Inside The Lobby
(Page 3 of 4)
The climax came on that spring Saturday morning with the vote Bill Abington had been awaiting a long time. Greg Hooser, Sen. McKnight's aide, noticed that all 31 members were present, very rare for a Saturday. As he looked around the gallery, he also noticed that the oil and gas lobby was all there, including Mr. Abington himself. Then it struck him that this must be the day, the final try to shake McKnight's hold on the bill and to bring it out of committee for a vote. But Hooser remembered one of the recently adopted joint rules. It stated that no house bill could be brought up except on regular House bill days (Wednesday and Thursday) without a two-thirds vote of both Houses. It seemed unlikely to Hooser that such votes could occur in both Houses this morning.
Senator Jack Hightower stood up and moved to take up House Bill 311, the unitization bill. McKnight objected, citing the new joint rule. To Hooser's amazement, Lt. Gov. Hobby overruled McKnight. Then followed a series of personal privilege speeches by fellow Senators. Senators Bill Patman and Max Sherman objected to the ruling, but the dean of the Senate, A. M. Aikin, spoke in support of Hobby.
Once again, Sen. Hightower moved to suspend the regular Senate rules and take up H.B. 311 for a vote. This required a two-thirds vote, 21 members out of the full 31 present. Secretary of the Senate Charles Schnabel began calling the role in his steady baritone: "Adams?" "Aye."; "Aiken?" "Aye."; "Andujar?" "Aye."; "Blanchard?" "No."; "Braecklein?" "Present."
Braecklein was the first surprise, and the first hint that McKnight might win. A wealthy man from Dallas, Braecklein had many friends in the oil business, but he thought McKnight's arguments rang true.
The vote continued down the list. The final vote: 17 for, 13 against, one present. The lobby had needed 21 votes. The bill was dead, short by four votes. McKnight had won. Knowing the personal battle he had waged against the measure since January, his fellow Senators mobbed McKnight and congratulated him on his victory.
Upstairs, Bill Abington, defeated, tucked away his pen and quickly made his way out of the gallery and toward the elevators. He suddenly felt tired; the only bright thought that occured to him was that the session's end was only nine days away. Despite all the money, pressures, and manpower, this time the lobby had lost. What happened?
They were overconfident. The early success in the House helped many lobbyists forget that the legislature had repeatedly defeated the bill since 1949. Overconfidence led them to refuse to compromise, the biggest mistake of all. They also put too much reliance on their early legislative commitments. Getting 13 Senators to co-sponsor the bill in January did not necessarily mean the rest would follow. Because of the complexity of the bill, some Senators couldn't cast a vote on its merits and had to rely on the judgment of McKnight.
The oil and gas lobby did not move quickly enough. They were caught off guard time and time again by McKnight's tactics. Each day that passed was a small victory for him because, as the session drew to a close, his colleagues did not want their own bills stymied by a potential McKnight filibuster.
McKnight proved that one Senator who had enough skill, and would fight hard enough, could defeat, for better or for worse, the largest industrial lobby in the State.
Although Abington was a loser, the lobbyist who was the biggest winner was probably Buck Wood, a first-term lobbyist for Common Cause, a citizens' group which was focusing its attentions on the legislature for the first time. Wood pushed his programs through against the opposition of practically every other lobbyist and many of the legislators themselves, although the strong support of Speaker Daniel and his team helped immensely.
Legislative reform was top priority for the 5500 members of Common Cause. With a new governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and speaker of the house, and with a legislature pledged to reform, Wood knew that it was now or never to put an end to the practices that had allowed the Shapstown scandals and which in his eyes subverted the democratic process.
Wood was hired in September, 1972. By late November he had drafted five bills that focused on ethics of legislators and state officials; lobby registration and reporting of expenditures; campaign finance reporting; expansion of the open meetings law; enlarging the public's access to government information. On December 5, a full month before the session, copies of the bills were mailed to House and Senate members as part of Speaker Daniel's reform package.
The first bill passed the House on February 8, and the rest followed in rapid succession. The Senate received them with less than total enthusiasm, and Lt. Gov. Hobby announced that no action would be taken until his own citizens conference convened in mid-March.
