Thursday, July 02, 2009

Two out of Three in the Special Session

posted by Victoria Rossi at 03:29 PM

The legislature wrapped up its special session today. Both chambers passed on a controversial toll road bill and chose to go home for Independence Day rather than slog it out in Austin for another week.

Bills renewing five state agencies and authorizing $2 billion in transportation bonds for highway construction sailed through both chambers, save for a scuffle over a Transportation Revolving Fund included in the transportation bill.

HB 3 and SB 3 which would have revived the state’s authority to enter into public-private toll road contracts sputtered out in committee. Legislators couldn't muster the votes or enthusiam to vote for the bills.

In 2007, the legislature put a moratorium on comprehensive development agreements, government contracts with private companies to build and operate—and profit from— toll roads. CDAs have long been one of Gov. Rick Perry’s favored means of financing highway construction in lieu of more traditional methods like a motor fuels tax, said Steven Polunsky, Sen. John Carona’s transportation spokesman. Carona, R-Dallas, and Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, authored legislation during the regular session that would have ended the moratorium on public-private toll contracts, and allowed limited CDAs.

Some legislators argue that CDAs are a necessary evil since other options like a local gas tax had been taken off the table.

“As far as the range of tools that you can use to build infrastructure, CDAs are not the most desirable at all. Tolls are not the most desirable,” Polunsky said. “But when all you have on the table are those less desirable options, when your urban areas are clogged with congestion and that’s affecting your air quality…. Is it a problem that you can just ignore and hope goes away?”

Toll road opponents, meanwhile, say the state shouldn’t give private companies a lease to tax citizens for driving on highways that used to be publicly owned.

“If that’s the only reason we’re here, you can just put me down as a no,” said Democratic Caucus leader Rep. Jim Dunnam. His comment was met with cheers from the handful of anti-toll road activists at the Transportation Committee hearing yesterday.  “If that’s the only reason we’re here, it’s offensive.” SB 3 got a similar reception at the Senate Finance Committee hearing.

So it wasn’t much of a surprise today when Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst pronounced what’s now dubbed the CDA bill dead. (“It wasn’t that urgent” he told reporters.) Many of the CDA projects the bill addressed—mostly in North Texas—would stay in the pipeline, at worst stalling until the next legislative session 18 months from now.

House transportation chair Joe Pickett carried HB 3, but didn’t seem to feel much urgency about it, either. “In transportation terms, two years is still a short period of time,” he said after the committee hearing, where he left the bill pending.

Only problem is, lawmakers may have forestalled a bill that could have added tighter guidelines for future CDAs, according to Sen. Nichols.  By not passing the legislation Nichols said they had “kicked the can down the road” to the next legislative session. He released a conciliatory, if slightly defeated, statement on the bill at the end of the day:

If the Legislature does not reauthorize CDAs during this very short special session, I don’t think it will cause any problems for the state. My only goal in authoring Senate Bill 3 was to make sure that if the Legislature decided to allow CDAs, we would only do so in a way that returned local control of transportation projects and established important protections for Texas drivers and taxpayers.

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Perry Sets Date for Special Session

posted by Victoria Rossi at 11:15 AM

Well, we can all stop holding our breath. Gov. Rick Perry announced today that the special session he’d promised will start July 1.

Perry wants a short session focused exclusively on renewing TxDOT and the insurance department, and on passing transportation bonds. The governor said in his release that he expects lawmakers to pass these items before the July 4th holiday. A three-day special session? That might be a record.

Whether the session will stay that short is now largely up to the legislature. Perry can talk about short sessions all he wants, but once one starts, lawmakers have 30 days to finish up.

"To get this done in three days is very ambitious and requires the cooperation of a lot of people,” says rules expert Hugh Brady. “You’re really going to have to bust a hump if you’re going to get this done by Friday afternoon.”

