We the People...
For almost a century the Texas constitution has been used by special interests to hamstring good government. The new draft constitution changes most (but not all) of that.
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URBAN INTERESTS FARED ONLY SLIGHTLY better on another major point of dispute, local government. The Texas Constitution has much to say on the matter of how cities and counties may govern themselves. The new document has the advantage of bringing all these myriad provisions together in one place (Article IX), and adding or rewriting a few that make it possible for local governments to operate somewhat more effectively; but on the crucial question of whether urban areas may cast aside the maze of contentious, conflicting political jurisdictions and put everything together in one Metroplan government, the Commissioners ran and hid. As a result, the local government reforms—though occasionally substantial—are far less than they could have been.
By the phrasing they chose for Section 1 of the local government Article, the Commissioners insured that county government would continue to exist, thus forestalling Metroplan. In Section 2 they made clear that the Legislature could grant broad regulatory powers to the counties if they chose, thus removing a possible constitutional objection to more effective county government. Section 3 represents the Commissioners' hesitant efforts to construct a compromise between Metroplan reformers and conservatives who wished to preserve county government structure in exactly its present form. The compromise allows a majority of a county's voters to create or eliminate the duties of various offices, or even to eliminate the offices themselves, while stopping short of allowing them to merge with municipalities into one big metro government. As a fail-safe for the conservatives, the compromise also provides that none of these powers can be exercised by the voters unless the Legislature first gives them permission to do so. Legislators are notably responsive to local official-dom, and inasmuch as local officials stand to lose the most if the voters are allowed to run amok changing the forms of government and casually discarding ten-term officeholders, it is problematical whether Section 3 will ever amount to much. But if it does, there is nothing to prevent a county from, say, hiring a County Manager.
Section 4 is the heart of the Commission's proposed local government reforms. It authorizes counties with a population of 25,000 or more to adopt a charter, similar to a municipal charter, thereby expanding its powers of self-government. Any county could also adopt ordinances by majority vote; armed with that power, it is conceivable that Texas could for the first time enjoy effective building codes and land use planning in its unincorporated areas. Here again, however, Catch-22 looms: these charter and ordinance powers could be exercised only where authorized by the Legislature, and the Legislature in the past has not been unacquainted with the desires of various influential interests who do not smile at the mention of effective building codes and land use planning.
Furthermore, by providing that city ordinances shall prevail over county ordinances wherever the city's territorial jurisdiction exists, the Commissioners have preserved the cities' dominance and effectively blocked an important method of bringing together a collection of municipalities and rural areas into one coordinated unit: that is to say, they have blocked Metroplan. Instead, they have broadened the authority (which cities and counties already enjoy) to enter into cooperative agreements for services like utilities, waste disposal, police protection, tax administration, and libraries. Some members of the Commission who favored a straightforward Metroplan provision look upon this approach as the next-best alternative. At a minimum, it eliminates a nest of impediments that do exist in the present Constitution.
A number of factors contributed to the heavily-urban Commission's decision to shy away from authorizing Metroplan government. The Local Government committee which did most of the work on that article was chaired by Barbara Culver, a County Judge from Midland who was herself no enthusiast of Metroplan reforms. The original committee drafts ignored the issue altogether, and it was not until the whole Commission instructed the committee to design a Metroplan proposal that it came to be debated at all. According to Judge Culver and Committee Vice-Chairman Bill Hartman (Editor of the Beaumont Enterprise and Journal), the hearings were filled with passionate testimony against Metroplan, from private citizens as well as officeholders. "It was basically a fear of change," said Judge Culver. "Fear of putting your fine local police force under the county sheriff, and things like that." Other Commissioners confirmed that the opposition was not confined to ranchers and other residents of unincorporated areas alarmed at the thought of having to submit to some city-dominated super-government; it also included uneasy suburbanites who saw the city they had deliberately chosen to escape reaching back out to seize them. Metroplan supporters were not nearly as vocal, so the Commission's decision to abandon it was virtually foreordained. Urban representatives will doubtless raise the issue again at Convention time, however.
