11.4: Areas of Public Policy in Texas

The state of Texas, as well as all local governments in the state, are involved in a large range of public policies. Each individual type of public policy is sometimes called a policy arena. These can be difficult to comprehend unless there is an overarching structure that helps make sense of it. The Fiscal Size-Up (FSU), which is produced after every meeting of the Texas legislature by the Legislative Budget Board does so, and the FSU format is used in this chapter. A list follows with the policy arenas in the FSU arranged in order of the amount of money the state spends on each:

1 – Education;
2 – Health and Human Services;
3 – Business and Economic Development;
4 – Public Safety and Criminal Justice;
5 – Natural Resources;
6 – Regulatory.

Education

Education has had its own Article in the Texas Constitution since 1845. Currently it is Article 7. The lack of a system of public education was one of the grievances in the Texas Declaration of Independence. Not only did it mention education, it also mentioned how it would be funded. Education is the most well-funded of all of Texas’s public policies, with seven agencies managing education policies in the state. Despite this, Texas ranks thirty-sixth in spending per each student in the country.²⁹

Defining the purpose of education is a key area of debate within the state. The Texas Constitution—building off the Texas Declaration of Independence—states that the “general diffusion of knowledge [is] being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people.”³⁰ Since then, it has also been argued that education is necessary to build a skilled workforce in the state. Land grant universities were funded nationally with the idea that they would provide the practical education necessary to develop the newly acquired territory to the west of the Mississippi. The practical concerns focused on agriculture and mechanics, which explains the name of Texas A&M University. Forces also argue that education is a basic human right, essential for the ability of each individual to live a full enriching life. And as a right, it is one to be provided equitably throughout the state. Doing so, the argument continues, also empowers minority populations to attain an equal position in society.

Unequal Education: Segregation Texas has never embraced the notion of equal education. It practiced legal racial segregation and continues to allow de facto segregation in the boundaries of school districts and the drawing of school attendance zones. It also has a school finance scheme that allows for large disparities in finance. The push for quality education across racial lines has gone hand in hand with the push for civil rights in the state. Two court cases exemplify the push. In 1946 Heman Sweatt applied for admission to the University of Texas Law School despite his ineligibility as an African American to attend. The school was restricted to Whites. In an attempt to comply with the separate but equal doctrine that made segregation legal in 1896,³¹ the state of Texas rapidly created a “law school for Negroes” which is now the Thurgood Marshall Law School at Texas Southern University.³² In Sweatt v. Painter (1950), the court not only ruled that the new law school was not an equal facility, the act of separation “harmed students’ abilities to compete in the legal arena”³³ The UT Law School had to desegregate. In 1954, the separate but equal doctrine was overturned nationally by the Supreme Court on the similar grounds and declared unconstitutional.³⁴

Despite these legal victories, White communities continued to resist racial integration. In 1956 a federal judge ordered the desegregation of Mansfield High School, but up to 400 White residents formed a ring around the school in order to prevent three Black students from enrolling. The mob turned violent. Governor Allen Shivers called in the Texas Rangers but not to confront the mob. Instead, they upheld segregation and allowed the school board to transfer the students out of district. The Mansfield schools remained segregated for another decade.³⁵ Texas born federal judge William Wayne Justice issued a large number of decisions mandating desegregation of schools in the state, which led to him being called “the most hated man in Texas.” Recent studies show that despite the attention once paid to desegregation, Texas schools not only continue to be divided racially, but that state leaders “have largely abandoned racial integration as a tool for equity."³⁶ Instead they seek unspecified alternative ways to expand educational opportunities to all Texas students regardless of race or ethnicity.
Equal Funding Inequity continues in education across Texas due to how the state funds schools. While each district is funded by the state equally, roughly $5,140 per student, about sixty-four percent of the revenue available for school districts comes from locally collected property taxes. These can vary significantly based since some of the 1,019 districts in the state are wealthy, and some are not. This means that some districts can spend more money on facilities and teacher salaries than others. This disparity led the San Antonio Independent School District (ISD) to file a federal lawsuit in 1968 arguing that the disparity violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The result in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973). was unsuccessful. The court ruled that the difference was not “invidiously discriminatory” and that they couldn’t really claim that a fundamental right had been denied to them since there is no clearly written out to education in the Constitution.³⁷ Because of this, the next major case involving inequity in school finance happened in the state courts, and focused on the provision in Article 7 of the Texas Constitution that mandates that “it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.”³⁸

