From Texas Redistricting: Current Districts

To help out with understanding the second written assignment.

- Click here and follow the links for each map.

Does Texas had a Foreign Policy? The case of CHAPTER 808. PROHIBITION ON INVESTMENT IN COMPANIES THAT BOYCOTT ISRAEL

States aren't supposed to, it falls under the prohibited powers. 

But Texas is Texas.

A law passed in 2017 mandates that the state not invest in companies that boycott Israel.


- Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar Reminds Businesses About Agency’s Boycott Israel List Amid Israel-Hamas Conflict.

. . . The Hamas terrorists have underestimated Israeli resolve and have invited the full retribution of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Similarly, as Israel’s ally, we must not waiver in our support.

“As this conflict unfolds, I remind businesses that my office maintains a list of companies that boycott Israel. Texas Government Code Chapter 808 defines ‘boycott Israel' as ’refusing to deal with, terminating business activities with or otherwise taking any action that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on or limit commercial relations specifically with Israel or with a person or entity doing business in Israel or in an Israeli-controlled territory … .'

“Texas has long been a friend and ally of Israel, and we support Israel’s right to defend its land and people. Companies that do business with the state of Texas should keep that in mind.”

__________

For more: 

- From the Comptroller's office: DIVESTMENT STATUTE LISTS.

- Texas Government Code: Chapter 808.

- HB 89 - 85(R).

From the Texas Tribune: Texas House passes three immigration bills after contentious night of debate

The bills in questions are: 

HB 4: Relating to prohibitions on the illegal entry into or illegal presence in this state by a person who is an alien, the enforcement of those prohibitions, and authorizing under certain circumstances the removal of persons who violate certain of those prohibitions; creating criminal offenses.

HB 6: Relating to making an appropriation for the construction, operation, and maintenance of border barrier infrastructure.

SB 4: Relating to the punishment for certain criminal conduct involving the smuggling of persons or the operation of a stash house; increasing criminal penalties.

- Click here for the article.

The Texas House in the early morning hours Thursday approved three bills aimed at beefing up border security, one that would appropriate more than $1 billion for additional border barriers, one that would allow police officers to send back migrants to who cross the border illegally and another that would increase penalties for human smugglers.

Lawmakers spent hours debating the measures Wednesday and into Thursday morning. All three bills drew Democratic opposition, but the most contentious debate was House Bill 4, which would empower police officers to apprehend, arrest or send back migrants who cross the border illegally. Tempers flared when state Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, made a motion to block new amendments, a rare move used to end a debate sooner.

After that motion passed, House Speaker Dade Phelan called a break as members posed parliamentary inquiries about the motion and the House stood at ease for hours. When they returned, Phelan called for the dozens of pending amendments to be heard.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: The Texas Legislature’s unexciting, no drama, very humdrum session

As seems to be intended.

- Click here for the article.

Are you not bored?

And do you not remember that this is what the governor and legislative leaders promised the people of the great state of Texas in January?

They said they were going to get along, that they were all on the same page, that this would be a meat-and-potatoes or bread-and-butter session. (Choose your preferred food group, if it’s in there.) In conversation, elected officials — the Republicans in particular — said they wanted to govern without looking like they had been driving around in a Washington, D.C., clown car. This was going to be a serious, no-nonsense legislative session.

They weren’t kidding.

And for the most part, that’s what they’ve delivered. No "bathroom bill" to bring out the armies of culture warriors. Education bills without fights, or really any conversation at all, about vouchers or other ways to use public money on private schools. Efforts to fan the immigration flames have been relatively scarce, unlike the days of "sanctuary cities" legislation (once deemed an emergency issue by Gov. Greg Abbott). Compared with other states in recent months, this Legislature’s abortion law disputes have been muted. Other than false claims that an election bill would prevent old people from carpooling to the polls, the perennial skirmishes over voting rights have been side issues.

Sure, there are battles. That voter legislation, Senate Bill 9, has plenty of material for snarling, snarky debate. And the state’s misbegotten effort to purge noncitizens from voter rolls ended with a court settlement and, probably, the busted gubernatorial appointment of Texas Secretary of State David Whitley, who oversaw that fiasco. But those wrangles haven’t reached the pitch of years past and certainly haven’t been loud enough to invoke comparisons with Congress.

