POLITICS The Greening Of The Legislature

ormer Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes noted recently that legislators aren’t really true legislators until they’ve had to vote for a tax bill to help finance some of the stale money they’re doling out. Several have gotten the chance in recent sessions, and they’ll all get that chance again this year.

Money-or lack of it-will be the chief topic during the 140-day session of the Texas Legislature that begins January 13. And to deal with that huge problem and others that are smaller by comparison, Dallas will be sending to Austin its largest gang of new legislative faces since the court-ordered switch to single-member legislative districts in 1972.

It doesn’t matter that Republican Bill Clements won the governorship on a no-new-taxes pledge and a secret plan to balance the budget without new taxes. Even Clements finally began to acknowledge that there will be new taxes in the 1987 legislative session, after a gut-wrenching round of budget cutting. It will only be a question of how much and on whom they will be levied. And most legislators will get the chance to see if they meet Barnes’s criterion for being a real legislator.

State Rep. Stan Schlueter of Killeen, the outspoken chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, made no bones about it to a group of businessmen late last year. Citing figures from the state comptroller’s office, he said that just to maintain the status quo in spending by state agencies on such programs as education, highways, prisons, mental health, and others, the state will have to come up with an additional $4.5 billion in new revenue over the two-year spending period that begins September 1.

That amount includes the approximately $1 billion shortfall that the Legislature had put off dealing with until this spring, rather than bile the bullet even harder during the two special sessions that outgoing Democratic Gov. Mark White called to deal with the revenue crisis.

Clements has said that he can deal with that shortfall through cuts alone, and without new taxes. But the sales tax increase that White got the Legislature to pass was temporary and will expire on August 31. The Legislature will be waiting with interest for Clements’s plan to find either the available revenue to continue programs or his ideas for cutting them, since he has also said that he won’t cut education, prisons, mental health, or law enforcement to balance the budget.

Comptroller Bob Bullock and some other state officials are discussing the possibility of restructuring the state’s sales tax, broadening it to include almost all services- among them charges by lawyers, doctors, accountants, and architects. Bullock says that with such increases, coupled with a change in the state’s franchise tax to a gross receipts tax, the state can drop the overall sales tax rate and still bring in a big hunk of new money. An added advantage would be that cities, which assess a sales tax of 1 percent, would reap a windfall of perhaps half a billion dollars a year because the tax would be applied to more items. Clements has said that any tax restructuring would have to be “revenue neutral,” bureaucratese meaning that the overall take from the taxes should be the same, thus preserving the “no-new-taxes” pledge. But Clements may be rethinking that position as he gets a firsthand look at the magnitude of the budget crisis.

Money-how to get it, how to spend it-will be the major problem the Legislature will face. There are others that will occupy their time: most also depend on money, but some don’t. A look at some of the issues that the Legislature must confront:

●Prisons. Clements has a blue-ribbon committee looking at the entire criminal justice system to make recommendations. Clements talked tough during his campaign, criticizing early releases of prisoners to avoid overcrowding, but he also hinted that he may be more in agreement with U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice than observers might think. Justice has issued court orders to relieve overcrowding in Texas prisons, to do away with prisoners having charge of other prisoners under a building tender system, and to require more psychiatric treatment; he has generally pushed the state to make its prisons more humane.

The combination of Justice’s orders and the fiscal crisis has finally forced Texas officials to search for some cheaper way to stop lawbreakers and deal with the state’s burgeoning prison population. Currently, inmates are housed at a cost of $12,000 a year per prisoner. Legislators will be asked to consider alternative methods of dealing with some classes of prisoners, such as the mentally deficient and nonviolent, and to consider other ways to deal with lawbreakers when they are returned to society.

●Public Education. If there’s a close second to money in Texas, it’s football. Many legislators want to shorten the no-pass, no-play suspension period from extracurricular activities from six weeks to three weeks. Clements favors it. Some educators and many coaches complain that the six-week period is so long that it destroys any incentive for flunking students to bring up their grades, because the season for their sport may be over by the time they do.

Defenders of the six-week suspension say that it has brought more attention to scholastic efforts and made coaches more involved in keeping students’ grades up. A shorter period, they say. would generate more pressure and more paperwork for teachers than the standard six-week grading period.