The argument in Edgewood Independent School District v. Kirby (1989) was that the relatively low level of funding provided by the state to schools in the state, led to a reliance on property taxes collected at the local level, which led to the imbalance in funding. The property values within the Edgewood ISD boundaries were $1.2 billion, while that of a neighboring district—Alamo Heights ISD—was $6.5 billion. And despite the fact that the tax rate assessed by the Edgewood district was higher than that of Alamo Heights, funds raised by Edgewood were less than Alamo Heights, as were the facilities they could provide their students. In Edgewood ISD v. Kirby, they argued that the Texas legislature was not complying with the Texas Constitution and the Texas Supreme Court agreed. The court mandated that the legislature provide an equitable school finance system, and the legislature responded with a program that recaptures property taxes from wealthy school districts and distributes them to poor districts. Though officially called recapture, it has been dubbed the Robin Hood Plan, and although unpopular, remains in place.

Control and Curriculum In addition to segregation and funding, controversies also exist concerning the structure of schools and the relative control of state and local forces over what subjects are taught, how they are taught, and how the curriculum will be evaluated. The 1869 Texas Constitution created a state-run primary and secondary education system, which was replaced with one controlled by local forces under the parameters set by the state. Currently the state kindergarten through twelfth grade (K–12) system is overseen by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). The TEA is headed by a state appointed commissioner of cducation appointed by the governor and overseen by and State Board of Education (SBOE). Each of its fifteen members is elected from a single-member district drawn across the state for overlapping four year terms. Public schools are actually run by over 1000 independent school districts across the state, each of which is overseen, and has their tax rates set by, an elected board of trustees. They also hire a superintendent to administer education within the district.

Board members are elected in partisan elections, which has allowed the board to become driven by ideological conflict concerning how subjects—primarily touchy ones like government, history, sex education, and science—are taught. In addition to overseeing the policies and setting academic standards, the board is responsible for the pre-approved state textbook selection. Many people involved in this process are ordinary citizens passionate about what schools teach. Social conservatives tend to have objections to the content of sex education classes, preferring they focus only on abstinence. They also raise objections to the discussion of evolution, asking that science textbook teach the controversy regarding creationism. Recently questions have also been raised concerning which historical figures should be highlighted in textbooks, and whether they should include civil rights activists such as Malcolm X (who championed African American rights in the 1960s) and Caesar Chavez (who championed the rights of Mexican American farmworkers in the 1970s). A recent controversy emerged when a Pearland High School student noticed that enslaved Africans brought to the United States were referred to as “workers.”³⁹ (Given the size of the Texas market, it has been suggested that textbook publishers orient their books around what is acceptable to the state, meaning that the influence of the SBOE extends beyond state lines.)

Charter Schools and School Vouchers Debate also exists over alternative options for education such as charter schools. Increasingly education reformers have raised the question of whether the public school model should be the dominant one in the state. Proposals have been introduced to broaden access to charter schools and to issue school vouchers. The appointment of Michael Morath, the current Commissioner of the TEA, is considered to be an effort to bolster the charter education sector in the state. Morath, who has a background as a tech entrepreneur, ran for an open unopposed seat on the Dallas ISD board in 2011. Once there he became part of a group that tried, unsuccessfully, to convert the entire Dallas ISD into a home rule district charter (i.e., an autonomous and independent), meaning that all its schools would be charter schools.

A charter school is a school that receives government funds, is accountable for results, but which are run according to whatever rules they set for themselves. More significantly, they are generally for-profit organizations, meaning that they are supported by business interests. School vouchers are different, and simpler in many ways. A school voucher is simply a certificate that provides to any school that a student goes to, government revenue. It is based on one of the characteristics of public school finance, student attendance. Schools take attendance so that they can receive the appropriate level of funding from the state. The idea behind vouchers is that the money will follow the student to whichever educational institution the student wishes to attend. Private schools would benefit from this programs, and proponents of private schools promote them, but critics argue that they would undermine public schools and undermine the role they have played in educating and enhancing the wellbeing of racial minorities. School vouchers are an example of privatization—a key mechanism of New Federalism (see chapter 2)—and legislation establishing them are a steady feature of each session of the legislature.

