From the Texas Tribune: Texas Senate takes first step toward school finance overhaul - The Senate has tasked a new budget working group with coming up with ways to overhaul the state's school finance system.

This is a tall order that may or may not be accomplished by the end of the session

- Click here for the article.

Leaders in the Texas Senate are vowing to find ways to overhaul the state’s school finance system, saying a recent Texas Supreme Court decision granted them a prime opportunity to shake up the heavily criticized status quo.

On Monday, they announced the creation of a Senate budget working group — led by Friendswood Republican Larry Taylor — to tackle the issue. That group will work with the Senate Education Committee, which Taylor chairs, to propose replacements for the current school finance system.

“The opportunity is huge for us to get it right,” said Jane Nelson, chairwoman of the Senate’s powerful Finance Committee. “We need a whole new method of school finance.”
They'll face an uphill climb in a session where legislators face several obstacles to major reform, not the least of which is money. The announcement comes a week after the Senate unveiled its preliminary budget, which did not include additional funding for public education.

. . . The current system funds Texas public school districts arbitrarily and inequitably across the state and is held together by short-term fixes that have not been revisited in decades. Educators have repeatedly asserted the funding formulas do not provide them with enough money to meet the state's academic standards.

In May, the Texas Supreme Court upheld the state's existing funding system as constitutional, and at the same time tasked state legislators with reforming it.

"We're left with a question mark as to what this effort will mean by the Senate," said Lynn Moak, a school finance expert at the Austin-based consulting firm Moak, Casey & Associates. The main question is "whether they're trying to reform school finance within existing dollars or looking for possible additional dollars to fund the system."

Nelson last week unveiled the Senate’s $213.4 billion two-year budget proposal, calling it a bare-bones starting point for financial discussions in what promises to be a particularly tight-fisted year. That proposal did not touch funding formulas for public education.

The House’s base budget — also released last week — included an additional $1.5 billion that could be spent on public education only if the Legislature reforms the school finance system.

From the Houston Chronicle: In race to fill Sen. Rodney Ellis' seat, tenure a top issue

There's much background to cover with this story - we will hit it soon.

- Click here for the article.

Amid frantic wooing of Democratic precinct chairs, the unconventional sprint to succeed state Sen. Rodney Ellis is boiling down to an argument over tenure: Is it better to move a seasoned legislator to the Senate, or preserve House experience by sending a relative newcomer to the upper chamber?

State Rep. Senfronia Thompson argues the former, touting her 44 years in Austin, as former Houston City Controller Ron Green makes a case for the latter.

Ten-year state Rep. Borris Miles casts himself as the Goldilocks of the bunch, seeking to leverage his experience while asserting that Democrats would lose too much in the House by promoting Thompson.

Houston's Senate District 13 opened up nearly three weeks ago after local precinct chairs tapped Ellis to replace late Precinct 1 Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee, forcing the 26-year state senator to remove his name from the November ballot for his legislative seat.

The urban district's 95 precinct chairs - 78 from Harris County and 17 from Fort Bend County - are set to meet Saturday to choose the party's replacement nominee.

Ellis was unopposed, meaning Democrats' replacement candidate is all but guaranteed to take office in January.

Yes the Texas Senate was unusually conservative this past spring

So says Rice Poli Sci guy Mark Jones.

- Click here for the article.

Links to maps

For even more help, click on these for maps of the entire state of Texas:

- State Senate Districts (map)
- State House Districts (map)
- Congressional Districts (map)

Notice how small the districts get in our area - especially in Houston. This is due to population density. In a future lecture we will talk about the court cases which mandated that each district have an equal number of people in its borders.

For a look at this requirement, click on the link below:

- State and Federal Law Governing Redistricting in Texas.

The 2003 Texas Redistricting

The case involving Tom Delay stemmed from his efforts to obtain a Republican Majority in the Texas House in the election of 2002, which would have been the first time the Republican Party had controlled the institution since Reconstruction.

Of course it was a very different Republican Party back then - nationalist in outlook and supportive of - Civil Rights.

What made this controversial was that DeLay's intent was to enable the Republican Party to draw new districts for the House of Representatives and give the Republican majority in the House a few extra seats. These are normally only redrawn in the legislative sessions immediately following the census when House seats are reapportioned. The Democratic Party still controlled the Texas Senate though, so Republicans were unable to dominate the redistricting process.

The legislature elected in 2000 was able to draw the US House districts that allowed the Democratic Party to continue to dominate the state delegation - there were 17 Democrats to 15 Republicans. The one elected in 2002 was able to redraw the districts, target certain Democrats - mostly white males - and result in a scheme that elected 21 Republicans and 11 Democrats.

This demonstrates the effectiveness of gerrymandering.

