With the temperatures in Austin reaching unseasonably high triple digits for the last week, and the Fourth of July vacation calling, many lawmakers aren’t really that happy about being back in Austin for a special session.
“I’m pretty pumped about it,” Rep. Carl Isett, R-Lubbock, said drily. Why wouldn’t he be? “It’s 80 degrees here in Lubbock. Maybe 85.” (When that figure was mentioned to a senior staff member to another lawmaker, his only response was, “Maybe we should have the session there instead.”)
However, Isett’s having to leave those relatively balmy climes for the Capitol mid-heatwave because he’ll be responsible for House Bill 2, the Sunset rescheduling bill that is one of three issues on Gov. Rick Perry‘s call. Along with Appropriations Committee Chair Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, and House Transportation Committee Chair Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, Isett will be leading an information session for House members on Tuesday afternoon. This will be their first opportunity to see and discuss the pending business that has brought them back to town.
But the big question is why they’re just bring back the terms of HB 1959, the Sunset Safety Net bill that the House failed to pass, rather than taking up the full Sunset bills?
“This is the last bill we tried to pass before sine die,” Isett said, calling this plan “the shortest path to ground […] If we were to try to do the full Sunset bill, that would dramatically elongate the time we would have to be down there. Remember how long we were on the floor for the [Texas Department of Transportation] bill?”
But there are already concerns that it’s going to be another two years before lawmakers will get to look over these agencies. True, they’ll get to delve into the toothless Texas Commission on Environmental Quality two years earlier than they expected (it’s being moved forward from 2013 to 2011), but they’ve been waiting 16 years for another shot at the Texas Department of Insurance. Equally, there are concerns that the last Sunset reports for these agencies will go to waste.
Isett said that while he would have preferred to get the full bills through (he called TxDoT “an agency in desperate need of reform”), that doesn’t mean it will be business as usual. Most of the Sunset recommendations, he argues, can be implemented by rule without having a law passed. His hope is that the agency executives use their authority to make the changes. “We have clearly shown them the direction we want them to follow,” he added.
As for duplicating the previous work, that’s not going to happen. “When you read the safety net bill, or the rescheduling bill as it should more accurately be called, one of the last paragraphs says that the agencies that would have expired in 2009 will only be subject to limited reviews. In other words, we’ve already done the full-blown reviews. All we’ll look at is what has changed.”
What it seems that everyone is trying to avoid is the large number of long special sessions that characterized the first half of the decade, when members were on the floor for “months and and months and months,” Isett said.
So is it really workable to get this done in three days, like Perry wants? “It’s not without peril,” he said. “The bonds are a pretty significant piece of legislation, and the [Texas Transportation Revolving Fund] is a pretty significant piece there.” He’s been fine-tuning his Sunset bill to tackle some concerns that have been raised, but he doubts there will be any deliberate upsets. He concluded, “I think we’re all ready to be home and get back to our lives.”
This article appears in June 26 • 2009.
