7.3: Role and Responsibilities of the Texas Legislature
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The key responsibility of elected officials is the passage of laws that represent the interests of those who elected them, their constituents. “The duties of the legislature include consideration of proposed laws and resolutions, consideration of proposed constitutional amendments for submission to the voters, and appropriation of all funds for the operation of state government,” as is stated on the website for the Texas House of Representatives.14 heir only mandate, as put forth by the Texas Constitution, is approval of a balanced state budget, and, as the textbook tax example at the beginning of this chapter shows, proposed legislation comes with a price tag, a “fiscal note,” provided by the Legislative Budget Board, in keeping with the balanced budget rule.
Despite the limitations built into the structure of the Texas legislature, legislators have obligations as well that take up their time when they are not in session. Constituent services include non-legislative functions such as answering inquiries about policies, listening to the concerns of residents, researching legislation, and facilitating cooperation among state agencies, local government, businesses, and nonprofit organizations. Figure 7.5 shows a bipartisan meeting with the Texas Association of Business, for example. This is in addition to the ceremonial attendance and speech-making at important events, not to mention political fundraising and campaigning for re-election.
Bills
A bill is the draft of a proposed change to statutory law; statutory laws are laws presented to and passed by the legislature. (Other laws include constitutional laws, based on the U.S. and Texas constitutions, common laws that invoke accepted standards in a community and judicial decisions, and regulatory laws that are regulations imposed by the governor or a regulatory body.) House members and senators can introduce bills on any subject during the first sixty calendar days of a regular session. If a bill is introduced in the House, it is called a House Bill and given a number. The 2019 Canales bill discussed at the beginning of this chapter was House Bill 21, or H.B.21. If introduced in the Senate, it is called a Senate Bill and given a number. S.B. 317, for example, was introduced by Senator Bryan Hughes of Mineola in 2019. This bill allowed feral hogs—a problem concerning the hogs that were descendants of pigs brought to Texas as food by early settlers and which had now become a menace—to be killed without a hunting license. Governor Abbott signed S.B. 317 into law in 2019.
Any bill increasing taxes or raising money for use by the state must start in the House of Representatives. After sixty days, the introduction of any bill other than a local bill—a bill that only affects the representative’s own local district—or a bill related to an emergency declared by the governor requires the consent of at least four-fifths of the members present and voting in the house or four-fifths of the membership in the Senate.
There are several types of bills that can be introduced, including local, general, special (for specific exemptions from state law), or bracket (which applies to, for example, a specific geographic area or a specific area targeted for economic development). The most common are general and local. A general bill is one that is applied to everyone equally, like the one for increasing the penalty for porch pirates introduced by Representative Wu. An example of a local bill is the one introduced by Representative Morales for renaming a highway in his district. Two thousand nine hundred and fifteen bills have been introduced in the Eighty-Seventh Texas Legislature.15 Few will make it into law.
Resolutions
Just as bills are used to propose a change to state law, a proposed change to the state constitution is proposed in the form of a joint resolution, which can be filed in either the House or the Senate. A joint resolution must be approved at least two-thirds of the memberships of each chamber—at least 100 state representatives and at least twenty-one senators. The governor has no veto opportunity (the opportunity to reject the bill)—once approved by the House and Senate, a joint resolution is filed with the secretary of state, who places it on a statewide election ballot for consideration by Texas voters, who must approve it by majority vote. In 2021, Senator Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat from Laredo, has introduced Senate Joint Resolution 13, which would amend the Texas Constitution to rescind the state’s observance of Daylight Savings Time. Voters in 2019 approved nine of the ten proposed constitutional amendments passed by the legislature, rejecting only a proposition to let more than one small town use the same elected city attorney.
Like joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions reflect the will of both the House and Senate but unlike joint resolutions cannot be used to propose a change to the state constitution. Concurrent resolutions (H.C.R if filed in the House, S.C.R. if in the Senate) are often used to express the official opinion of the legislature on a federal issue before Congress. Concurrent resolutions are required for the legislature to grant itself permission to adjourn for more than three days during a regular session—seen frequently during the early weeks of the 2021 session as lawmakers deal with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and are required to grant a plaintiff permission to sue the State of Texas. In the 2021 session, H.C.R. 21, by Representative Ron Reynolds, a Democrat from Rosenberg, would urge Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars per hour.
Simple resolutions can be adopted by either the House or Senate (H.R. in the House, S.R. in the Senate) without participation by the other chamber and have no force of law. These are used to recognize birthdays, anniversaries, and victories by local high school sports teams, and as memorial resolutions to commemorate a deceased official or important constituent. In 2021, S.R. 37 by Senator Sarah Eckhardt, whose district includes the University of Texas at Austin, is a memorial resolution recognizing the recent passing of legendary Texas Longhorn football coach Fred Akers.