What got DeLay into trouble was that the manner in which donations from corporation were funneled to candidates. Corporate financing for candidates was illegal at that time. Prosecutors argued that DeLay circumvented those rules by funneling corporate money through his account to those of the Texas Senate candidates. The appellate court seems to have argued that these funds were not meant for the campaign, but rather to have access to DeLay.

As we should expect, a Wikipedia page exists that provides an overview of the 2003 redistricting effort.

We will discuss elections in Texas soon enough - this gives us a head start.

Here are more sources:

- The Texas Gerrymander
- Justice staff saw Texas districting as illegal
- The Killer D's
- Sourcewatch

From the Monkey Cage: Crowd-Filibustering in the Texas Senate

Its also being called the citizen filibuster. A handful of actors both inside and outside the Texas Senate worked together to defeat SB5 - at least temporarily.

One of the authors at The Monkey Cage walks through several aspects of the filibuster. I'd consider this essential reading for my students since it reminds us of the reality of how political power is exercised.

Did Dewhurst screw up?

Accusations are flying that the Lieutenant Governor's mismanagement of the special session set the stage for Davis' filibuster. Dewhurst's political future may have evaporated. We've been reading about Allen Shivers and how he made the Lieutenant Governor a powerful position. I wonder if history will look at Dewhurst as being responsible for undermining it. 

Great detail from Ross Ramsey:

When the special session began (and, to be fair, before abortion was on the agenda), Dewhurst took a long-planned trip to France. That had to do with the dedication of a D-Day museum, a project that involves some family history for Dewhurst, whose father was on a bomber crew. Most lawmakers gave him a pass, even if they rolled their eyes at the same time.

When it came time for Dewhurst to give someone a pass, it was the last day of the session, and he decided that the most important issue on his plate was more important than the funeral of the father of Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio. It’s true that the funeral was held on the last day of a special session with several bills still in play.

But it’s also true that the first bill in line — because Dewhurst put it there — was the abortion bill. He and everybody else knew there would be a filibuster and that it might imperil other legislation on tap.

He might have asked senators to vote out the other bills, gone to the funeral and let Davis have a short filibuster on Tuesday night. That would have completed the other business, taken some of the spotlight away from Davis and set up a story for Republicans coming back in another special session to get their work done in a way the Democrats couldn’t block.

Or he could have used the rules to cut off the filibuster, which turned out to be the strategy he pursued. He assured the governor and House leaders that the abortion legislation would pass on Tuesday. But the day slipped away from him.

Senators are allowed to talk as long as they want, and when they do that in a strategic way — to delay a vote, for instance — it’s a filibuster. Those can be stopped if the senator doing the talking breaks the rules of the filibuster, yielding the floor to another senator, sitting or leaning on furniture, or going off subject. It’s a three-strikes-you’re-out rule, and Senate Republicans decided that was the way to go.

Instead of the customary empty chamber where one senator filibusters and friendly colleagues take shifts asking questions to pass the time, senators stuck around for Davis’ debate, watching for mistakes. They eventually found three that Dewhurst would sustain, and the filibuster came to a halt. But it was late and his rulings were questionable — to some of the senators and most of the spectators — and a challenge pushed Dewhurst out of the chair.

The parliamentary wrangling and the protesters ate up the rest of the time, and when Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, finally called a vote on the abortion bill, it turned out that the midnight deadline had passed.

Republicans had the votes they needed, and the conversations about whether and when to come back and try again started right away on Wednesday morning.|

They might be able to put the bill back together, but Dewhurst’s fortunes are another issue. In his attempt at a political revival, he flopped on stage with everyone watching.

The Texas Tribune reports that the filibuster just might work

Governor Perry has a wild card though - he can call another special session.

From the story:

Using delaying tactics and parliamentary rules, the minority party argued into the wee hours in the state House on Monday morning and then stuck together to keep the GOP from jamming Senate Bill 5 through the Senate in the afternoon and evening. Republicans vowed to try to muster enough support to push the bill through Monday night, but that effort failed. And Democrats are prepared for a final talk-a-thon Tuesday that could spell death — for now — for the bill.

SB 5, by state Sen. Glenn Hegar, R-Katy, would make abortion illegal after 20 weeks and would establish stringent new requirements for facilities that perform abortions. Supporters of the bill say it would make the procedures safer for women and protect unborn babies. Abortion rights proponents say the legislation would shut down most of the abortion facilities in Texas.

With barely more than a day left in the 30-day special session called by Gov. Rick Perry at the end of May, that means Democrats have moved much closer to putting the controversial measure within the range of a filibuster.

From the Chron: Texas Senate has a history of record-breaking filibusters

Opponents of the abortion bill being debated in the Senate are planning a filibuster.

The Houston Chronicle points out that the record was set in the Texas Senate in 1977 - 43 hours. They also point out that the filibustered bill passed immediately after the filibuster was over.

SB 2 - the charter school expansion bill - passes the Senate

The Bill now heads to the House - click here for info from TLO.

