Floor Pass

Patrick Michels

Texas State Capitol

The Lead:

The continuing battle against discrimination in the workplace spread to the House floor on Thursday. House members grew emotional  discussing Rep. Senfronia Thompson’s bill that would align Texas lawsuit practices with the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The talk shifted from a calm discussion on the bill to an impassioned debate on equal rights for women. Women reps from both parties banded together in support of the proposal, which eventually passed on a vote of 79 to 50.

The Senate is gone for the weekend. But the House will meet today and will vote on a $875 million supplemental spending bill that will augment state programs through August of this year. The bill, HB 1025, includes $500 million in public school funds.

Yesterday’s Headlines:

1. The House will soon hear a rapidly moving bill aimed at limiting political influence over state funding for technology projects. Good for transparency, not so good for Gov. Perry, whose Emerging Technology Fund has had an affinity for distributing grants to campaign contributors and friends of the governor.

2. The Austin American-Statesman reports that a bill to finance water infrastructure projects, one of the session’s major proposals, may not pass the House on Monday. The bill would steer $2 billion to finance the state water plan.

3. The Senate voted in favor of a bill that would require University of Texas regents to promptly respond to open records requests.

Line of the Day:

“We’ve had enough Bushes … It’s not just four families, or whatever.” —Former First Lady Barbara Bush, speaking from Dallas on the “Today” show on Thursday, responding to a question on whether her son and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would run for president in 2016.

What We’re Watching Today:

1. The House vote on a $875 million state spending bill today. The bill includes $500 million to be allotted for public schools.

Sen. Kel Seliger’s bill that could cut through the University of Texas System regents’ current power struggle with the Legislature was heard by the House Higher Education Committee early Wednesday morning.

Seliger, and nine other senators, filed Senate Bill 15 in response to allegations that the governor-appointed University of Texas Regents are trying to oust UT-Austin President Bill Powers. Seliger has said his bill, which would limit the authority of the UT Regents and other state higher education governing boards, is all about transparency.

The bill passed through the Senate earlier this month with very little discussion and overwhelming bipartisan support, possibly spurred by the Legislature’s own trouble dealing with the UT Regents. Some lawmakers have said the Regents are on a “witch hunt” to get rid of President Powers, despite UT Chancellor Francisco Cigarroa lauding Power’s accomplishments.

The Regents have also tried to withhold requested documents from legislators under Texas open records laws, inciting a more heated controversy over the power of the UT regents.

Currently the education code allows governing boards to bypass chancellors on decisions, something Seliger has said endangers the future of the higher education systems in Texas.

“The only reason they’re as good as they are is because the leadership and governance that those systems have had,” said Seliger in a YouTube video, posted after he filed the bill. He said the bill ensures, “as these systems grow and continue to flourish all over the state of Texas, that they are as well led in the future as they have been in the past.”

Seliger has also called on Gov. Perry to relieve the tension between his Regents and the Legislature. “He ought to do what’s best for the state of Texas. Turmoil in an institution for no good reason is something we certainly ought to be wary of. It’s not productive,” Seliger told the Texas Tribune earlier this month.

Seliger’s bill takes a more procedural slant and would add the following provisions to the education code:

• Allow boards of regents to appoint the system chancellor and a university president.
• The chancellor, with board advice, will be allowed to evaluate university presidents.
• Authorizes a chancellor to recommend termination of employment of a UT president, but the board of regents will not be allowed to fire a president unless the system chancellor recommend it.
• Prohibits regents appointed to the board when the Legislature is not in session from voting, until they have been to the Committee on Nominations, or upon 45 days without a committee meeting.
• Would prevent any appointed board members from voting if they have yet to complete an ethics training course.

The current Texas Education Code fails to provide appropriate guidance to higher education governing boards, said House Higher Education Committee Chair Dan Branch in laying out the bill Wednesday’s hearing.

“This is meant to clarify, there’s going to be a role for the chancellor, there going to be a role for the regents, and a role for individual university institutional leadership, and presidents are going to be held accountable largely by the chancellor, and chancellors are going to be held accountable by the regents,” Branch said. “So, If you don’t like that sort of approach, then you probably won’t like SB 15.”

The bill was left pending in committee, with a possible vote either Thursday or Friday of this week.

State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio)

In a county juvenile lockup, you can be shut alone in a room for all sorts of things. Fighting, sure, or trying to escape. But in some counties, “horseplay” and “disrespectful attitude” also count as “major rules violations” that could land you in seclusion with no idea when you’ll get out.

Youth advocates say some counties are putting kids in seclusion too readily, for far too long. Juvenile justice officials say they have those rules for a reason, and when a child is dangerous and acting out, they simply have to isolate them.

It’s a familiar disagreement in juvenile justice, but lawmakers got to hear it again Tuesday night as they considered placing a four-hour limit on counties’ use of seclusion.

Under a bill from Sen. Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio), only assault, escaping or trying to escape would carry a penalty of seclusion for more than four hours. Each county facility in the state would also have to report how often it placed juveniles in solitary, and why.

As part of the movement away from big, state-run juvenile facilities, more kids are held and treated by county juvenile probation offices. It’s a good idea for many reasons, but it also means rules can vary from one county to the next. It’s tough to get statewide data from such a decentralized system, and the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition says the state’s oversight of the county system is still too weak.

In advance of the bill’s hearing, the Associated Press took a longer look at the issue, and some of the research on why solitary confinement is so harmful for kids.

“This bill reflects a national trend in rethinking the use of solitary confinement,” said Catherine McCullough from the ACLU of Texas Tuesday night—but the county juvenile officials who turned up uniformly opposed the bill.

Some argued that four hours in seclusion was no great deterrent at all—at 9 p.m., after waiting all afternoon to testify, one woman joked that even “eight hours goes by pretty fast”—and only long stints in seclusion would make an impression on kids.

Others said disciplinary seclusion was hardly as bad as advocates suggest. “When kids are in their room … they have to have all their rights given to them,” said Doug Vance, the chief juvenile probation officer for Brazos County. “They’re not locked away in some dungy cell for hours and hours on end.”

They made a strong distinction between their disciplinary seclusion and the sort of solitary confinement youth might get in the adult system.

The county officials said they were fine with reporting their use of seclusion, but urged senators to commission a study on improving their use of seclusion—if there’s any problem at all.

Mark Williams, Tom Green County’s chief probation officer, said Van de Putte’s bill ignores the reality of running a youth lockup, and gives too much credence to the opinions of outsiders.

“The people that don’t work with the kids are the ones that really like this bill,” he said, “and the ones that work with the kids are the ones that do not.”