Three-Point Shots, Vol. 1, No. 1

The Texas Legislature convened for its biennial session this week. With God’s help, Texas will still be standing when they go home on Memorial Day.

(Welcome to the initial edition of Three-Point Shots, an occasional series briefly surveying three interrelated stories of passing importance. Three-Point Shots is a part of my Life Its Ownself Substack page. If you enjoy reading it, please 1) hit the Like button at the bottom, 2) subscribe to the Life Its Ownself newsletter, and 3) recommend it to others. Also, comments welcome and encouraged.)

Saturday, January 14, 2023

“No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” – Judge Gideon J. Tucker, 1826-1899

         Judge Tucker was from New York, but he may well have had the Texas Legislature in mind when he uttered his immortal quote. The Lege convened for its 88th Regular Session on Tuesday. That makes today Day 5 of the session, which means there are only one million days left before they adjourn on Memorial Day.

1.    The 88th Texas Legislature will come to, ahem, order.

         Opening Day was all smiles in Austin. All 31 senators and 150 House members were sworn in before beaming spouses, children, constituents, and the occasional mistress. This contrasted favorably with the nightmarish hostage situation the week before in the U.S. House, where children had to sit quietly in the back of the chamber for four days while the grownups tried to decide who was in charge.

Rep.-Elect (and Marco Rubio stunt double) George Santos sulks after being reprimanded again for kicking the bench in front of him.

         In short order, the House and Senate had met and certified last November’s election results for Governor Greg Abbott and Lite Guv Dan Patrick. Which means they were certifiable, I guess.

2.    “Are you a Marxist or, worse, a Democrat?”

         On Wednesday the House adopted its rules for the session. This is usually rather pro forma, since the rules change very little from session to session. But one new rule caught the Democrats’ eye: a proposal allowing the House to fine, sanction, or even expel a member who “is absent without leave for the purpose of impeding the action of the house.” This, of course, is retaliation for the group of House members who fled Austin in the summer of 2021 to keep the House from enacting draconian a voter suppression bill. The new rule was adopted on pretty much a party-line vote.

         More entertaining was a proposal by Rep. Bryan Slaton (R-Neanderthal) to require all committee chairs to “submit a statement on official state letterhead to the speaker as to whether the chair supports Marxism or not.”   

         Believe it or not, that was only the second-stupidest rules change the House considered. Feast your eyes on this, from Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R-Dark Side):

         Sec. 5A.  AFFIDAVIT OF CHAIR. The chair of each committee shall submit to the speaker an affidavit stating that the chair believes that there are only two genders.

         You really can’t make this stuff up. Or at least I can’t, but then I haven’t read the fetid fever swamp of ignorance, paranoia and authoritarianism that is the Texas GOP Platform. Fortunately, both proposals were killed on points of order, and the House was soon ready to govern itself.

3.    Meanwhile, in the Senate, who needs rules?

         Once upon a time, the Texas Senate was like most other parliamentary bodies. It operated on a set of rules that were enforced by the presiding officer, advised by a parliamentarian.

         In recent years, strict adherence to the rules has become more, shall we say, flexible, weakened by strong Lieutenant Governors and abetted by the laziness of the senators themselves.

         Which is why all the senators shrugged their shoulders when Lite Guv and Emperor-in-Waiting Dan Patrick announced he would ban reporters from the Senate floor, where they’d had a conference table at which to sit, scribble notes, and even talk to senators for a generation or more.

         As Christopher Hooks explained in Texas Monthly:

 For as long as anybody can remember, credentialed members of the Texas press corps have sat at a long rectangular table at the front left of the upper chamber, free to observe proceedings, talk shop, and occasionally grab interviews with lawmakers and staffers. This was an unusual privilege: many state legislatures don’t allow press on the floor, and of course Congress doesn’t. In one small way, the Texas Lege, a pretty opaque and parochial institution, was a little more transparent than its counterparts. …

But the closing of the Senate floor does have significance as another installment in a long process by which Texas politicians—overwhelmingly Republican ones, with a few Democrats in the mix—have withdrawn from engagement with the media. 

         He also banned everyone from the hallway behind the Senate chambers, which was accessible to everyone for years and years. It was a great place to pull a senator off the floor for a quick powwow while the Senate was in session. This is a continuation of the worrisome trend of insulating members of the Senate from the public.

The Dallas Morning News’s Lauren McGaughy in front of the sign denying access to the back hallway of the Senate Chamber.

         And so, with a House committed to bipartisanship (for the moment) and a Senate hostile to the press, we’re off to the slog.

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         Next week will be a light one. The Senate will adopt its rules for the session. Or not.

         In the House, having set the rules and established the committees, members will begin the sometimes delicate negotiations with Speaker Dade Phelan to draw their preferred assignments. And by “delicate negotiations,” I mean shouting matches over what’s been promised and what’s been delivered on both sides. Ahh, to be a fly on the wall of the Speaker’s office behind the House Chamber!