Standardized Testing In the 1970s, various groups were becoming concerned with the quality of education in the state. Many of these were business groups worried about the basic abilities of students who were graduating from high school. In 1979, the legislature responded by passing laws that required the measurement of basic skills, these became the basis for a variety of testing regimes that have been implemented, and themselves revised. The efforts caught fire nationwide and different states were encouraged to experiment with different ways to increase student performance. One items that stuck, and became nationalized, was standardized testing.

Standardized testing is an example of what is called outcome-based education, which simply means that the quality of education is evaluated by a student’s achievement of measurable outcomes, such as those collected from standardized tests. A series of different test were implemented from 1980 until 2011 until the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) was created in 2011. The purpose of the test is to determine whether students have adequately learned the curriculum they are taught. Conveniently enough, the TEA lays out the curriculum standards in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) Everything you were supposed to have learned from kindergarten through high school is laid in these TEKS curriculum standards.

Standardize testing is controversial for a number of reasons, including whether they’re really necessary and whether the solution to the alleged deficiencies of education is more testing rather than more teaching. Teachers and parents complain that classroom instruction is oriented around preparation for the test rather than education. Suspicions exist that performance on tests only indicates the test taking ability of students, not their general knowledge. The cumulative results from the test can result in punishment for the schools and teachers involved, which places additional burdens and stresses on the school and students. What’s more, suspicions also exist that the tests are based more on the political muscle of the publishing companies that produce and administer the them than they are on the wishes of the educational sector trying to improve teaching. Debate still centers on whether other aspects of education suffer as a result of the attention paid to these tests.

Higher Education Higher education is divided into two-year institutions—community and technical colleges—and four-year institutions, which can also offer graduate degrees. Texas also funds a variety of professional schools, including schools of medicine, law, dentistry, and veterinary science. In addition to public schools, Texas is home to private universities. Funding for higher education comes from a variety of sources, including tuition, the Permanent University Fund (PUF) and Higher Education Fund (HEF), and the federal government. As discussed in chapter 10 on local government, community college districts can also collect property taxes since they are organized as special purpose districts much like independent school districts.

As with K-12, higher education exists in order to advance the economic interests of the state. This goes beyond training a workforce and includes efforts to establish Texas as a center for research. Business opportunities can then develop from the research. Some examples include the Center for Superconductivity, which is supported by the University of Houston, and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). CPRIT is supported by the Texas A&M Institute of Bioscience and Technology, the Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Texas Medical Branch, the University of Texas Health Science Center–Houston, the University of Houston, and Rice University, among others. The University of Texas, and others, have also established partnerships with industry leaders in technology.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) was created in 1965 in order to make the delivery of higher education more efficient in public institutions. Programs and new construction must be approved in order to ensure that state money is allocated effectively.

Health and Human Services

The reserved powers of the states (see chapter 2) are primarily involved with the police powers, which are defined as “welfare, health, safety, and even morals.”⁴⁰ These include policies related to the poor and public health, and to the degree that attitudes about provision for these are dependent upon opinions regarding the consequence of individual behavior, they also include policies related to morality. Texas’s historical focus on traditionalism and individualism has made it reluctant to engage in these policies statewide with any seriousness. These were instead sent down to local government, as well as private charitable institutions.

Poverty in Texas The determination of who was and was not eligible for benefits has been left up to the local community. They were also able to make determinations for themselves about who was eligible for assistance, and what that assistance would be. For example, Section 8 in Article 16 of the original 1876 Constitution stated:

Each county in the State may provide, in such manner as may be prescribed by law, a manual labor poor house and farm, for taking care of, managing, employing and supplying the wants of its indigent and poor inhabitants.⁴¹

Regardless of opinions about the poor, the following agencies have been created to address health and human services. In order of size they are: Health and Human Services Commission; Department of Family and Protective Services; Department of State Health Services.

Health and human service policy is now the second largest area of spending in the state. This is not, however, due to any shift within the state of attitudes about the poor; these remain roughly the same. Rather, it is due to the expansion of federal power beginning with programs related to the New Deal and continuing with the Great Society (see chapter 2). These involve policies passed by the national government and run by the states. Some of these began in the 1930s—most notably the inclusion of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) in the Social Security Act of 1935. ADC became the basis for what is commonly—and often derisively—called welfare. In 1965 it was reformed as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFCD), and in 1996 further modified into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). In each case, funding is made available for the ultimate purpose of taking care of children, with the idea that such care should be provided by the child’s family rather than a government in the form of an orphanage or other such facility.