From the Texas Tribune:

As colleagues praised Education Chairman Dan Patrick's efforts at building consensus, a significantly altered version of his expansion of the state's charter school system quickly passed out of the Senate Thursday afternoon.

Patrick, R-Houston, said Senate Bill 2 accomplished what should be the goal of lawmakers — lifting everyone through quality education.

"The key to that is to have the opportunity for a great education, and I'm real proud to be a member of the Senate today," he said as senators approved the measure by a vote of 30 to 1.

The lone dissenter, Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, did not explain his reasons for doing so from the floor but later issued a statement saying he could not vote to expand charters until the Legislature adequately addressed the issues of over-regulation and inequitable funding in traditional public schools.

. . . Patrick originally intended to lift the state's 215-school cap on charter contracts. After amendments, including one from Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, it now incrementally increases the limit on charters, reaching a hard cap of 305 by the year 2019. Charter schools aimed at dropout recovery or operated within traditional school districts would not count toward that cap.

The Senate dropped a requirement for school districts to lease or sell underused buildings to charter schools and another that would have provided facilities funding for charters, which — along with the state cap on charter school contracts — is a primary issue in a lawsuit pending against the state.

Some superintendents and school board members objected to the proposal, saying that in a time of limited resources, charter schools that serve only 3 percent of the public school population should not received additional state funding for facilities. Other critics said that before adding more new charter schools, the state should focus on closing those that perform poorly.

On Thursday, Democrats in particular commended Patrick for his effort to be inclusive and bipartisan in drafting the bill, which has undergone many changes since it was originally introduced.

From the Texas Tribune: The Texas Weekly Index

I still haven't completely figured out the methodology here, but it purports to show the "political climate" in each of the legislative districts in the state.

The Texas Senate determines who gets a two year terms and who gets a four year term

Every ten years - in the election immediately following redistricting - the Texas Senate has to decide which of the 31 senators get to serve a four year term, and which have to serve a two year term, and run again to serve a four year term.

It involves drawing lots.

Its a quirky little thing, but its necessary to both comply with the four year, overlapping term requirement for the Senate. After every redistricting process the senate districts are new, so the constituents in each have the chance to determine who will represent them. But then this process begins so that the Senate is allowed to pull back a bit from the immediate preferences of the population.

The Texas Tribune describes the actual process as it worked its way out in the Senate today. 

One by one, senators walked up to the front of the chamber and picked an envelope, each with a piece of paper inside a capsule. The papers were numbered 1-31. Senators who picked an even number will serve a two-year term. Senators who picked an odd number got a four-year term.

Simple enough.

Meet Larry Taylor

Larry Taylor is the new State Senator representing the 11th District, which is the district ACC is located in. He represented House District 24 for six terms. He is an insurance agent out of Friendswood - he owns the Truman Taylor Insurance Agency.



Here's detail from his official website:

During his tenure, Taylor served as the Chairman of the House Elections Committee, Co-Chairman of the Windstorm Insurance Legislative Oversight Board, a member of the House Insurance Committee, the House Select Committee on Voter Identification and Voter Fraud, the Energy Council, and two terms as Chairman of the House Republican Caucus.


Committee assignments have yet to be released, we'll discuss them when they happen.

A few links about our new Senator:

- Campaign website.
- Official Senate website.
- Texas Tribune profile.
- Texas Watchdog story regarding the TWIA.
- PolitiFact story involving vote about in-state tuition for illegal immigrants.
- BallotPedia page.
- TLO: 80th Session.
- TLO: 81st Session.
- TLO: 82nd Session.
- TLO: 83rd Session.

Texas Senator Mario Gallegos Dies

The Texas Tribune discusses the life of the senator here, and the peculiar situation voters are in now since it is too late to remove his name from the ballot. For Democrats to hold the seat, they must vote for him so that the governor must call a special election after the general election.

Dewhurst announces committee chairs

Story in the AAS.

The Battle for Abilene on the Senate Map

From the NYT, an insider's account of conflict over where to draw state senate district lines:

Twenty years ago, a young state representative from Big Spring — a Republican in a Texas House then dominated by Democrats — found himself, via redistricting, in a race against a veteran Democrat.

The Democrat, David Counts, was a committee chairman and a member of the leadership, and the district was drawn in a way that favored him and put the Republican in the shadows.

Facing certain electoral death in the House contest, Troy Fraser decided to run instead for the State Senate. He lost and went home.

Mr. Fraser now lives in Horseshoe Bay, in Central Texas. He’s still a Republican, but now he’s a state senator, a seat he won four years after that 1992 loss. He’s a committee chairman and a member of the leadership. But he’s in another redistricting battle — this time with another Republican and based more on what part of the state is shrinking than on politics.