Non-Legislative Powers
In addition to its legislative responsibility to introduce bills and resolutions, the Texas legislature has non-legislative powers that include counting election returns for governor and lieutenant governor, investigating problems as they arise, and appropriating funds for specific agencies, which is part of their approval of the state budget. But one of the most significant non-legislative powers of the Texas legislature is impeachment, the process by which an elected official can be officially accused of misconduct, removed from office, and prohibited from future elected service.
Impeachment indicates charges are brought against an officeholder; it does not indicate that the officeholder is guilty The House alone can bring impeachment charges against a statewide officer, which would result in a trial before the Texas Senate. It is the same impeachment system that operates at the national level. The Texas Constitution gives the House the power to decide what constitutes an impeachable offense. Impeachment charges have only been successful twice in Texas’s history.16 Judge O.P Carrillo spent three years in jail for income
tax fraud after his impeachment in 1975, and Governor James “Pa” Ferguson was impeached in 1917 for bribery, embezzlement, and selling pardons. Though he had resigned in a failed attempt to avoid impeachment charges, he was convicted and prohibited from running again for governor in Texas. After his conviction, his wife Miriam Amanda “Ma” Ferguson ran for governor to vindicate the family name. On the campaign trail, she announced “two governors for the price of one,” and Pa Ferguson was the main speaker at her rallies.17 She was elected governor twice, first in 1924 and again in 1932. She was the first woman elected as governor of Texas; the second by a hair in the U.S. with Wyoming’s Nellie Tayloe Ross being sworn in on January 5 and Ma Ferguson following on January 20.18
How Legislators Make Voting Decisions
Unlike in the U.S. Congress, decision making in the Texas legislature relies on much more than political party. The most common advice new legislators hear from veteran members is “always vote your district.” The Republican State Senator Drew Springer from North Texas described it this way, “When you get to Austin, you always vote your district. It is not always up and down party lines. A lot of the challenges we face are not Republican versus Democrat, they are rural vs. suburban or rural vs. urban.”19 Though legislators often choose up sides based on party membership, they can also divide into urban versus rural on transportation issues, districts where water is plentiful versus those where it is not on water policy and coastal versus interior on hurricane resiliency and flooding issues.
Voting one’s district is about more than just who lives in the district—it is about who votes in the district. Older citizens outvote younger ones. Homeowners outvote renters. If you are ever tempted to think voting does not matter, watch the legislature discuss a bill that would benefit elderly homeowners. Rarely does a session pass without serious attempts to increase Texas’s generous menu of property tax exemptions for homeowners aged sixty-five and older.20
While less of a factor in the state legislature than in Congress, partisanship has become an increasingly important and complex source of pressure on legislators’ voting decisions. Most legislators see more political risk from a challenge in their own party primary than from a general election opponent. Accordingly, Republicans and Democrats alike are wary of allowing a potential opponent to outflank them from the more extreme end of the partisan spectrum. Republicans face a particular quandary today as they try to anticipate the mood of Republican Party primary voters in the post-Donald Trump era.
14. “Texas Sessions,” Texas Legislature | 2021-2022 | 87th Legislature, LegiScan, https://legiscan.com/TX.
15. “Impeachments in Texas,” Ballotpedia, https://ballotpedia.org/Impeachments_in_Texas.
16. John D. Huddleston, “Ferguson, Miriam Amanda [Ma] (1875-1961),” Texas State Historical Association Handbook of Texas, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/...nda-wallace-ma.
17. Tony Pettinato, “First Woman Governor: Nellie Tayloe Ross,” First Two Women Governors, Nellie Tayloe Ross and Mirian “Ma” Ferguson, genealogybank, Nov. 4, 2016, https://blog.genealogybank.com/first...y-elected.html; “Ma Ferguson Sworn In as Governor,” Texas Landmarks Legacies, vol. 8, no. 20, Jan. 20, 125, https://howdyyall.com/Texas/TodaysNe...m?GetItem=1530.
18. Drew Springer, quoted in Jimmy Potts, “Springer Gives Legislative Update to Olney Voters,” Olney Enterprise, Nov 3, 2016, https://www.olneyenterprise.com/news...e-olney-voters.
19. “Age 65 or Older or Disabled Exemptions Frequently Asked Questions,” Taxes: Property Tax Assistance, Comptoller.Texas.Gov, accessed Feb. 24, 2021, https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/...sabled-faq.php.
20. Ara Jones, “Texas House speaker Dade Phelan announces diverse leadership slate,” Austin American-Statesman, Feb. 4, 2021, https://www.statesman.com/story/news...ts/4393274001/.