Public Health The largest of the programs for those with low-incomes is Medicaid, which was passed in 1965 as part of the Social Security Amendments of 1965. It provides funding for medical assistance to the poor. These mark a compromise of sorts in that benefits will be provided, by law, to the poor, but eligibility requirements can vary depending on what is suitable to the state. Less controversial poverty programs, those related to old age, are not only funded nationally, but are run nationally as well. These are Social Security, which is a system of old age pensions that people pay into over the course of the working lives, and Medicare, which runs on the same principle, but is intended to fund medical assistance for those over sixty-five. If you have a job, you might notice that you pay two forms of payroll taxes to fund each. One is Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) and the other is Medicare. These go, respectively to the programs associated with each.

Social Security and Medicare are not state programs, even though they address problems that were the primary focus of state policy prior to the 1930s. The national government has in essence taken over care of the elderly. The states did not complain because the issue was not controversial. The recipients paid into each program, so they have covered the costs associated with it, and have legal rights to the money. And assistance for the elderly, especially those that are no longer able bodied, is generally considered worthy of funding. This is not the case with assistance to the poor. It is paid out of regular tax funds, and can be given to people that some consider the able bodied poor, people not worthy of support. This is why the states wanted control over it. The agencies established to oversee these programs in Texas, in other words, are not so much in charge of delivering the support, but ensuring that it is limited to those the state determines is worthy.

Affordable Care Act (ACA) Currently controversies involve the expansion of Medicaid offered to all the states in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. As part of the effort to increase access to health insurance, the ACA authorized states to expand eligibility to persons with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty line (Figure 11.6). The national government would reimburse the states for the additional costs. Initially it would reimburse the states fully, then that figure would gradually go down to ninety percent for perpetuity. Texas was one of a handful of states to not only refuse the expansion but also to sue to stop the national government from forcing it to take the money in order to expand access to health insurance. Battles continue within the legislature regarding whether Texas will eventually agree to expand access to Medicaid.

Figure 11.6 Estimated Number of Uninsured Due to Job Loss, 10 Most Populous States and U.S., February – May 2020. Texas has the highest overall percentage of uninsured in the country. Texas Alliance for Health Care estimates that the number of uninsured Texans could be 6.1 million by 2040.

Business and Economic Development

Over time, Texas has positioned itself as a leader in business in the nation. This didn’t happen by accident. It was the result of over a century of consistent effort. Rick Perry, who served as governor from 2000–2015, actively lured businesses to the state, going so far as to take out radio commercials in California to try to persuade businesses to relocate to Texas.. Perry stated that Texas was “open for business,” meaning he wanted California businesses to move to Texas.⁴² Critics have argued that he did so by providing tax breaks and subsidies, sometimes to “hand- picked companies" with ties to his own high-dollar campaign donors.”⁴³ In 2005, Perry convinced the legislature to create the Emergency Technology Fund which allowed him the ability to direct “state venture capital to high-tech startups.”⁴⁴ Controversies regarding the success of its efforts led to Perry’s successor, Greg Abbott, terminating the fund, but replacing it with one of his own, the Governor’s University Research Fund, oriented towards attracting “top researchers to public universities” in the state.⁴⁵ Governor Abbott has continued such efforts by, more recently, trying to convince Facebook to open a second data center in the state.⁴⁶

There is nothing new about these efforts. Similar efforts were made to ensure that Texas was center for the petrochemical industry and aerospace. Dallas petitioned successfully in 1914 to be the headquarters of one of the branches of the Federal Reserve. Austin emerged as a center of high tech research and development, and more recently music and film. In the early 1900s, business leaders in Houston convinced the federal government to contribute matching funds to deepening and widening the Houston Ship Channel, which is now one of the world’s largest ports despite being fifty miles inland from the Gulf Coast. This effort was aided by the development of railroad transportation since the Port of Houston, unlike the Port of New Orleans which lies at the mouth of the Mississippi River, is connected to no substantive waterways. More recently, funding has increased on cancer research, including the development of pharmaceuticals. This has blossomed into the advancement of bio-tech. The Eighty-Seventh Texas Legislature is considering requesting bonds to be sold to assist the development of brain research. All these efforts will aid in the continued expansion of medical research facilities in the state, primarily Houston’s Texas Medical Center which was established in 1945, and now contributes over twenty-five billion dollars to the economy each year.⁴⁷