From the Texas Tribune: "People were giving us lip service": Texas cities' legislative efforts have struggled this year

For 2306's look at the relationship between cities and states.

- Click here for the article.

The interest group representing Texas cities used to be one of the most powerful legislative forces at the Capitol. This session, it has become the GOP’s most prominent adversary.

Its members have been harangued at hearings. Targeted by a proposed ban on “taxpayer-funded lobbying.” And seen multiple proposals sail ahead over their protests.

When, around March, one mayor inquired about the reasoning for a controversial provision in a property tax bill, he said an adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott suggested, “You reap what you sow.”

The message was clear, said McKinney Mayor George Fuller: Local officials had been obstructionists in the past.

Although the antagonistic relationship between Texas cities and the state has been building for years, this session has reached the fever pitch of all-out legislative assault, Austin Mayor Steve Adler said in April. Typically, the Texas Municipal League tracks bills it opposes that are gaining momentum in the Legislature. This session, the group had amassed more than 150.

Among them was a bill regarding cable franchise fees authored by state Rep. Dade Phelan, a Beaumont Republican and chair of the powerful State Affairs Committee. After the Texas Municipal League warned its members the proposal could cut into cities’ revenues, Phelan had a concise response for the group, which represents 1,156 of Texas’ roughly 1,200 cities.

“When you are in a hole — you should stop digging,” Phelan recommended in an email obtained by The Texas Tribune.

In an interview, Phelan said he harbored no animus toward the organization but took umbrage with its opposition to legislation his constituents want. The sentiment is widely shared in the Legislature, Phelan said, as evidenced by the support bills on taxpayer-funded lobbying and franchise fees have garnered.

Mentioned in the article:

Lobbying
Governor
Mayor
Republicans in the Legislature
State Affairs Committee
Texas Municipal League
model legislation
conservative think tanks
progressives
Lt. Governor
property taxes
local budgets
House Speaker

From The Texas Tribune: Renewable energy proponents brace for last-minute attack on tax breaks for wind and solar

Tax breaks for wind and solar energy are discussed in the policy chapters of 2306.

- Click here for the article.

In the waning days of the 86th legislative session, as House and Senate lawmakers spend hours debating and voting on bills, wind and solar groups are watching for any last-minute attempt to make renewable projects ineligible for a local tax abatement program that benefits all types of industrial and commercial developments.

They have good reason to be on high alert.

Ahead of the legislative session, the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation — the Austin-based policy institute that is an ideological beacon for many Republicans — launched a crusade against renewable energy subsidies at all levels of government. Locally, the foundation has zeroed in on property tax abatements granted under chapters 312 and 313 of the state tax code that cities, counties, school districts and other taxing entities have wielded for almost two decades to lure oil refineries and — more recently — wind farms alike.

The crux of the foundation’s argument against renewable energy subsidies is that they distort the electric market, leading to artificially low prices.

The billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies that have been awarded to renewable projects at the local, state and federal level — $16 billion, according to the foundation — “has allowed renewable energy generators ... to sell their electricity at whatever price they need to get it onto the market, which drives prices low, into negative territory,” Bill Peacock, the foundation’s vice president for research, said in an interview earlier this year.

Still, lawmakers are moving to renew both programs; Chapter 312 would otherwise expire this year, followed by 313 in 2022.

No legislation has been filed that would strip renewables from the abatement programs. But lawmakers always have the option of proposing last-minute amendments to bills just before the House or Senate vote on them.

And that’s what Jeffrey Clark, president of the pro-renewables Advanced Power Alliance, is expecting.
Mentioned in the article:

- 86th legislative session.
- property tax.
- tax abatements
- Texas Public Policy Foundation.
- state tax code.
- subsidies.
- Advanced Power Alliance.
- last-minute amendments to bills.
- University of Texas at Austin’s Energy Institute.
- corporate welfare.
- school districts.
- Todd Staples.
- Texas Oil and Gas Association.

From the Texas Tribune: To fight anti-"sanctuary" bill, Democrats may highlight "sanctuary industries"

For the many 2306 students looking at "sanctuary city" legislation. Some strategy to attempt to derail it.

- Click here for the article.

As Texas Democrats strategize how to continue pushing back against state-based immigration proposals, they’re considering a tactic often embraced by some far-right members of the Republican Party to assist their efforts.

