July 1985
The Ten Best and (Groan) The Ten Worst Legislators
It is a cliché around the Capitol that each legislative session has a personality unlike any other. Even clichés can be right on occasion, and this was one. The 69th Legislature was a surly child that had been dragged along to a place it did not want to go for the purpose of doing things it did not want to do, and by golly, somebody was going to have to pay for it. In the end it did what it was supposed to, but not before bruising a lot of feelings and a few fists as well.
Three things affected the collective temperament this session: money, Republicans, and the memory of last summer’s special session on education reform. The state’s tight fiscal situation contributed mightily to the grim looks on lawmakers’ faces. Most politicians don’t like to tell people no; this session they had little choice. The unpleasantness was exacerbated by the fear that Texas is nearing the end of the oil era and ought to do something to plan for the future. Empty treasury or no, the Senate wanted to invest millions in high-technology programs, mainly at UT and Texas A&M, while the House clung to a we-can’t –afford-it posture.
Which brings us to the rise of the Republicans, or to put it another way, the decline of the conservative Democrats. The realignment election of 1984 added 15 new Republican seats to the House, swelling GOP numbers in the lower chamber to 52—more than a third of the membership. Many of their gains came at the expense of conservative Democrats, and those who survived never forgot it for a moment. For the first time, conservative Democrats began to see themselves as dinosaurs, and they did not view their prospective extinction with equanimity. They made nervous jokes about how the new Republicans want government only to defend the shores and deliver the mail, but they didn’t joke at all about their own party, which was trying to foist on them a presidential primary bill that would have accentuated the Democrats’ liberal drift. Kent Hance’s switch to the GOP hit them hard; they sprouted buttons advertising, “We would rather fight than switch.” Meanwhile, the Republicans proved themselves shrewd and able politicians by not voting as a bloc but letting their numbers act as an incentive to cut spending and frivolity.
The hangover from the education reform session was the biggest factor of all. Last summer was the Legislature’s finest moment in years, maybe ever. Veteran members returned to Austin knowing that they had already done the most important thing they would do in their careers. What’s more, they had already dealt with the only issues ordinary Texans seem to care about: education, highways, taxes. The session began with no sense of urgency, no feeling that anything just had to be done, no reason except a budget to be there in the first place. It was anticlimactic from day one. Passions were spent not on issues but on personal hostilities; there were more fistfights and near fistfights than anyone could remember, and one legislator even treed a student during an outdoor protest of tuition increases.
Despite the gloomy atmosphere, the Legislature came up with a session to be proud of. For that we can thank the much-maligned Texas constitution and its equally maligned injunction that the Legislature meet every two years for no more than 140 days. All the ingredients were present for a stalemate: torpor, factionalism, the absence of pressing issues. Had the Legislature been a year-round body like Congress, we still wouldn’t have a water plan or a budget or a hazardous-waste law or dozens of other good bills that are headed for the law books. The deadline provided the urgency that nature had omitted, and the Legislature lurched toward its destiny almost in spite of itself.
Under the pressure of time, the philosophical and party rifts became an asset. Compromise was the only way to beat the clock. Consequently, although this was the most conservative Legislature in recent times, its product was also one of the most balanced in recent times. There seemed to be something in everybody’s stocking: indigent health care (passed during a brief special session after it became the one thing that time really did run out on) and a hunger package, tough new crime laws, the first glimmerings of environmental concerns in a water plan, a leaner bureaucracy, decent if not lavish funding for universities, even a consumer bill or two.
That augurs well for Governor Mark White, who faces reelection in 1986. Never mind that White had little to do with the session’s success. He has never bridged the gap between electoral and legislative politics; he paints with too broad a brush, full of generalities when dealing in an arena where all the battles are over specifics. On subject after subject, on fee increases, blue laws, funding for indigent health care, a telephone tax adjustment, White’s waffling led to controversies that could have been avoided. Did he want a cigarette tax to pay for indigent health care or didn’t he, and why wouldn’t he make up his mind? (When he finally did decide-nix on the tax- it was the Friday before the session ended). But if he isn’t very good, he at least is lucky. Mainly, he’s lucky that the House and Senate are in good hands and can insulate him from having to lead.
Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby is the best thing that has happened to Texas government since the oil severance tax. He has the best vision of what Texas should be, the best understanding of public policy, the best sense of how politicians should comport themselves, the best ideas, the best staff. He has defined the modern Senate. Speaker Gib Lewis, in his second session—five fewer than Hobby—showed some surprising signs of moving in the same direction. He too is molding his members into the kind of legislators he wants them to be: those who do their work in the coolness of committee deliberations rather than the heat of floor debate. That makes for less excitement but better legislation. He is a member’s Speaker who uses his power to keep the train on the track rather than to run over people. His main weakness is his indifference to the details of issues, which sometimes leaves him blind to impending trouble (such as the predictable deadlock that occurred in the water conference committee), and his how-ya-doin good-ol’-boy tendencies, which make him at times an easy caricature. (He asked a visiting group of paraplegics to “stand up and be recognized,” for instance, and proclaimed at a women’s lobby luncheon that “I’m so happy to be here. I love girls.”) But no one can question his good intentions or his courage. He stuck by education reform despite attacks from all sides, and during the special session, in the middle of the most partisan fight since Reconstruction, he broke a tie to save indigent health care.
Our criteria for the Best and Worst lists, as always, rest on personality rather than ideology, because that is how legislators judge their colleagues. Nor did we base our selections on issues, although with money as such a major factor in the session, it was inevitable that work on the budget, good or bad, became a short route to one list or the other. The constants of politics are intelligence, integrity, open-mindedness, fairness, and the desire to find a way to advance the ball. The common characteristic of bad legislators is their absence of a constructive purpose. We judged harshly those who elevated partisanship and emotional issues above the business of the state. There just isn’t time for that sort of thing in 140 days.
The Ten Best
Paul Colbert
35, Democrat, Houston
If brains alone got you on the Best list, this would be Colbert’s third straight appearance. But in sessions past, his cerebral, compulsively talky style—as foreign to the gregarious, backslapping House as Margaret Mead must have seemed to the Samoans—raised the hackles of other members and limited his effectiveness. He diluted his stock through sheer overexposure at the microphone, explaining endless amendments in excruciating detail and playing the kamikaze. Then something called HB 72 changed Colbert’s life: during last summer’s special session on that educational reform bill, brains were in. His awesome knowledge of school finance proved essential. He was ubiquitous (colleagues fretting over the bill in the men’s room were startled when Colbert materialized from a stall to set them straight); people who had tuned him out suddenly tuned him back in. By the end, he had forged ties with the leadership, changed his image (a near-impossible feat in the unforgiving House), and discovered that he was on the inside. What’s more, he discovered he liked being on the inside.
For one thing, there were rewards—his spot this session on the key Appropriations Committee, for example. Again he was everywhere, speaking for this program and against that program, busier than a squad of trauma-room doctors on a full-moon Saturday night. Kept HB 72 reforms patched together in the face of attacks from House honchos; spared parks from a devastating raid; single-handedly resuscitated a scholarship fund for bright students who want to be teachers. Ferreted out loose money in unlikely places (“Colbert could find money inside this plant,” asserted one member, fondling a fern); used his fertile mind to figure out how to divert $15 million in interest from the usually sacred highway fund when others were insisting there were legal impediments. Tried to make the point that there’s fat in the higher education budget by moving to phase out UT-Permian Basin—and, much to his own surprise, got the votes; repeated the performance on A&M-Galveston. Because those were the most publicized cuts of the session (they were later restored), some accused Colbert of grandstanding, but that’s the price you pay for winning. At least no one accused him of not making his point.
