this time, use a prodigious surplus to ease some of the human misery in our foster care facilities and nursing homes and hospital emergency rooms? Unfortunately, no. Will we live up the promise of Texas, the promise of that extraordinary building we are privileged to enter and work in? Probably not.

         But at least for today, we can hope a giant or two will stride into the building and give us hope, however fleeting, that the Texas Legislature can live up to the vision of its legislative forebears.

---

         Here’s to the 181 legislators, hundreds of staffers, and thousands of lobbyists, advocates and citizens who will spend the next five months in the Capitol, toiling to bring forth a better Texas. Godspeed, 88th Texas Legislature.