“I would just say that all options are on the table to expose the hypocrisy of only focusing on immigrants and not on Texas businesses that rely heavily on them,” state Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, told the Tribune. “There may be a multi-tiered strategy to expose the hypocrisy and bring business to the table.”

Anchia, the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, made his remarks last week, a day after he was in the middle of a bruising debate on the House floor. Anchia unleashed a six-minute tirade on the floor after state Rep. Mark Keough, R-The Woodlands, offered an immigration-enforcement amendment to legislation that would create a new system of monthly payments for relatives caring for children in their families who have been abused or neglected. The amendment would have prevented undocumented families in the same circumstances from receiving state aid.

“If this is how the session’s going to go, and you guys want to talk about ‘illegals’ and you guys want to talk about immigrants and you guys want to talk about sanctuary cities, well, we’re going to start talking about sanctuary industries,” Anchia said during the debate, coining a new term about businesses that don’t fully vet their employees’ legal status.

From the Texas Tribune: Tensions mount between Dan Patrick and the Texas House

No one likes being checked.

- Click here for the article.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick celebrated a milestone Wednesday: His Senate had acted on all four of Gov. Greg Abbott's emergency items with many more days to go in the 85th legislative session.

"It's the earliest ever that anyone knows of that either body ... has already passed all the emergency items," Patrick said in a radio interview. Abbott's top priorities are "out and done" in the Senate, Patrick boasted — a not-so-subtle contrast with the Texas House, which tackled its first emergency item this week.

It's not the only bone Patrick has to pick with the House these days. As its resistance to some of his top priorities has come into focus in recent weeks, the lieutenant governor has become increasingly vocal about the tension between the two chambers.

"The brow-beating — I think the volume's up a lot higher than we've seen in the past," said state Rep. Lyle Larson, an ally of House Speaker Joe Straus, a fellow San Antonio Republican. "Using a brow-beating approach in governing never bodes well for anybody."

From the Texas Tribune: Thousands of school choice advocates expected to rally at Texas Capitol

File this under agenda setting - among other things.

- Click here for the article.

Thousands of students, activists and family members are expected to flood the Texas Capitol lawn Tuesday morning in a sea of signature yellow scarves as the Legislature prepares for a fight on whether to let parents use public money for private school tuition.

In advance of the "National School Choice Week" rally, an event that has become a session tradition over the past decade, organizers said they feel closer than ever to actually seeing a bill for private school choice make it to the governor's desk. For the first time, Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will headline this year's rally, scheduled for 10 a.m. on the Capitol's south steps.

Patrick is expected to unveil his bill this week advocating for education savings accounts — state-issued debit cards that parents can use for private school tuition and other education expenses. A former chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Patrick has championed private school choice legislation since he first became a state senator in 2007.

Abbott last month was more vocal than ever in his support of private school choice, saying he would sign the "most pro-school choice law" arriving on his desk.

From the Texas Tribune: Texas House unanimously elects Joe Straus for record-tying fifth term as Speaker

Straus is on route to becoming the most powerful House Speaker in Texas history.

- Click here for the article.

For the first time since he was elected House Speaker in 2009, Joe Straus walked into the lower chamber on Tuesday without a clear leadership challenger.

And two years after facing a rare contested vote for Speaker, Straus was re-elected unanimously by House members on the opening day of the 85th Legislature for a record-tying fifth term. He joins former House Speakers Pete Laney and Gib Lewis for the longest tenures presiding over the House.

Following the 150-0 vote, Straus took the oath of office and made clear in a speech to a packed House chamber what his legislative philosophy would be for the upcoming session.

“Compromise has become a dirty word in politics,” Straus said. “It’s a good word in this House.”

Straus has long been criticized by some in his party as being too moderate, drawing primary challenges from Tea Party candidates. But he’s easily held onto his San Antonio-based seat.

Straus’ easy re-election as House speaker Tuesday was a departure from 2015, when he faced a Republican challenger from Scott Turner of Frisco who forced the first contested vote for Speaker since 1975. All but 19 House members voted for Straus that year.

For more:

- Tribpedia: Speaker of the House.

Here's the language in the Texas Constitution that states how this is to be done:

Article 3. Sec 9. (b) The House of Representatives shall, when it first assembles, organize temporarily, and thereupon proceed to the election of a Speaker from its own members.

Here's a look at how he's been able to stay Speaker for so long:

- Analysis: Speaker Straus breaking a trend seen with his predecessors.