When it became clear that passing the bills would require the same grinding drudgery that must accompany the typical lobbyist's bill, Wood settled down to it, ushering the bills from subcommittee to full committee.
After countless hours of work and untold committee meetings, the key reform bills came right down to the wire on the last day of the session. Only one key aspect, a proposed Ethics Commission, bogged down hopelessly in a House-Senate conference committee and had to be abandoned for the sake of passing the whole ethics bill.
Besides the ethics bill, Common Cause secured its other goals: an improved open meetings law; tightened controls over campaign contributions and expenditures; easier public access to government records; and, most importantly for the lobby, tightened control over lobbyists and their spending.
Almost all lobbyists hated this part of the reform package (HB 2). It will require them to report expenditures while the legislature is not in session. Lobbying expenses can no longer be reported under a lump sum but must be categorized. Also, individual members of organizations must now report their expenditures on lobbying. These new requirements rankle some of the lobby, but by and large they still leave the lobby with plenty of room.
One should not get the impression, however, that the old guard is completely moribund. Against Harry Whitworth of the Texas Chemical Council, the environmentalists and their legislative package didn't have a chance. If bringing up the nine reform bills didn't start a lobbyist spluttering, with indignation, certainly the mention of the major environmental measures would. Virtually all the business and industrial lobby stood in ranks solidly against these bills, making their passage next to impossible.
Harry Whitworth entered the starting gate at the session's beginning riding a mule instead of his customary thoroughbred. In 1963, he had spotted a tall, red-haired, rough-edged House member named Ben Barnes and decided he was unique. As head of the powerful Texas Chemical Council, Whitworth had entreés, money, and information, all of which he gladly shared with young Ben.
Barnes' capacity to learn astounded even his most ardent admirers, and in 1965 he was suddenly elected Speaker and was on his way. Whitworth had displayed his most valuable talent: choosing an unknown out of the gaggle and staying hitched to him.
In January, 1973, Barnes was building shopping centers in Brownwood and Whitworth was awaiting the beginning of a new session as he had done for many years. He had always performed well. The chemical industry flourished, and because of his efforts, they paid no special state taxes.
There were two bills that Whitworth had to kill this session: 1) H.B. 205 by Hawkins Menefee of Houston, which would have allowed any Texan to file suit to stop pollution of the air or water—a privilege now belonging only to the state and to those who suffer specific provable damages from the hands of the polluter. It also would have allowed suits against state agencies by persons who believed their clean air and water standards were not set high enough or were not well enough enforced. 2) H.B. 646 by Carl Parker of Port Arthur, which would have set state policy on the environment and would have created an umbrella environmental protection agency to which all state agencies would have to submit environmental impact statements on planned projects. The new office would have the authority to veto projects that would harm the environment.
Whitworth's work was cut out for him. The first thing was to decide who would also find this bill disastrous. That impact statement had to be a nuisance for lots of folks. He began by calling John Terrell, lobbyist for the Texas Association of Builders. Old John didn't like it at all. Certainly cities would be affected, so Whitworth forewarned the executive director of the Texas Municipal League (TML), Richard Brown. Almost every mayor and city official in Texas belongs to the TML, and it has clout.
The next step was to find a freshman House member, unknown, conservative, unscarred, to work the floor. To Whitworth, Pete Laney from Plainview seemed ideal. Pete put out a farm and ranch journal and was a farmer up in the Panhandle. Whitworth was interested in farming, and soon the two were old friends. Whitworth never asked him for anything regarding the bill, but only to study it carefully and assay how much it might hurt the farm and ranch business.
Joining Whitworth, the homebuilders, and the Texas Municipal League in opposition were the Texas Water Quality Board, Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas, Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners, and West Central Texas Oil and Gas Association.
On May 2, after two crippling amendments were added, Rep. Parker angrily pronounced his bill dead. Pointing to the lobbyists in the gallery he said, "I see the vultures up there waiting to pick the bones. They have done their work well in representing their clients."
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