From the Texas Tribune: In the Texas House, they're seen as lobbyists. In the Senate, they sit at the press table.

For our look at lobbying - and senate rules in Texas. And the powers of the lieutenant governor.

- Click here for the article.

It’s become a common scene in the Texas Legislature. A bill comes up for a vote — caps on property tax rates, maybe, or a referendum on “sanctuary cities” — and a text goes out. Lawmakers are told they will be graded on this one, and low marks, they know, could launch a primary challenge from the right.

The sender, the scorekeeper and the eventual challenger is often Empower Texans, a tea party-aligned group formed in 2006 with millions in oil money that has worked to replace moderate Republicans with hardline conservatives. For the last decade-plus, the organization and its PAC — which blur the bright lines between newsroom, lobbying firm and political action committee — have aimed, with on-again-off-again success, to upend the Texas political scene with pricey primary challenges, by-the-minute scorecards of lawmakers’ votes and a lawsuit aimed at gutting a state agency.

This year, instead of watching from the sidelines, two employees of Empower Texans’ reporting arm, Texas Scorecard, sit for the first time at the press table on the Senate floor, feet away from the lawmakers their organization has helped bring to power and the lawmakers their organization has failed to swat down.

Curious observers are welcome in the halls of the Texas Legislature, but in the House and Senate chambers, they have long been relegated to the upper-floor galleries. Lobbyists, who are paid and who pay out large sums to boost or bust legislation, are barred from the floor. Aside from lawmakers, staff and special guests, only journalists are allowed on the floor of the chamber, where they have closer access to elected officials.

From the Texas Tribune:Texas officials flag tens of thousands of voters for citizenship checks

For 2306 today

- Click here for the article.

The Texas secretary of state's office announced Friday it would send local election officials a list of 95,000 registered voters who the state says counties should consider checking to see whether they are U.S. citizens and, therefore, legally eligible to vote.

In an advisory released Friday afternoon, the office said it was flagging individuals who had provided the Texas Department of Public Safety with some form of documentation — including a work visa or a green card — that showed they were not a citizen when they were obtaining a driver’s license or an ID card. Among the individuals flagged, about 58,000 individuals cast a ballot in one or more elections from 1996 to 2018, the secretary of state's office said.

It’s unclear exactly how many of those individuals are not actually U.S. citizens and whether that number will be available in the future. In its notice to counties, the secretary of state's office said the names should be considered "WEAK" matches, using all capital letters for emphasis.

That means counties may now choose to investigate the eligibility of the individuals who were flagged, which would require them to send a notice asking for proof of citizenship within 30 days, or take no action. By law, the counties aren't allowed to automatically revoke a voter's registration without sending out such a notice.

From CNN: Trump signs bill ending shutdown, official says

For review in 2305:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/22/politics/senate-shutdown-vote-congress/index.html

For background on the budgetting process:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_process

From Grits for Breakfast: TDCJ suicide record argues against state takeover of Harris County Jail

A look at the relationship between state and local government in the context of criminal justice.

- Click here for the article.

In a roundup post over the weekend, Grits pointed to an odd story emerging when "Sen. John Whitmire suggested the state should take over the Harris County Jail after its fifth suicide in two years. If the Texas Department of Criminal Justice did a better job, Grits might agree. Suicide attempts at TDCJ are quite high."

Then, on cue, yesterday Keri Blakinger published a story in the Houston Chronicle titled, "Mother sues Texas prisons after 'egregious' failure to prevent son's suicide." So TDCJ has its own suicide prevention problem.

When I made that passing comment, I didn't have the data on TDCJ suicides close to hand, but Keri did. From the story: "In 2017, the Texas prison system saw 34 suicides, the second-highest number in a decade. At the same time, suicide attempts have been on the rise, though previously officials chalked that up to a change in data recording."

The Harris County Jail, whose inmate population is about 1/15th of the state prison system, has had five suicides since January 2017, Blakinger reported last week. So TDCJ's suicide situation isn't notably better than the Harris County Jail. Why would a state government bureaucracy that can't stop suicides do a better job at suicide prevention than a county-jail bureaucracy that struggles with the same problem?

Perhaps the solution has nothing to do with who manages the facilities, but reducing unnecessary incarceration and vastly expanding mental health services outside of the justice system?

Grits believes that expanding TDCJ's jurisdiction isn't the answer to anything; that agency's footprint needs to contract. The institutional division should incarcerate fewer people. The probation division should supervise people for shorter periods. Understaffed, rural prison units should close and the property beneath them should be sold on the open market.

