As of Sunday, December 5, 2004, the Texas
House of Representatives members have
filed 192 bills and the Texas Senate
members have filed 102 bills. This total
excludes Senate and House Resolutions
(only six House Resolutions have been
filed to date) which are used to honor
individuals.
Of the 294 pre-filed bills, there are
eleven (11) House Joint resolutions (HJR)
which are all intended to change the Texas
Constitution. The Senators have filed four
(4) Senate Joint Resolutions (SJR) with
the same intent.
The Senate Constitutional Amendments are:
1. |
SJR6
(Carona) Requiring a record vote
on “certain” legislative
actions. |
2. |
SJR7
(Carona) Concerning Line of Credits
for Reverse Mortgages. |
3. |
SJR8
(Shapleigh) Imposing time limits
on when Redistricting may be accomplished. |
4. |
SJR9
(Shapleigh) Creating a “consolidated
Metro Government” for El Paso
County and the city of El Paso. |
The House of Representatives Constitutional
Amendments are:
1. |
HJR6
(Chisum) Defining marriage as the
union of one man and one woman. |
2. |
HJR11
(Branch) Defining a “quorum” for
the Legislature as a majority (changed
from two-thirds). |
3. |
HJR12
(Branch) Defining a “quorum” for
the Legislature as two-thirds of
the members of each house, excluding
those who the presiding officer deems
to be absent from the state. |
4. |
HJR13
(Branch) Requiring a record vote
on final passage of a bill (with
exceptions) and to publish the record
vote on the Internet. |
5. |
HJR14
(Naishtat) Allowing the Governor
to declare a moratorium on executions. |
6. |
HJR15
(Rodriguez) Proposing a state income
tax with some fuzzy language about
redistribution of tax liability. |
7. |
HJR16
(Wong) Allowing the Legislature to
limit the maximum average annual
increase in the appraised value of
real property to five percent or
more. |
8. |
HJR17
(Pena) Requiring a house or committee
of the legislature to take a record
vote on certain legislative measures
and actions. |
9. |
HJR18
(Chavez) Exempting the taxation of
the sale or use of certain food,
drinks, medicine, and child-care
services. |
10. |
HJR19
(Talton) Defining marriage as one
man and one woman and prohibiting “legal” recognition
of other forms of civil union. |
11. |
HJR20
(Hilderbran) Exempting political
subdivisions from unfunded legislative
mandates with EXCEPTIONS. |
Beyond the Constitutional Amendments, which
will receive considerable interest, an
analysis of bills by specific codes/acts
gives a good overview of Legislative
priorities. There may be several different
ways to dissect and categorize these
294 bills, but the easiest (and most
accessible by Texas citizens) is from
the Legislative Reference Library (LRL).
In this analysis there is NOT a one-to-one
relationship between bills and affected
codes. For example the 15 Constitutional
Amendments above affect 19 different
sections of the Constitution. Some bills
will affect several different codes and
some will affect only one code.
For
all of our readers another tool exists
for you to determine the priorities of
your representative or senator. This web
page (http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlo/mytlo/authlist.htm)
will enable you to select your personal
Rep/Senator and see what he or she thinks
is important. Click here for
a MS Word document that contains a brief
synopses (for categories affected by
less than 100
bills)
and live
links to the bills which are referenced
in the LRL categories. If the
number is greater than 100, you can use
the link indicated to get a complete list
of the bills.
The
LRL web site lists 32 categories of bills.
These categories include 30 Codes/Acts
and two other categories of “Session
Laws” and “No Reference”.
Those bills which are intended to revise
previous session laws are include in that
category and those wherein no code is referenced
is included in that category. The categories
sorted by number of bills affecting each
category is shown below. Remember that
of the 294 bills currently filed 1,629
categories are affected!
Several
cautions are necessary while digesting
this mathematical analysis. While it is
easy to apply numbers to numerical bills
and numerical codes affected, it is very
difficult to try to quantify time and/or
work load when “the human factor” is
added to the analysis. For instance, there
may be 100 (or any number you choose) of
the Tax Code issues on which all members
agree and those can be easily brought to
the floor quickly (after going through
the necessary legislative process), while
others may consume a great amount of time.
Additionally, expect many of them to be “killed” in
committee. With that in mind let’s
begin with the aforementioned erroneous
(just kidding) analysis.
The table below suggests that over half
(almost 55%) of this next legislative session
will be consumed by tax and education issues.
That should really come as no surprise
to any observer of Texas politics, especially
in light of the recent 126 page legislation
from the judicial bench (is that legal?)!
Robin Hood has been declared unconstitutional
by a liberal judge. Remember that it was
originally put into force by a ruling from
another liberal judge. We may have a trend
here!
When
you add Government Code, Health & Safety
Code, and Insurance Code issues to the
tax and education issues, three-fourths
(74%) of the legislation session is already
taken. That leaves ¼ of the 140
days (35 days), for the 79th Legislative
Session (2005) to consider other issues.
Based on the 78th session (2003) and subsequent
special sessions, a considerable amount
of time may be spent on issues related
to the constitutional amendment by Sen.
Shapleigh on redistricting. After holidays
in Oklahoma and New Mexico 16-18 months
ago, there are probably some members of
each side waiting to extract their own “pound
of flesh” from the other side. For
the sake of all Texas citizens, hopefully
the importance of School finance will prevail
and this session will not deteriorate into
the partisanship of two years ago!
 Two of the Constitutional Amendments are
useless and frivolous and should be Thrown
Away immediately. The first from Representative
Rodriguez for an Income Tax, should be
tossed into the closest circular file
and left there for eternity to turn into
compost. Second, Senator Shapleigh’s
shameless “sour grapes” amendment
on redistricting should get all of the
attention it deserves – NONE! Stay
tuned as we look deeper into some of
the pre-filed legislation emanating from
the minds of elected officials.
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