This time, it’s all about Abilene. It’s the secret to Mr. Fraser’s political strength in his largely rural district, but it’s also a logical remedy to the shortage of population in an adjoining district represented by Senator Robert L. Duncan, Republican of Lubbock.

Democracy and Casinos in Texas

Here's a great example of the limits institutions place on democracy:

From the Chronicle:

While a new statewide poll shows that 86 percent of Texans believe the public should vote on whether to legalize casinos, an influential state Senate chairman with jurisdiction over gambling said Monday he has no intention of advancing the necessary legislation.

"There is no support in my committee," said state Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock. "I just don't think there are the votes in the Senate. I don't see any chance of passage."

Duncan's opposition signals almost insurmountable odds for the expansion of gambling in Texas, despite the industry's hopes that lawmakers would look favorably upon casinos this year as a solution to the state's fiscal crisis.
The story also illustrates the Lieutenant Governor's control over the committee system, and the impact that can have on legislation:

So far, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has referred all gambling resolutions and bills filed in the Texas Senate to the State Affairs Committee, which Duncan chairs.

His spokesman, Mike Walz, said Dewhurst also likely would refer all "stand-alone" gambling bills passed by the House to Duncan's committee. He noted that the issue could be attached to other significant legislation that traditionally is heard by other committees.

Duncan's opposition creates a huge hurdle for an industry that has geared up its lobbying effort to take advantage of a desperate search by state lawmakers for new revenue sources.

By sending gambling bill to Duncan's Committee, which is a hugely important one the the legislature, Dewhurst can kill the bills without putting his fingerprints on the weaponry.

More on Senator Duncan:
- Senate website.
- Texas Tribune.
- Duncan's quotes.

The Senate Committee on State Affairs

- Official website.
-

Dewhurst Announces Senate Committee Assignments

This is one of the tools available to the president of the Texas Senate that grants him leverage over the rank and file.

- story in the Chron.
- story in the Texas Tribune.

Area Senator Mike Jackson is on the Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Business and Commerce, Natural Resources, and State Affairs committees. Both 2301 and 2302 students ought to consider what exactly the Senator is able to do to address constituency needs in each of these committees.

The Texas Senate Retains the 2/3rds Rule

From the Texas Tribune:

In a party-line vote, the Texas Senate adopted its rules today without making any changes to the rule that requires the consent of two-thirds of the body in order to bring an issue to the floor. Of course, no change means that controversial legislation on voter ID — as it was last session — is exempt.


This has been controversial because though Republicans have a comfortable majority in the Senate, they don't have a 2/3rds majority. Democrats still have the ability to stop legislation, except now for Voter ID legislation.

The Gerrymandered Texas Senate and the Threats to the Senate's 2/3rds Rule

Rick Casey comments on what he calls the most stable job in Texas politics: Texas State Senator.

There is one Texas elected body that is so stable that it offered a safe harbor for Democrats even in the political monsoon that blew on Tuesday.

Is this good news for the Democrats? Not hardly, as we shall see. The body is the state Senate.

Consider this: While Democrats lost 21 seats in the 150-member Texas House of Representatives and most likely three veteran congressmen, the 31-member Texas Senate had 12 Democrats and 19 Republicans before the election and will have exactly the same margin after the new Legislature is sworn in next January. And only two are newcomers, one Democrat and one Republican having stepped down voluntarily.
But while Democrats are safe in body, its districts have been designed so that they underrepresent Democrats in the state -- as is the case with most other offices in the state. Republicans, who control the districting process, accomplish this feat by packing Democrats into fewer seats than they might otherwise occupy, but Democratic incumbents are hardly likely to complain because this makes their seats more secure.

Even with this small number of seats, Democrats -- and the minority party in general -- has been able to leverage this small number of seats into a type of veto power since as long as they are at least one-third of the Senate, they can block legislation from going through the floor. From the Legislative Refrence Library:

For almost half a century, blocker bills have routinely been placed at the top of the Senate's Daily Calendar, which in effect forces a suspension of the regular order of business on every bill. Blocker bills are bills that are introduced and passed out of committee as early as possible in a legislative session in order that they may occupy the first positions on the calendar. They are not intended to be worthy of serious consideration or passage. The sole purpose of a blocker bill is to ensure that at least two-thirds of the membership have an interest in debating a measure before it can come to the floor. Bills that do not enjoy substantial support cannot make it past the blocker bill.

Though it has been set aside on rare occasions, this practice -- known as the "two-thirds rule" -- has been an honored tradition in the Senate. Among other things, it is generally acknowledged that the Senate's two-thirds rule fosters civility, a willingness to compromise, and a spirit of bipartisanship.

Republican Senators have argued that this rule undermines democracy -- and certainly their agenda -- and have made efforts to remove it in the past. Similar efforts are underway currently.

- In Defense of the Two Thirds Rule.
- Bill Hobby comments on the rule.