At a point when speakers are generally wearing out their welcomes, Straus faces less opposition than ever before.

He has avoided scandal. His Republican Party is firmly in control of both the state government and, more importantly, of the House itself. Turnover among his lieutenants has been low enough to keep things stable and high enough to allow him to bring new people into the fold. His opposition, almost all of it coming from the most conservative waters in the GOP pool, is noisy but small: In that 2015 contest against state Rep. Scott Turner, R-Plano, the challenger got only 19 votes.

He has quietly become a legislative counterbalance, and the House and Senate have switched traditional institutional roles. The normal formula is that the House is the place for hot passions and the Senate is where things cool off and get more careful consideration. In Texas, it’s now the Senate that chases flashy political issues and the House that slows things down.

The Texas Legislature convenes today

They'll be in session until May 29, 2017 and will likely pass close to 6000 bills in that time. That's the trend anyway. There are a handful of places you can find detail about it, in order to avoid overload I'll focus primarily on the a page the Texas Tribune has set up to cover it.

- Click here for the 85th Texas Legislative Session.

Here are more sources we will be using this semester.

- Texas Legislature Online.
- Texas House of Representatives.
- Texas Senate.
- Legislative Reference Library of Texas.
- Daily Legislative Clipping Service.
- House Research Organization.
- Senate Research Center.
- Texas Legislative Council.

Pre-filing starts today

Legislators can begin filing bills the first Monday following the election, which is today.

- Here's what's been filed so far today.

For more on pre-filing:

- Legislative Reference Library of Texas.

From the Texas Tribune: Lawmaker Job Has Lousy Pay, but Great Benefits

The previous story refers to the retirement pay for members of the Texas Legislature, which ofsets their otherwise low pay.

Here's detail.

- Click here for the article.

Serving in the Legislature, while enormously time-consuming, is supposed to be a part-time gig for the civically interested Texan. Keep the 9-to-5 job that pays the mortgage and feeds the family and, for 140 days every two years, come to Austin and legislate on behalf of your fellow citizens. In between, you and your staff can take care of constituent services, helping this one obtain vital records like birth and death certificates, helping that one with a regulatory issue in some agency.

That arrangement obviously requires some forbearance at work. At a minimum, a lawmaker will spend at least four days a week in Austin in January through May of every odd-numbered year. It’s not easy, but neither is serving on a school board or a city council or doing volunteer work.

The pay genuinely stinks. It’s $600 per month, plus a daily allowance of $150 for those days when a lawmaker is in Austin or on the road for official business. Voters have turned back various attempts to turn these into full-time jobs with full-time pay.
That doesn’t mean it’s not lucrative in the long term.

Texas legislators who serve at least eight years are entitled to start collecting pension benefits at age 60. If a lawmaker has at least 12 years of service, the benefits can start when the lawmaker is 50.

The benefits aren’t based on that $600-per-month paycheck, either, but on the salary paid to state district judges. That salary, set by the same legislators whose pensions depend on it, is $125,000. There’s a formula ($125,000 x .023 x years of service), but the bottom line is that retired Texas lawmakers get an annual pension of $2,875 for every year they were in office, as long as they have met the minimum service requirements.

It adds up. That eight-year lawmaker would get $23,000 annually starting at age 60. After 12 years? $34,500, starting at the ripe old age of 50.

Every case has particulars — adjustments and deductions for this and that — but it’s easy to figure a lawmaker’s base benefit just by knowing the years in office. For instance, former Speaker Tom Craddick — the longest-serving state legislator in office and the second-longest in state history — took office in 1969 and will have 44 years of service at the end of his current term. The Midland Republican is running, unopposed, for re-election. But if he were to retire at the end of this term, his annual pension benefit would be $126,500.

The 1866 Texas Black Codes

For our look at civil rights.

- Click here for them.

For more: TSHA - Black Codes

List of major topics in recent sessions of the Texas Legislature

I'm posting this for future reference. The Texas House Research Organization publishes lists of topics likely to dominate each session of the legislature prior to its meeting. Below are links to the ones published going back to 1998.

2306 students who are thinking about paper topics related to next year's session might find this useful. The legislature tends to revisit certain issues regularly.

- Click here for the HRO's section on Legislative Session Reports.