Something that will not get as much attention-but probably should get more-is the proposal to save money by raising the twenty-two-child per classroom ceiling that had been established in the education reform effort, and perhaps by cutting back on full-day kindergarten and pre-kindergarten.

Clements favors the cuts, but will meet opposition from legislators who argue that to cut back on education is not conservative, it’s stupid. They’ll point out that prisons are full of people who didn’t get a good start in education. Also, with Texas trying to build its competitive edge nationally and internationally, a sizable contingent in Austin, including most of the minority legislators, will fight to avoid cuts in education.

Another education proposal that involves money is the teacher career ladder, which is supposed to provide more money for teachers as they progress through their careers. Many teachers dislike the ladder system because, without full state funding, it is unequally applied, depending upon the school district. Some complain that the appraisal system is too subjective and thus open to abuse by administrators playing favorites. Don’t be surprised if the legislators, already fed up with teachers they consider whining and ungrateful, simply cut out the career ladder and save S295 million.

●Higher Education. Cold-eyed legislatorsare thinking about closing or merging somecolleges with low enrollments-as long asthe target schools are in someone else’sdistrict. Tops on the list for mergers areTexas Woman’s University with North TexasState University in Denton; predominantlyblack Texas Southern University with thedowntown campus of the University ofHouston; and joining program offerings between Corpus Christi State University andTexas A&I University at Kingsville to avoidduplication.



A lew major issues will occupy an awful lot of hours and emotional energy of legislators, because they have to do with the pocketbooks of competing business interests.

●Tort reform. The liability insurancecrisis may be reaching its climax in Texas. Abroad range of groups whose members havebeen paying increasing insurance premiumssay that limits are needed on jury awards andlawyers’ fees. The trial lawyers, on the otherhand, say the problem is not with the tortsystem, but with greedy and shortsighted insurance companies, who cut rates to draw investment money when interest rates werehigh, and now are rapidly raising rates tomake up lost ground.

The trial lawyers have been successful in the past several years in helping elect members of the Texas Supreme Court who tend to favor plaintiffs when it comes to tort litigation. The trial lawyers also have considerable sway over at least one-third of the members of the Texas Senate-and under the Senate’s rules, a third of that body can kill virtually any legislation.

The tort reform effort will be the full-employment act for high-paid lobbyists. Millions of dollars have already been spent to affect legislative and judicial campaigns- especially the Texas Supreme Court, which just saw the election of former State Sen. Oscar Mauzy of Dallas (a trial lawyer) to its ranks. And plenty more will be spent on sophisticated lobbying efforts trying to influence legislators in Austin to lean one way or the other in this battle. Some legislators would just as soon not fool with the issue, but they will have no choice. The economic stakes are simply too high.

●Judicial reform. This issue overlapssomewhat with the tort reform effort. Somegroups, like the insurance lobby, would liketo see Texas judges appointed, which wouldreduce what they see as the undue influenceof lawyers over judges they support withcampaign contributions. Others, includingSupreme Court Chief Justice John L. Hill.say judges should be selected by somemethod other than partisan elections becausecurrently there is no filter to make sure thatcandidates are qualified. Can voters, whousually have little or no knowledge about thequalifications of the dozens of judges theyelect, choose the best judicial minds?

But this is not just a question of voter competence; it’s a war between the trial lawyers and the various groups opposed to them. The trial lawyers fear that if judges are appointed, they will come from the ranks of those deeply opposed to juries handing out big awards to plaintiffs.

This is an issue so inflammatory that it will probably provoke another study, which may lead to legislation sometime down the line. But it will still command attention during the coming legislative session.



The Dallas delegation to the Legislature that must tackle these issues will have more new faces than any delegation since redistricting shocked the Dallas establishment in the 1972 elections. Six members of Dallas County’s current House allocation, now down to seventeen since redistricting in 1981, will be new. In the Senate, there will be one new member among the six whose districts include portions of Dallas County.