Anyway, if the state wants to take over the jail, will they pay for it? That's the reason it's incredibly unlikely such a thing will happen in 2019.

If legislators have that much extra money to throw around, there are better ways to improve the justice system. To prevent suicides in county jails, legislators would be better off reducing incarceration levels across the board through bail reform and sentence reduction, and financing outpatient competency restoration so fewer mentally ill people are incarcerated there.

From the Texas Tribune: Texas Supreme Court will weigh whether state should reveal execution drug supplier

For a future look at the Texas Supreme Court, and the criminal justice process in general.

 - Click here for the article.

For years, the state of Texas has fought to keep the identity of an execution drug supplier a secret. On Wednesday, the Texas Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether that company's identity should finally be revealed.

Three lawyers who represent death row inmates are seeking to name a pharmacy that supplied pentobarbital — the sole drug used in Texas executions — in 2014, at a time when multiple states had "botched"executions with new drug combinations and struggled to find lethal doses. The Texas prison system has claimed before lower courts that the information should be withheld from public disclosure because it would endanger the supplier. A district and an appellate court both sided with the death penalty lawyers, rejecting the claim that disclosure would put the company in danger.

Originally, the Texas Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, indicating that the state soon would be forced to reveal the pharmacy's identity. But the justices changed their minds after the state filed a motion for a rehearing and focused on a broader claim: that naming the pharmacy could cut off the state's supply of drugs and end the death penalty in Texas, which has executed by far more inmates than any other state.

“This lawsuit is a collateral attack on the death penalty,” former Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller wrote in his last-shot petition in July. “If allowed to stand, the court of appeals’ decision directs the public unmasking of a supplier of Texas’s lethal-injection drugs, which jeopardizes the State’s ability to carry out the death penalty.”
For more, click here.

From 2306 today

All from the Texas Tribune

- Analysis: Unfunded state mandates have a new enemy — the governor of Texas.
- Dan Patrick announces Senate committee assignments, making a few noticeable shifts.
- Cornyn picks top Abbott operative to manage re-election campaign.
- Texans fighting citizenship question on 2020 census are headed to court. Here's what you need to know.

From Wikipedia: National Emergencies Act of 1976.

For an early look at the bill making process.

Also:

- commander in chief
- inherent powers
- presidential power

- Click here for the page.

The National Emergencies Act (Pub.L. 94–412, 90 Stat. 1255, enacted September 14, 1976, codified at 50 U.S.C. § 1601–1651) is a United States federal law passed to stop open-ended states of national emergency and formalize the power of Congress to provide certain checks and balances on the emergency powers of the President. The Act of Congress imposes certain procedural formalities on the President when invoking such powers. The perceived need for the law arose from the scope and number of laws granting special powers to the executive in times of national emergency.

The legislation was signed by President Gerald Ford on September 14, 1976. As of January 2019, the United States is under 31 continuing declared states of national emergency.

What are the other national emergencies?

- Click here.

For the legislative history, click here.

09/14/1976 - Public law 94-412.
09/14/1976 - Signed by President.
09/02/1976 - Measure presented to President.
08/31/1976 - Resolving differences -- House actions: House agreed to Senate amendments.
08/27/1976 - Passed/agreed to in Senate: Measure passed Senate, amended.
08/26/1976 - Reported to Senate from the Committee on Government Operations with amendment, S. Rept. 94-1168.
09/04/1975 - Passed/agreed to in House: Measure passed House, amended, roll call #494 (388-5).
04/21/1975 - Reported to House from the Committee on the Judiciary with amendment, H. Rept. 94-238.
02/27/1975 - Introduced in House

From the Brennan Center for Justice: A Guide to Emergency Powers and Their Use

The scope of a president's emergency powers has been in the news recently. Not much clarity has been given to what constitutes an emergency, who gets to determine an emergency exists, and what can  president do about it.

It turns out, a very large number of bills apply to the concept.

- Here's a comprehensive explainer.

Unknown to most Americans, a vast set of laws gives the president greatly enhanced powers during emergencies. President Donald Trump’s threats to get funding for a wall along the border with Mexico by declaring a national emergency are not just posturing. The Brennan Center, building on previous research, has identified 136 statutory powers that may become available to the president upon declaration of a national emergency, including two that might offer some legal cover for his wall-building ambitions (10 U.S.C. 2808 (a) and 33 U.S.C. 2293 on our list below). The table below displays these powers by subject matter, specifies the conditions triggering their use, and lists the occasions on which they have been invoked. Our top-line observations from this research may be found here, while our methodology for compiling the database is available here. Separately, we have developed a running list of national emergencies declared since the National Emergencies Act went into effect. And we did a deeper dive into some of these powers in the January/February 2019 issue of The Atlantic.