Topics for the
- 76th Session. (1999)
- 77th Session. (2001)
- 78th Session. (2003)
- 79th Session. (2005)
- 80th Session. (2007)
- 81st Session. (2009)
- 82nd Session. (2011)
- 83rd Session. (2013)
- 84th Session. (2015)

From the Texas Tribune: PAC Mobilizes to Defend Vaccine Exemptions in Texas

A look at elections, interest groups, and public policy making in Texas. A possible agenda items for the 85th Session next year.

- Click here for the article.

Texans For Vaccine Choice’s mission, according to Schlegel-Polvado, is to guard parents’ rights to opt out of vaccine requirements — whether that means targeting legislators who seek to close non-medical exemptions or pushing for policies that otherwise protect parents who choose not to vaccinate, like preventing physicians from excluding them from their practices.

In this year's primary elections, that meant going after state Rep. Jason Villalba, the Dallas Republican who filed the bill.

“The animus that was leveled against me for that was very surprising to me,” said Villalba, who ultimately won his race. “These people, they literally said it to my face — they hate me. That was troubling. Because I get it, they care about their children — but I care about my children too, and the children of the community.”

When he filed the bill last session, Villalba, a father of three, said he expected it to be non-controversial. Like other lawmakers around the country who have pushed to re-examine vaccine laws — including in California and Vermont, which last year successfully limited provisions allowing non-medical exemptions — he was motivated by recent outbreaks of diseases like measles and whooping cough that medical officials attributed to growing numbers of parents choosing not to vaccinate their children.

. . . Pediatricians — many of whom have watched with dismay as the number of parents choosing not to vaccinate their children has climbed — widely support the elimination of non-medical exemptions to immunization requirements.

"In my opinion, there are no good, valid reasons for deferring vaccinations or not vaccinating based on religion or philosophical objection," said Dr. Jason Terk, a pediatrician at Cook Children's Hospital in Keller. "It is my firm conclusion that vaccines and the benefit they provide to individuals and the rest of the public is well founded."

Terk said low immunization rates brought an undeniable risk of otherwise preventable deadly disease outbreaks.

"That is not a theoretical argument; that is something that we’ve seen occur in the parts of U.S. where the frequency of non-vaccination is significantly higher, and those locales are precisely the places where we’ve seen outbreaks," he said.

But for parents like Schlegel-Polvado, who have children they believe have been harmed by vaccines, any proposal to end exemptions is a battle call.

“You come after parental rights, we are going to fight back,” said Schlegel-Polvado, who discontinued vaccinating her younger two children after concluding that a childhood DTaP immunization led to brain damage in her now-15-year-old daughter, Ashlyn.

During the 2015 legislative session, Villalba said he quickly became acquainted with the passion of the anti-vaccine movement’s supporters, many of whom believe the undue influence of pharmaceutical companies has led to an overabundance of immunization requirements that come at the expense of children’s health.

“This is a group that is very dedicated, very organized; this issue is very important to them,” he said.

From the Texas Tribune: Analysis: Texas Legislative Review Process Needs a Review

The Sunset Review process is falling under criticism.

- Click here for the article.

When the Texas Department of Transportation was up for its periodic legislative review in 2009, the must-pass bill became a magnet for every legislative idea that had not already passed on its own.|

“There were, like, 200 or 250 amendments,” recalled House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, in an interview last week. “I couldn’t even see the parliamentarian for the stacks of amendments everywhere. It was just ridiculous.”

He has a pretty good memory: An aide looked it up and found there were 222 amendments. The most important thing to remember, however, was that after months of work on one of the state’s biggest and most important agencies, that so-called Sunset legislation failed.

“It makes a mockery of the whole Sunset process, and it makes me question whether or not it still serves a useful purpose,” Straus said. “So, let’s give it a try, to try to refocus and instill some discipline, and see how we do.”

From 538: How Much Should State Legislators Get Paid?

Texas pays $600 a month - is this a good idea? We discussed this in 2306 a few times.

- Click here for the article.

Earlier this year, a Republican state lawmaker in New Mexico proposed a constitutional amendment that would give his colleagues (and himself) something most workers take for granted: a paycheck. Since 1912, when New Mexico entered the union as a sparsely populated frontier settlement, its state legislators have worked without a salary, although lawmakers receive a per diem that amounts to approximately $7,000 for up to two months of work per year. Today, it’s the only state with an unsalaried legislature. In an op-ed published in January, the amendment’s sponsor, Terry McMillan, argued that a volunteer legislature has its limits. We tend to prefer a professional fire department to a squad of volunteers, he said — why don’t we feel the same about the people in our government?