Eddie Bernice Johnson, replacing Oscar Mauzy. becomes the first black senator from Dallas. She will be one of three women and two blacks in the thirty-one-member Senate. An articulate woman. Johnson, fifty-one, a health care professional, spent three terms in the House in the Seventies before leaving to become regional director of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1977.

The members who are leaving the Dallas House delegation are by and large among the most effective Dallas had. With the exception of Carlyle Smith of Grand Prairie, who was considered a maverick outsider, they were the type of get-it-done people who served Dallas County well.

Perhaps most missed in the delegation will be Lee Jackson, who was a heavy burro for lots of legislation. Jackson, now Dallas County Judge, was a legislator with whom a broad variety of people could work, and he was quietly effective in getting things done. Jackson will be replaced by A.R. Ovard, a sixty-five-year-old real estate broker.

Ray Keller of Duncanville, as chairman of the Law Enforcement Committee, became the point man for the prison reform. He will be missed. Keller was a conservative Republican, but he was willing to recognize mat something was rotten in Huntsville, and he helped make some changes in legislative attitudes toward the penal system. Keller will be replaced by Republican Glenn Repp of Duncanville, a fifty-five-year-old businessman who served six years on the Duncanville City Council.

Bill Blanton, a Carrollton Republican and the only House member who served on both the spending and the taxing committees, was a low-profile legislator who represented his district well. Blanton’s replacement is Ken Marchant, a thirty-five-year-old homebuilder.

Jesse Oliver was a rapidly rising star in the House who had become an insider in just two terms-partly because of his yeoman efforts on behalf of the indigent health care bill. Oliver got a late start in the Senate race that was won by Eddie Bernice Johnson because he had deferred to the friend who had recruited him for the House, Paul Ragsdale. By the time Ragsdale backed out of the Senate race, Oliver started at a disadvantage. He lost in a three-way primary race that included Johnson and Dr. Jesse Jones, a Bishop College professor and president of the Progressive Voters League. Oliver’s seat in the House was taken by Jerald Larry, a forty-two-year-old financial consultant.

Ragsdale is gone, too; at the last minute he decided to forgo the Senate race and run for a seventh term in the House, but he was beaten by former Dallas city councilman Fred Blair.

As for Carlyle Smith, he will be replaced by Democrat Bill Arnold, sixty, a deputy school superintendent of Grand Prairie. Whatever he does. Arnold could hardly have less influence than Smith, whose long-running feud with House Speaker Gib Lewis rendered him all but ineffective.

In the Senate. Republicans O.H. “Ike” Harris and John Leedom are almost oppo-sites. Harris is an affable inside player who chairs the Economic Development Committee and is likely to continue; Leedom is an opinionated conservative ideologue. Republican Bob McFarland of Arlington is articulate, reasonable, and smart, a man who can solve complicated legislative problems while allowing losers to save face.

On the Democratic side, representing districts that include only part of Dallas County, are Chet Edwards of Duncanville and Ted Lyon of Rnckwall. Both are respected, though Edwards’s colleagues are starting to chuckle at his passion for issues likely to generate television coverage. If Edwards continues as chairman of the Senate Nominations Committee, to which he was appointed after another senator resigned in midterm, he will have his work cut out for him, with Clements as governor and a strong Democratic majority in the Senate.

In the House. Democrats Steve Wolens and David Cain are two of the smartest, most honest, and most effective members of the delegation. Sam Hudson III is occasionally embarrassing-such as when he fasted to protest his bills being ignored, but told no one for thirteen days-but is relatively harmless. Al Granoff has not lived up to his potential, but that is partly because he is in the rather leaderless progressive wing of the House Democrats.

Republicans Anita Hill of Garland and Gwyn Clarkston Shea of Irving are hardworking, well liked, and predictably Republican. Patricia Hill is bright and independent and cannot be taken for granted as a lock-step Republican voter. Bill Hammond gets high marks for attention to detail. Bill Blackwood of Mesquite is a hard-right Republican, while Fred Agnich is rich and simply there. Bill Ceverha of Richardson has infuriated his colleagues over the years by forcing votes on controversial measures like abortion. He makes enemies and can generate opposition to a bill simply by supporting it. It was only partly coincidental that the blue law repeal effort succeeded in the session after he quit carrying the bill.