The famous/infamous Texas Monthly Best and Worst Texas Legislators 2009 may seem like old business by now, but the wounds it opened still seem raw, especially in the Valley.
List author Paul Burka was already getting some blowback after naming Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr., D-Brownsville, on his furniture list (as several wags have commented, furniture is something he knows about). Now he’s getting hammered by veterans groups for going after Rep. Kino Flores, D-Palmview.
Burka excoriated Flores in the list for a May 2 verbal dust-up over House Bill 742, his veterans’ property tax reforms. According to Burka, “He interrupted a debate over cockfighting to make a parliamentary inquiry about whether cockfighting was more important than veterans and why trivial bills were being scheduled ahead of his bill.” Burka called this “vintage Kino: ever the bully, ever acting as though the established rules and procedures didn’t apply to him.”
Now Valley veterans groups have mounted a defense of Flores’ actions (which seem to have been more complicated than Burka’s description) and started lambasting the list. Veterans Alliance of the Rio Grande Valley Co-Chair Homer Gallegos called the comments “an insult to all veterans.”
Hidalgo County’s Veterans Services Director Emilio De los Santos added, “It is sad to read how one individual, Mr. Paul Burka, from Texas Monthly, demeaned our (Valley) legislators.”
Burka’s complaint was that Flores got so bent out of shape about “a bill that had no opposition and was certain to pass.” But in the context of the Seinfeld session, there was pretty much no such thing, and in fact neither HB 742 nor its Senate companion, SB 469, passed (in fact, SB 469 died on a point of order. So much for “no opposition”). Ultimately, the measure was only salvaged by Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, adding the whole text on as a last-minute Senate amendment to HB 3613 by Rep. John Otto, R-Dayton.
Burka also glosses over the fact that there was a major to-and-fro between the back mike and the speaker’s chair over the cockfighting bill and what it said about House management. Flores and House Democratic Caucus Leader Jim Dunnam questioned whether the speaker broke the covenant of precedent by letting Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center, leave the front mike and call for passage of his cockfighting bill without hearing amendments. Then again, since Burka put all three of them on his worst list, it would be hard to see how they would fit into his good guys/bad guys approach to ranking lawmakers.
This article appears in June 12 • 2009.