Introducing the House Research Organization and the Senate Research Center

For 2306 students, these will be very helpful for your 1000 word paper assignments.

- House Research Organization.
- Senate Research Center.

Dates of interest for the 86th Legislative Session

- Click here for the calendar.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: Property taxes in Texas are high. Don’t expect the Legislature to change that.

Attempts to limit property tax increases continue to be on the agenda of the Texas Legislature. The author of the following article points out that attempts to do so have failed in the past, and might continue to.

- Click here for the article.

Restrain, reform, rein in, restrict and limit are not synonyms for the word Texas property taxpayers crave: cut.

This is an alert: Your property taxes will not be falling, in spite of all the talk about easing property taxes that is emanating from the Texas Capitol.

State lawmakers can’t make property tax rates come down. They’ve tried. It didn’t make rates come down. And even trying is expensive: It would cost the state just under $2.5 billion to replace a dime’s worth of local school property taxes; that is, to lower the property tax rate by ten cents. On a $250,000 home, that would amount to overall savings of about $20 per month in property taxes.
But the state of Texas doesn’t levy property taxes — that’s the job of local governments. And it has proved to be impossible for state lawmakers to lower taxes they don’t control.

They can try to create conditions that could lower property taxes, increasing the state’s share of the costs of big programs like public education, public health, criminal justice and mental health. But because they don’t control either the appraisals of real estate or the tax rates imposed on those properties, Texas state lawmakers cannot guarantee a cut in your property taxes.

They hear a lot about it in town hall meetings and campaign visits, though, so you can’t blame them for trying.

The best recent example was in 2006, when then-Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislature embarked on an ambitious rebalancing of public school finance that included what was supposed to be a swap that raised state taxes on corporations in return for lower local school property taxes.

The swap amounted to a $7 billion reduction in what Texans would have paid without it, the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a business trade group, said at the time. But taxes didn’t drop. And Perry’s explicit promise that the average homeowner would save $2,000 came back to bite him during the 2006 race for governor.
Article 8 of the Texas Constitution concerns taxes and revenue collection. It establishes the basic relationship between the state and local governments regarding revenue, it is also exceedingly complex. In 2306, we will do what we can to make sense of it.

 - Texas Constitution, Article 8.

From Forbes: Texas Judge Deals Obamacare A Major Blow

Texas is once again trying to take the law down.

- Click here for the article.

Key terms:

- federalism
- commerce clause
- judicial review
- checks and balances
- district judge
- implied powers

A judicial attempt to invalidate the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was given a major boost on Friday, December 14th, when a federal judge in Texas ruled that the ACA, otherwise known as Obamacare, is unconstitutional.

As part of the tax overhaul passed last year, the ACA penalty for not having health insurance was abolished. This went into effect in January, 2018. In a Federal District Court case, Texas v. Azar, in which oral arguments were heard in September of this year, the plaintiffs - Republican officials in 20 states led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton - argued that with elimination of the health insurance requirement there is no longer a tax, and therefore the law loses its constitutionality. In brief, “once the heart of the ACA — the individual mandate — is declared unconstitutional, the remainder of the ACA must also fall,” the lawsuit stated.

In a 55-page opinion, federal judge Reed O’Connor writes regarding the lawsuit: “The court finds the individual mandate can no longer be fairly read as an exercise of Congress’s tax power and is still impermissible under the interstate commerce clause ― meaning the individual mandate is unconstitutional…. [T]he court finds the individual mandate is essential to and inseverable from the remainder of the ACA."

This case will likely to go to the U.S. Court of Appeals 5th Circuit, and then possibly on to the Supreme Court, which implies that for now the ACA remains in effect.

Suffice to say, removing the individual mandate does not invalidate ACA on policy grounds. It weakens it, for sure. Indeed, the individual mandate is an integral component of the law, because it facilitates pooling of risk and expands population-wide access. But, it is not a necessary part of the law. ACA can function without it.

I'm a health policy analyst, not a legal expert. So, I won't weigh in on the constitutionality of the individual mandate. Rather, I'll focus on if when one part of ACA, the individual mandate, is found to be unconstitutional the remainder of the law must be jettisoned. Legally, severability implies that if any part of a legislative act is ruled unconstitutional, the remainder shall not be affected. Court decisions tend to favor severability, which, in cases in which certain parts are deemed unconstitutional, preserves as much of the original legislation as possible. In several landmark cases, the Supreme Court held that an unconstitutional provision is severable unless it is evident that "Congress would have preferred no legislation to legislation without that provision, or unless the legislation is incapable of functioning independently without it."