While a pro-business mindset permeates almost all public policies in the state, These specific agencies are charged with implementing them. In order of size, they are: Texas Department of Transportation; Texas Workforce Commission; Department of Housing and Community Affairs; Texas Lottery Commission; Department of Motor Vehicles. They cover business policy; labor policy; transportation policy; housing policy; workforce policy; gambling policy.

Over eighty percent of the expenditures in this section go to the Texas Department of Transportation, most of which are on the “planning, coordination, acquisition, construction, preservation, and operation of the state’s transportation systems and services.”⁴⁸ Federal funds are significant part of its revenue stream meaning that much of what it does is in cooperation with the United States Department of Transportation. Related controversies are numerous. These include the ongoing question of whether automobile transportation is preferable to mass transit, and even if it is, whether gas powered cars and trucks are the future of transportation. There is also the question of self-driving cars and whether we are likely to see situations in the future where people are not in control of their cars on the highway. The answers to these questions, to a large extent, will come from the private sector, not the public sector, since they will be driven by the choices consumers make when they purchase cars in the future.

The federal and state governments will still be involved in laying out highways, as they traditionally have, and this leads to one of the more serious controversies since when highways are built in developed areas, existing structures—including whole neighborhoods—are sometimes displaced. Critics argue that the locations of highways have a greater negative impact on poor communities since they lack the resources to challenge the decisions made about where the highways will be built. Other critics have noted that the placement of highways can reinforce racial barriers. As legal means of segregating races have been minimized, these tangible ways of doing so have increased. Currently in Houston, proposals by the state to expand I-45 have meet resistance from a variety of sources, including local governments.⁴⁹

The continued focus on highways, as opposed to mass transit, has also contributed to urban sprawl, where developers continue to build out beyond a city’s center in ways that are unplanned and with little regard for the impact they are likely to have on other areas.⁵⁰ Cities like Houston now span over 600 square miles and encroach upon what used to be farmland. One unintended consequence of this expansion has been more flooding. Open land that once allowed for rain water to be absorbed into the ground has been built upon. The water is now displaced and flows to lower elevation areas. The greater amount of water often is more than the existing drainage infrastructure can handle, leading to property damage and even deaths during severe floods.⁵¹

The expanse of highways also contributes to air pollution in the state, primarily in urban areas. These problems can also be deadly for older people and anyone with breathing difficulties. Summers can be especially brutal since the combination of heat, ozone, and particle pollution can lead to periods where it is unsafe for vulnerable populations to go outside.⁵²

Public Safety

The provision of safety and security is perhaps the most basic function of a government. The enticement of Anglos to settle Texas was driven by the hope that they would assist in securing Mexico from raids by the Comanche. Many of the current debates concerning the balance between gun rights and safety are couched in this language (Figure 11.7). These policies can be complex however, and sometimes even contradictory. While these policies are set at the state level, they are also set—as well as implemented—primarily at the local level. This isn’t true for all of areas of policy—immigration and military, for example—but the activities of local officials are often the truest measure of the nature of the specific policy. The local officials that oversee these policies are—in the case of county officials—elected county wide. This is true for the sheriffs and district attorneys. Indirectly this is also true for the municipal officials as well since they are hired and fired by the elected mayor, depending upon the form of government.

Figure 11.7 “Pow, You’re in Texas, Son. Texas-Sized Keep Away Sign.” SOURCE: faster panda kill kill is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

In order of size, the specific state agencies are: Department of Criminal Justice; Department of Public Safety; Juvenile Justice Department; Military Department; Alcoholic Beverage Commission; Commission on Law Enforcement; Commission on Fire Protection; Commission on Jail Standards.