More contested legislation like the Voter ID Bill and CHIP expansion have been kept off the agenda, and Perry says he doesn’t anticipate adding anything new while the session’s underway. But even with such a narrow set of issues on the call, lawmakers have a lot of leeway about what amendments they can add to bills.

True, the House Parliamentarian could always adopt a very strict interpretation of what amendments are germane to certain bills, but that would be going against several judicial and legislative precedents, Brady says. “If the House or the Senate really wants to, they could take a narrow bill and try to expand it to add consumer protection or whatever they’d like to add onto it.” So lawmakers could still add amendments that substantially reform TxDoT and the insurance department, and it may take more than a few days to do so: just passing a bill in a three-day period would require suspending certain rules, he added.  

But will they really want to? In that sense, at least, Perry timed his session well. As Brady points out, “it’s the middle of the summer and nobody really wants to be here.”

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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Schieffer vs. Watson?

posted by Victoria Rossi at 10:53 AM

Former state Rep. Tom Schieffer officially announced his candidacy for governor today outside an elementary school in Ft. Worth. He’s scheduled appearances in Houston and Austin later this afternoon and will then head to South Texas to start campaigning.

His announcement comes just a day after his expected opponent for the Democratic seat, state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, said she wouldn’t enter the race. (Humorist Kinky Friedman is also expected to be in the Democratic field.) She also put in a good word for colleague Kirk Watson, urging him to run. In the same breath she took an indirect stab at Schieffer, whose personal ties to George W. Bush landed him an ambassadorship to Australia and later Japan:

Prominent Democrats must put personal ambitions aside and very pragmatically nominate the person best equipped to win in November. Just because one can win the Democratic nomination for Governor doesn't mean one should, unless he or she is best positioned to defeat the Republican nominee in the fall. That's why I think Senator Kirk Watson should raise his sights and run for Governor.

Maybe that’s why part of Shieffer’s announcement touched on what should have been an obvious point. “I am a Democrat,” he said, “as Sam Rayburn used to say, without prefix, suffix, or apology.” Much of the rest of his speech focused on education and health care—issues that go hand in hand with his oft-repeated concern about Texas becoming a third world state. 

Watson, an Austin Democrat and former mayor of the city, said he was flattered by Van de Putte’s endorsement and would think it over, but wouldn’t decide until at least the end of the special session, which many expect Gov. Rick Perry to call in July.

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Monday, June 22, 2009

Sneak Preview: “People’s Friends & Foes”

posted by Victoria Rossi at 12:20 PM

As promised, we've just posted a sneak preview of our upcoming issue on the 81st Texas Legislature. In our preview article, "People's Friends & Foes," we take a close look at those lawmakers who've done right -- and wrong -- by the citizens of Texas. The rest of the issue will be posted on our homepage by the end of the week.

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Friday, June 19, 2009

Special Session: Perry Calls the Shots, But He’s Also a Target

posted by Victoria Rossi at 01:06 PM

So far, the only certainty about the special legislative session Gov. Rick Perry has said he’ll call is where it’ll be. When it'll happen, how long it might last, and exactly what legislation he’ll bring back to the table is anybody's guess.

Perry’s not usually shy about special sessions. This will be his eighth since becoming governor in 2000; he’s allowed many of them to last their full 30 days and sometimes piled multiple special sessions into a year to ensure a law’s passage. After the meltdown at the end of the regular session in late May, the need for such a session is obvious. Lawmakers still have to pass bills that renew at least five major state agencies—among them, the departments of transportation and insurance—or they’ll start shutting down in September and be completely closed for business by Sept. 1, 2010.  

But with primary contender U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson indicating that she’s ready to pounce on Perry for any misstep, there’s reason to think he’ll tread cautiously this time around. “The only losers in special sessions are governors,” says Harvey Kronberg of The Quorum Report.

Perry can lay low during regular sessions and leave the mistakes to lawmakers, but during a special session he’s calling the shots, making him an easy target for advocacy groups and political opponents. The wisest course of action, Kronberg says, would be to get in and get out quickly—“put the special session in the rearview…and let those 181 loose cannons stay home."