From the Texas Tribune: To settle voting rights suit, Richardson ISD will get rid of at-large elections

This illustrates a point we will make in the chapters on elections. Single member districts in local governments facilitate the election of racial minorities.

key terms
- voting rights
- single purpose governments
- ISDs
- Voting Rights Act
- federalism
- desegregation
- districts

- Click here for the article.


Following a voting rights challenge to the way it elects its school board members, Richardson ISD has agreed to adopt a new election system that could give voters of color more say in who represents them.

After months of negotiations, the North Texas district agreed to switch from an at-large system, with all of the district’s voters able to vote in each race, to a hybrid approach with two at-large districts and five single-member districts. Voters of color will make up a majority of the electorate in at least two of those districts.

It’s the latest victory in a wave of litigation against school boards in the area where the influx of Hispanic families and the flight of white families have dramatically transformed the racial makeup of public school classrooms but haven’t led to increased representation on the local school board. Richardson was one of hundreds of Texas school districts — many of them in suburban areas with similarly changing constituencies — still governed by board members who are elected at-large.

David Tyson, the sole person of color to ever sit on Richardson ISD’s board, brought the lawsuit last January, arguing that the system for electing members prevents people of color from having a fair say in who represents them. The lawsuit points out that the district is now 60 percent black and Hispanic, but its board members are white and live in parts of the school district where most residents are also white.

"The newly drawn districts will hopefully result in a board that is a closer reflection of the diverse and inclusive communities and families that the RISD serves," Tyson said in a statement Thursday.

In the suit, Tyson alleged that Richardson ISD’s at-large election system functioned as a “white-controlled referendum on all candidates” because white voters — who make up a majority of the electorate — regularly formed a voting bloc and wielded control over every seat on the board. Tyson had asked a Dallas-based federal court to declare the system was in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act because it unlawfully diluted the political clout of people of color in the district.

For more: Richardson ISD's student demographics have significantly changed. The makeup of its school board hasn't.

A few items on the agenda of the Texas Legislature

- Texas House proposes massive increase for public school funding.

- Domestic abusers can trap their victims with financial debt. This Texas bill seeks to provide a way out.

- Medicaid, opioids and abortion: Health care issues to expect this Texas legislative session.

- Texas lawmakers indicate they may use rainy day fund for school security, hurricane recovery and teachers' pensions.

- Bill would curtail criminal prosecutions of rent-to-own customers.

From the Texas Tribune: Federal judge rules against Trump administration’s push for citizenship question on 2020 Census

For GOVT 2305

- Click here for the article.

A federal judge has ruled against the Trump administration’s addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

In the first major ruling on the controversial question, U.S. District Judge Furman of New York’s Southern District court ordered the administration to stop its plans to add the question to the survey “without curing the legal defects” identified in his opinion.

“This ruling is a forceful rebuke of the Trump administration’s attempt to weaponize the census for an attack on immigrant communities,” said Dale Ho, an attorney for the ACLU, which was a plaintiff in the case.

The Trump administration had tried several times to stop the case from going forward, including requests to the Supreme Court; the administration is likely to appeal Furman’s decision in the high court.

Plaintiffs in the trial include 18 states and several cities and jurisdictions, along with civil rights groups. It is one of three trial that arose from Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s March decision to add the question.

Opponents of the question say it will reduce response rates in immigrant communities and make the constitutionally mandated decennial survey more costly and less accurate. The government had said the question was necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

From teh Texas Tribune: In increasingly diverse Texas, the Legislature remains mostly white and male

A topic we will cover in a few areas in class, notably the chapters on the legislature and elections. The diversity of the state population has yet to translate to the state legislature. but indications are that it soon will.

- Click here for the article.

Every two years, The Texas Tribune compiles the demographics of the Texas Legislature. Every two years, the headline is the same.

Once again, the disparities between the makeup of the Legislature and the people they are elected to represent are stark: In a state where people of color are in the majority, almost two out of every three lawmakers are white. And not even a quarter of them are women.

Click on the article for informative graphics.

A few links for GOVT 2306

These are all - mostly - related to the Texas legislature.

2306 students will visit these regularly throughout class.

- Texas Legislature Online.
- Texas House of Representatives.
- Texas Senate.
- Legislative Reference Library.
- Texas Statutes and the Texas Constitution.
- Texas Register.
- Texas Legislative Council.
- Legislative Budget Board.
- Sunset Advisory Commission.

Each is covered in your textbook, be prepared later in the semester to field quiz and test questions about each.