The amendment, which would have raised New Mexico legislators’ salaries to match the state’s median household income, around $45,000, died quietly when the session ended in February. But arguments like McMillan’s raise a tricky question for American taxpayers: How much are our lawmakers really worth?

“The question of salaries has haunted American legislatures since the 1640s,” said Peverill Squire, a professor of political science at the University of Missouri and an expert on state legislatures. “It has been a chronic issue where lawmakers generally ask for more pay and the public is almost always resistant.”

When they ask for more money, lawmakers like McMillan try to make the case to voters that they deserve a pay raise because of the time and knowledge required to do their jobs well. It’s a hard sell, because higher–compensated legislatures such as those in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York, where lawmakers are paid well above the state’s median income, routinely face accusations of incompetence or corruption. According to Squire and other political scientists, higher pay isn’t a magic bullet for better governance — but there’s evidence that when it comes to state legislatures, we get what we pay for.

From the Texas Tribune: Texas Supreme Court Upholds Tax on "Small Tobacco"

More from the Texas Supreme Court, and bit in revenue collection in the state.

It also fits with a discussion in some classes about how laws in Texas favor large businesses over small ones.

- Click here for the article.

A state tax that imposes a 55-cent fee on each pack of cigarettes produced by small tobacco manufacturers is constitutional, even though larger tobacco manufacturers do not pay the tax, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday. 

In a ruling that overturned the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin, the justices said that the tax law, written by State Rep. John Otto, R-Dayton, and passed in 2013, was sound.

In December, lawyers for a coalition of companies known as "Small Tobacco" had argued that the tax, introduced by House Bill 3536, violated Texas’ “Equal and Uniform Clause,” which they interpreted to mean that taxes must be uniform on all items similar to each other. In other words, they claimed it was unfair to tax producers of certain cigarettes without also taxing the producers of essentially identical cigarettes from other companies.

The ruling Friday, written by Justice Don Willett, concluded the clause pertains to the entities being taxed, not the products themselves – and therefore, it was legitimate for the Legislature to draw a distinction between various classes of cigarette manufacturers.

“No reasonable person would dispute that an ice cream manufacturer could be classified differently than a computer manufacturer,” Willett wrote. In the same way, he explained, it is legitimate for the Legislature to make different “rational” classifications based on methods of conducting business, among other distinctions.

From the Houston Chronicle: Houston senator’s work raises questions of conflict of interests

In 2306 we discussed a central problem in amateur legislatures. where the general session s very short and legislators paid very little, the expectation being that they work full time in the real world. Legislators often have conflicts of interest. The work they do as part time legislators can go hand in hand with the work they do in their full time jobs.

This may be an example.

- Click here for the article.

Over the past 26 years, state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, has voted to confirm gubernatorial appointments to the Lower Colorado River Authority, a powerful electric utility in central Texas.

During the same time, financial firms he either owned, worked for, or owned stock in have profited handsomely by helping underwrite $3.7 billion in bonds sold by the authority.

His impressive legislative record is well-known — 676 bills he has authored or served as the lead Senate sponsor have become law, including major reforms to Texas’ criminal justice system, schools and community colleges.

But because of Texas’ lax ethics law, much less is known about Ellis’ equally impressive career in the lucrative government bond business, which has repeatedly placed him in a position to exercise authority over local governments and public agencies whose bond proceeds were being used to pay Ellis’ firms.

His dual role as lawmaker and bond underwriter has left him straddling the line between politics, municipal finance and public policy, raising questions about potential or actual conflicts of interest, or the appearance of conflicts.

Since first being elected to the Texas Senate in 1990, Ellis has been involved directly or indirectly in municipal bond deals totaling $120 billion in Texas, an analysis by the Houston Chronicle has found. Nearly all of those deals have involved several firms doing “underwriting” — when firms are chosen or bid to buy bonds from a government agency and then sell them to investors.

The cost of issuing government bonds is about 1 percent of the bond’s principal amount, or $1 million for every $100 million in bonds sold. About half that issuance cost, or $500,000, would go to underwriters’ fees, according to Public Sector Credit Solutions, a California-based research firm which examined 800 bond deals nationwide since 2012.