Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio (who also represents south Austin) has his hand up – but will the teacher call on him?
Wentworth is the Senate sponsor of House Joint Resolution 29, which (if approved by voters) would change the Texas Constitution to allow the Legislature to briefly reconvene after the regular session to consider whether to override the governor’s vetoes.
Currently, the Lege’s override power is kind of meaningless. “While the Legislature has the theoretical power to override a gubernatorial veto, as a practical matter we are powerless, because after the governor vetoes a bill, the legislature has adjourned sine die and is no longer in session,” Wentworth said in a letter sent to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst yesterday. “We are incapable of taking legislative action of any kind, because we are not even in session.”
The Legislature meets for regular session only 140 days every two years. Any other sessions must be called by the governor.
The effect, Wentworth wrote, is that “only one vetoed bill in the past 68 years has been overridden by the Legislature, and that occurred in 1979, three decades ago.”
The purpose of Wentworth’s letter was to ask Dewhurst to recognize him for a motion on passage of the resolution. Wentworth pointed out that the resolution, authored by Rep. Gary Elkins, R-Houston, passed the House 131-16 way back on April 1. The session ends on June 1, so the clock to bring it to the Senate floor is ticking.
“This is not a piddling resolution,” Wentworth wrote to Dewhurst. “It is a significant proposal on which the people of Texas have a right to vote to bring about a needed check and balance on the powers of the legislative and executive branches of state government.”
This article appears in May 22 • 2009.