Department of Criminal Justice and the Juvenile Justice Department With the exception of the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers, which are regulated by the state, law enforcement is a local matter. However, the state plays a role in oversight with three separate commissions that establish basic rules associated with not only law enforcement but also fire protection and jails. The principle area of spending in the Department of Criminal Justice is the running of penitentiaries (for more in-depth coverage of the criminal justice system, see chapter 12). Given Texas’s punitive attitudes toward crime and criminals, the conditions in these facilities are rough. Often these are rough enough to raise questions about whether they amount to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Similar accusations have been made about juvenile justice in the state. In fact, the current Juvenile Justice Department was established in the state in 2011 after sexual abuse scandals led to the termination of the Texas Youth Commission.

Texas Military Department The Texas Military Department dates to the days of the republic, when it was an actual military. Currently it provides assistance during times of disaster and helps with border security.

Alcoholic Beverage Commission The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) oversees the enforcement of liquor laws in the state which set in place at the end of Prohibition. The legality of most types of alcohol remains a local matter in the state, but the enforcement of laws related to producing, distributing, and selling alcohol is handled by the TABC.

Natural Resources

A discussion of natural resource policy must begin with noting that in Texas the largest landowner is the state. It owns 22.5 million acres of land. By contrast, the largest private landowners are the heirs to the King Ranch, who own just over 900,000 acres.⁵³ This might seem to be an unusual statement to make, but it is an important point because it impacts much of what Texas does. Consider that the federal government is the largest landowner in most western states. It owns eighty percent of the land in Nevada, sixty-three percent of the land in Utah, and forty- seven percent of the land in Wyoming. In comparison it owns 1.9 percent of the land in Texas.⁵⁴ The was purchased by the federal government in order to create national parks, forests, and monument, as well as military bases such as Fort Hood. Most federal land is contained within the Big Bend National Park.

The land owned by the state is managed by a handful of agencies. When Texas won independence, it laid claim to over 250 million acres of public land.⁵⁵ Being cash poor, this land was its major source of wealth for both the republic and the early state. Land grants, as well as the sale of public lands, helped that state attract railroads, and the investments of the use of public lands—primarily from the production of oil and gas, and the mining of minerals— continues to help fund education on the state. In order, the largest natural resources agencies follow: General Land Office and Veteran’s Land Board; Department of Agriculture; Parks and Wildlife Department; Commission on Environmental Quality; Water Development Board; Railroad Commission. They cover agriculture policy, environmental policy, land policy, water policy, and energy policy.

General Land Office The General Land Office (GLO) dates back to the Texas Republic and administers laws related to public lands and properties the state owns the mineral rights to, as well as the proceeds from their use and sale.⁵⁶ This comes to 20.5 million acres, which includes land off shore extending 10.3 miles. The office is headed by an independently elected commissioner. Since the revenue from much of the land is tied into education, the commissioner is also charged with overseeing the Permanent School Fund. In 2015 Commissioner George P. Bush (Figure 11.8) ruffled some feathers by terminating a contract Texas had with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas to run the Alamo in order to allow the state to take over the development and management of the site. In 1946, the Texas legislature created the Veterans

Land Board, and made funding available for veterans returning from World War II. Since then, the state has established other similar boards, all run by the GLOC.

Figure 11.8 Commissioner of the Texas General Land Office George P. Bush

Department of Agriculture Texas began as an agrarian state, and while agriculture is no longer dominant, it is vitally important. In 1907, the state created the Department of Agriculture to promote Texas agriculture and assist with research. It also receives federal funds in order to Support Child and Adult Nutritional Programs (SNAP). In addition, it is responsible for rural health and economic development.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation are important to many in the state, and the state has had a series of commissions and departments to oversee them. In 1963, these were merged into the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department which operates ninety-five state parks and historic sites, in addition to the Texas Historical Commission. Part of its mission is to ensure that these opportunities are made available for future generations, which is why licenses are required to engage in them and these are enforced by law enforcement officers—game wardens—which can make arrests for any offence. In 2015, Texas voters approved an amendment stating “the people have the right to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife,” ⁵⁷ which meant these were constitutionally enforceable rights. In 2019, Texas voters approved a different amendment mandating that money collected from the sale of sporting goods is automatically appropriated to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas Historical Commission.⁵⁸