The proposed new constitution requires single member legislative districts everywhere in the state. This could have extensive political impact in the urban areas which do not now have them, including Austin, El Paso, Fort Worth, and Corpus Christi. The requirement that legislators run at large in giant districts has traditionally inhibited minority candidates as well as those who lack the time, independence, and financial backing to run a big-time campaign. When Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston switched to single member districts last year, the complexion of their delegations immediately changed to include more Republicans, blacks, Mexican-Americans, and marginal candidates, few of whom could have won the moneyed support that was previously indispensable to success. Similar results can be expected in other urban areas if the single member district principle is adopted statewide.
A related provision may have equally interesting political ramifications. For the first time, a Representative's district may not be divided between more than one Senatorial district. (In the current Legislature, some Representatives share territory with as many as four Senators). Houston trial lawyer James Kronzer was responsible for the inclusion of this idea, which is known as the "pod principle" and has been adopted by seven other states. In theory, it prevents gerrymandering by forcing Senators and Representatives to work together in drafting district lines that both (or all) can live with. Currently each house of the Legislature draws its own district lines and the other does not interfere; thus there is nothing to restrain a Representative from constructing a district stretching from Dallas to the Gulf one precinct wide if by so doing he can accumulate a suitably compliant body of constituents and his neighboring Representatives are willing to go along. (Indeed, the district of Congressman Olin Teague comes close to fitting this description).
But if he must work it out not only with other Representatives but also with a Senator who has wishes of his own and whose district (because it is larger) sets the perimeters of the Representative's quest for constituents, there is a better chance that sensible lines will be drawn: ambition counterbalances ambition. "There is no way," says Kronzer, "that a Senator can force a gerrymandered district, because he will mess up a Representative who likes things the way they are. And vice versa."
What effect this system may have on urban politics remains to be seen. Certainly it ties the Senator and "his" Representatives closer together than they now are, and there are those who feel that it will strengthen the Senator's hand in legislative politics because it will permit him to block the Representatives' legislation if they try to push him around. Because there are so few Senators (the proposed Constitution does permit the number to be increased from 31 to 50) they are more likely to have a substantial urban electorate than many Representatives do. If the "pod principle" does operate to strengthen the Senators' hands, urban influence in the Legislature could thereby be increased. But no one really knows yet.
The inner cities (as distinguished from suburbia) won some impressive economic advantages in the section of the proposed Constitution dealing with public school education. Writing in the shadow of the United States Supreme Court's decision in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the Commissioners laid down the principle that "the quality of education...shall...be based on...the wealth of the state as a whole," rather than varying according to the tax resources each particular school district happens to have within its geographical borders. For some urban districts, like pitifully poor Edgewood in San Antonio, this amounts to a constitutional promise of massive state aid.
But the Commissioners went even farther. In a provision aimed squarely at the beleaguered city centers, they authorized the Legislature to "take into account the variations in local tax burden to support other local government services." Put simply, this means that central city districts may receive preferential treatment when the time comes to distribute state education dollars, on the theory that urban taxpayers are already burdened with a disproportionate tax load to support a wide range of municipal services that the surrounding suburban and rural residents use but do not pay for. Huntsville residents find many occasions to use Houston's streets, but Houstonians seldom reciprocate. The visitor from Granbury takes for granted that the Fort Worth police will respond if his car is stolen or wrecked on a shopping trip to the big city; although Fort Worth travelers doubtless expect the same help from Granbury, they are far less likely to need it. The cities are the ultimate repository for many of the social problems of their surrounding areas, be they runaway children or hardcore unemployed. Their tax dollars are always spread too thin. This constitutional provision is designed to help bail them out.
"The suburbs have better schools because they've always been able to devote more money to them," remarked one Commissioner. "They just don't have as many expensive, non-school services to provide and pay for. The cities have more obligations, more services. Once we laid down the principle that every child should have equal access to educational resources, it follows more or less automatically that the Legislature should be able to take these city services into account when they determine what is an 'equal' tax burden for the schools."
The Commissioners adopted this new approach without apparent dissent. The chances seem good for the Constitutional Convention to retain it in the final document.
Much as the members of the Constitutional Revision Commission would like to believe that they have written "A New Constitution for Texas," the final decisions on these and numerous other questions rest with the legislators themselves. When they meet as a Constitutional Convention on January 8th, the real, dead-earnest battles will begin.
For the special interests—not only the highway crowd and local officials—this battle is the big one, and the pressure they will be able to bring on legislators preparing for primaries in June will be immense. It will be the lobby show of a lifetime, and hopefully the future of Texas will not be lost in the shuffle.
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