Now that the third special session of the Texas Legislature is over, we can’t help but to ask this nagging question:
When did Texas tilt toward a full-time Legislature?
The Texas Constitution requires the Legislature to meet in regular sessions beginning on the second Tuesday in January of odd-numbered years and lasting a maximum of 140 days. After that, the governor commands sole authority to call a special session to deal with specific issues of the governor’s choosing and lawmakers have just 30 days to address the list.
Lawmakers also can file bills but only if the subject is on the governor’s list. And there is no limit to the number of special sessions a governor could call.
This legislative year in Austin was somewhat of an outlier — or so we thought. House Democrats broke quorum and fled to Washington to protest a GOP-supported voting integrity bill. Lawmakers also knew that they had to tackle the once-in-a-decade task of redistricting in a special session.
Nonetheless, Gov. Greg Abbott called three overtime sessions, filled them with hot-button items and even put items back on the table that he had signed, vetoed or that lawmakers had failed to pass in an earlier session.
Out of curiosity, we checked with the Legislative Reference Library of Texas for precedents and found a bunch.
For example, Gov. Rick Perry called four special sessions after the 78th Legislature’s regular session in 2003 for lawmakers to deal with 63 topics and followed up in the 79th Legislature with three special sessions and 55 items.
Perry, who served 14 consecutive years as governor, called 12 special sessions. In contrast, his immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, called none, and Bush’s predecessor, Ann Richards, called four during her four-year term. (As a footnote, all of that is small potatoes compared to a century ago. Gov. William Hobby put 253 topics on his special call in 1919 and more than 700 items to be considered in special sessions during his time in office.)
Numbers alone don’t tell a complete story because some issues are complex, controversial or both. But special session fatigue aside, we think the legislative process works better when lawmakers can hash out policy during the regular session, find consensus or delay further consideration for the next session two years later. That is especially true when issues agreed to in a previous session and even signed into law by the governor are reintroduced just weeks later.
Among other things, multiple special sessions chip away at the idea that Texas has a part-Legislature. And while an additional 90 days in three special sessions isn’t the same as a year-round, full-time Legislature, we aren’t sure that the state emerges in a better place from these overtime sessions. Calling lawmakers repeatedly into overtime sessions minimizes the hard work and decision-making that occurs during the regular session and gives the governor in an otherwise weak executive system a remarkable amount of power at the Legislature’s expense. All of that could, over time, change how policy is made in this state. Is that what Texans really want?
Dallas Morning News