It wouldn’t be so hard to do: call a quick, two-to-four day session sometime in July, stick strictly to 'emergency legislation' [renewing those agencies] and hope all those finicky lawmakers calling for Perry to add more bills to the agenda quiet down soon.

Ahh, but then there’s voter ID, the conflict-ridden partisan monster that stalled the House for a week and took out some 400 bills with it when it finally died. Though reviving such a contentious bill would undoubtedly draw criticism, Perry’s conservative base is counting on him to add voter ID to the agenda—and Perry’s counting on them to win him the primary against Hutchinson.

Will he risk introducing a legislative wild card for some primary votes? There’s no guarantee Perry will play safe this session, Kronberg says, based on his past performance: “The governor on more than one occasion has demonstrated a willingness to take risks and to throw Hail Mary passes.”

Meanwhile, Hutchinson has been prowling around the rink waiting for Perry to take off his statesman’s hat and put on his boxing gloves. She hasn’t officially announced her bid for governor, but she’s issued a slew of press releases critiquing Perry’s leadership during the regular session and it’s clear that she’s going to take full advantage of any special session screw-ups. She's done as much with the regular session, according to The Dallas Morning News:

Hutchison told The Dallas Morning News in Washington that if she, rather than Perry, had been governor, there would be no need now to call lawmakers back.

"I would hope not," she said. "Because I would be hands-on, working hard through the session and I would be working with the Legislature, which is what I think the governor should do."

Sounds like the primaries will be more fun to watch, regardless of what Perry cooks up for the special session. "Let’s get the statesmanship out of the way," Kronberg says, "and move on to the smackdown.”

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Friday, June 19, 2009

Session Wrap Up

posted by Victoria Rossi at 01:00 PM

The regular session’s over, and with it go the updates to "Floor Pass"—at least until the special session Gov. Perry is expected to call. Keep an eye out, though, for our legislative wrap-up issue, due out June 26th, where we’ll talk about what all happened—and didn't—during (and to) the 81st session. You’ll find a sneak-peak article posted this Monday.

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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Bang! Special Session Triggered?

posted by Reeve Hamilton at 09:55 AM

Just when you thought the 81st Legislature couldn't get anymore bizarre, the Senate closed up shop for good last night without approving or even considering the House's clever attempt to work around dealing with the "sunset safety net" bill.  Subsequently, major state agencies are left without the legislation they require to continue. 

The sticking point - at least on the surface - in the Senate seems to have been discomfort with amending statute with a resolution, which is technically againsst the rules, and the House's failure to address $2 billion in road construction bonds.

The Austin Chronicle's Richard Whittaker explains the trouble with the resolution:

It was a basically a safety net resolution to save the safety net bill that saved the Sunset requirements for Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas Department of Insurance. The problem is that it sets a terrifically troubling precedent by allowing major statutes to be altered at the 11th hour by a resolution. The potential impact on future legislation is little short of monumental. Similarly, there are concerns that it could have severe consequences about the role of the Legislative Budget Board, and gives them too much power over the spending of federal stimulus dollars.

Sen. Steve Ogden told the Quorum Report:

“We need a short special session to fix two things,” Ogden said. “The bonding issue and the sunset schedule.” 

“The TxDOT budget is wrecked, the agency will start winding down, people will lose their jobs,” Ogden continued.  “Uncertainty will jeopardize projects that have already had years of planning.”

Agencies can take their time pretending to wind down until the situation can be corrected in a special session - or, if they really have to, next legislative session.

Last night, many lawmakers  indicated that they expect to be back at the Capitol for a special session in April 2010, after the gubernatorial primaries.  Both the sunset and bonding issues would likely be on the docket, but the big question is what else might join them.  Could Voter ID rise up, McLeroy-like, and terrorize the legislature all over again?

To be continued...(in April, maybe)

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