Commission on Environmental Quality The Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) oversees environmental policy in the state, but it is not the only one. The Texas Railroad Commission’s Surface Mining and Reclamation Division, the State Soil and Water Conservation Board, as well as the Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission are also involved in environmental policy. In each case, criticism have been leveled based on the governor’s appointment of individuals believed to be more sympathetic to the needs of industry than that of the general public. Tension often exists between the decisions of the TCEQ, and its national counterpart, the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has criticized the TECQ for being too lenient on polluters in the state, threatening to remove the TCEQ’s ability to regulate pollution in certain instances and federalize it.⁵⁹ The Surface Mining and Reclamation Division, which is charged with overseeing land that has been mined in order to ensure it is returned to its original state, is led by a former coal executive who has been alleged not to enforce this requirement that strongly.⁶⁰

Texas Water Development Board Much of Texas is desert. Even the part that is not a desert is subject to periodic—and sometimes severe—droughts. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, Texas had a drought for 271 weeks, starting on May 4, 2010 and ending on July 7, 2015. In 1957 the legislature created the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) on order to “lead the state's efforts in ensuring a secure water future for Texas and its citizens.”⁶¹ Since then, Texas voters have approved numerous bonds for the TWDB to use to develop various means for ensuring access to water

This involves the creation and periodic update of the State Water Plan. Laws governing water in the state can be complex, however, and can sometimes work against efforts to conserve it. One has to with the rule of capture, which states that landowners have the right to pump and capture whatever water is available beneath their property, “regardless of the effects of that pumping on neighboring wells.”⁶² This is believed to create problems for the viability of aquifers in the state, which provide sixty-two percent of the water it uses. An additional ongoing problem is reconciling the needs of the three groups that use the most water in the state, these are: cities, agriculture, and industry.⁶³ Each attempts to draw as much as they can, but doing so limits what can be collected by the others.

Texas Railroad Commission The history of the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) is interesting. It is a relic in many ways of a time when the state was far more suspicious of large corporations than it is today. Regulation of railroads was necessary to ensure that rates were kept at a reasonable level because farmers’ livelihoods depended on railroads to get their goods to market. These regulations were ensconced in the Texas Constitution. The TRC was controversial when it was created partly because of doubts about its constitutionality, as well as its potential power. In the spirit of limited government, the TRC is governed by a three-member commission, each elected in separate overlapping partisan elections for six year terms. Regardless, the need to regulate railroads became unnecessary because of the advent of highways and the ability of commerce to be moved by truck.

Given its origins in transportation, the TRC was able to preserve its existence by claiming control of the transportation of oil and gas, through the regulation of pipelines and then production. The TRC was accused of favoring large oil companies over small ones when an oil boom led to a significant drop in the price of a barrel of oil. It used the state militia to cut production in order to maintain a reasonable price. As reserves in the state increased, the TRC became the de facto oil regulator for the nation. This was facilitated by presidents beginning with Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression.

Regulatory

The Texas Railroad Commission just discussed is an example of a regulatory agency. There are many more in the state. The top ten regulatory agencies are: (1) Department of Insurance; (2) Department of Licensing and Regulation; (3) Public Utility Commission; (4) Texas Medical Board; (5) Texas Board of Nursing; (6) Board of Pharmacy; (7) Texas State Securities Board; (8) Texas Racing Commission; (9) Texas State Board of Medical Examiners; and (10) Board of Plumbing Examiners.

While Texas does not spend a great deal of money on regulatory agencies, the decisions they make have huge financial consequences for the industries affected by them. Battles are fought over their control. Industries that are regulated by a given agency become involved in the political process by funding campaigns in order to influence who is appointed to these agencies. Since the governor makes the appointments, the contributions generally end up in his or her campaign.

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29. Texas Legislative Budget Board, Fiscal Size-Up: 2018–19 Biennium, 197– 212. See also schools.texastribune.org.

30. Tex. Const. art. VII, § 1.

31. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896).

32. “Sweatt v. Painter (1950), Case Summary,” Tarlton Law Library, May 27, 2020, https://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/clark/sweatt-v-painter.

33. Sweatt v. Painter 339 US 629 (1950), https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/339us629.

34. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483 (1954).

35. George N. Green,“Mansfield School Desegregation Incident,” Texas State Historical Association,Handbook of Texas, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/...ation-incident.

36. Aliyya Swaby and Alexa Ura, “Dis-Integration,” Texas Tribune, Nov. 29, 2018, https://www.texastribune.org/series/...l-segregation/.

37. Justice Lewis Powell, quoted in “1973: San Antonio Independent School District v. States, Library of Congress, https://guides.loc.gov/latinx-civil-...riminatory.%22.

38. Tex. Const. art. VII, https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/D...N.7/CN.7.1.htm

39. Laura Isensee, “Why Calling Slaves 'Workers' Is More Than An Editing Error,” NPR, Oct. 23, 2015, https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015...-editing-error.

40. The People's Law Dictionary, s.v. "police powers," https://legal-dictionary.thefreedict.../police+powers.

41. Tex. Const., formerly art. XVI, § 8 (amended to rdesignate as art. IX, § 14, Nov. 6,

42. Maurice Chammah, Marshall Project, “In Radio Ads, Perry Reaches Out to California, Businesses “Texas Tribune, Feb. 4, 2013, ttps://www.texastribune.org/2013/02/...ns-move-texas/

43. Joe Holley, “Governor's Office 'Open for Business' under Perry, White says,” Houston Chronicle, July 25, 2011, https://www.chron.com/news/houston-t...er-1577417.php.

44. Caroline Cournoyer, “Texas Ends Governor Perry’s Controversial Startup Fund,” Governing, The Future of Texas, June 8, 2015, https://www.governing.com/archive/tt...ment-fund.html.

45. Cournoyer, “Startup,” . https://www.governing.com/archive/tt...ment-fund.html.

46. Shawn Mulcahy, “Gov. Greg Abbott Publicly Slammed Facebook. Privately, He’s Courting the Social Media Giant to Build a Second Data Center in Texas,” Texas Tribune, April 5, 2021, https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04...bott-facebook/.

47. Lisa Bridges, “Texas Medical Center,” Collier’s, Dec. 26, 2019, https://www.colliers.com/en/news/hou...onomic-outlook.

48. “Legislative Budget Board, “The Fiscal Size-Up 2020-2021 Biennium,” May 2020, https://lbb.state.tx.us/Documents/Pu...cal_SizeUp.pdf

49. Doug Begley, “Massive I-45 rebuild receives regional support, over objections of Houston, Harris County,” Houston Chronicle, March 26, 2021, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/new...t-16056633.php.

50. “Urban Sprawl,” Everything Connects: Why Nature Matters, Nov. 2013, https://www.everythingconnects.org/u...g%20in%20these.

51. Lynn Anderson Davy, University of Iowa, and Morgan Kelly, Princeton Environmental Institute, “Houston’s urban sprawl increased rainfall, flooding during Hurricane Harvey,” Princeton University, Nov. 15, 2018, https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/...rricane-harvey.

52. Perla Trevizo, “Despite Progress, Houston Air Quality Among Worst in the Nation, Study Fnds,” Houston Chronicle, April 24, 2019, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lif...ty-among-worst.

53. 2017 Texas Land Report 10,” Texas Land Report, May 10, 2017, https://landreport.com/2017/05/2017-...port-texas-10/.

54. “Federal Land Ownership: Overview and Data,” Congressional Research Service, Feb. 21, 2020, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf.

55. Aldon S. Long and Berte B. Haigh, “Public Lands,” Texas State Historical Association Handbook of Texas, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/...s/public-lands.

56. John G. Johnson, “General Land Office,” Texas State Historical Association Handbook of Texas, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/...al-land-office.

57. Tex. Const. art. I, § 34, https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/D...N/htm/CN.1.htm.

58. Tex. Const. art VIII, § 7-d, https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/D...8/CN.8.7-d.pdf.

59. Kate Galbraith, “The Pollution Wars,” Texas Tribune, June 3, 2010, https://www.texastribune.org/2010/06...us-to-breathe/.

60. Kiah Collier, “Texas Coal Companies Are Leaving Behind Contaminated Land. The State Is Letting Them,” Texas Tribune, Oct. 30, 2019, https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10...aminated-land/.

61. “About the Texas Water Development Board,” Texas Water Development Board, https://www.twdb.texas.gov/about/ind...p#twdb-history.

62. “Texas Water Law,” Texas A&M University, https://texaswater.tamu.edu/water-law.

63. “The Three Groups That Use the Most Water,” Texas Living Waters, https://texaslivingwaters.org/water-...ater-in-texas/.