The Best and the Worst Legislators 1991
(Page 2 of 5)
Martin’s list of achievements would have been satisfying even for a veteran. He passed two big environmental bills protecting the Texas coast, including one to save wetlands. He was the key figure in strengthening the state’s hurricane-insurance program and the floor manager for part of the governor’s insurance-reform package. He almost derailed a heavily lobbied, pro-business, products-liability bill with an asbestos amendment; it failed only because Speaker Lewis signaled his forces by casting a rare vote against it. And Martin did kill a suspicious bill to help savings and loans just by raising questions that its sponsor couldn’t answer.
As important as what he did was the way he did it. He selected his targets carefully, heeding the rule that freshmen should keep their ears open and their mouths shut unless they have something important to say. Martin addressed issues that he deeply cared about (most members knew that his stepfather suffers from asbestosis) and avoided debates that required special expertise, such as spending and taxes. Elected president of the freshman class, normally just an honorary office, he used the position to help his classmates. He brought in experienced members to explain the House rules and held meetings to discuss major issues like school finance and ethics reform. “He’s willing to have other members know as much as he does,” said an admiring old hand. “He wants to empower his peers.”
But where does Mike Martin go from here? As successful as he was, he ended the year deeply discouraged about the indifference of House veterans to following procedural rules or solving the state’s problems. Will he try to change the system from the inside as a future committee chairman, or will he become an outsider, the leader of an as-yet-nonexistent opposition? As a freshman he was able to keep his options open; next session he will have to choose.
John Montford: The yardstick
Democrat, Lubbock, 48—The last of the great senators of the Bill Hobby era who emulated the virtues of the former lieutenant governor. Like Ray Farabee, Bob McFarland, and Kent Caperton before him, Montford is fair, nonpartisan, dignified, concerned more with the future of the state than with his own ambitions, and respectful of the Senate as an institution. In a body that has a disgraceful quotient of sleaze and self-interest, he remains the standard of what a senator ought to be.
In his first year as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Montford saved Texas from the nationwide embarrassment of having state government shut down on September 1. As the end of the first special session neared, he knew that there wasn’t time to pass a budget by going through the formal procedure of a House-Senate conference committee. He knew too that the pin had been pulled from the grenade: If the budget fight went into a second special session, a single procedural delay—a filibuster or a point of order—could prevent the bill from becoming law before the September 1 deadline. So Montford cheated the calendar by inviting House members to help write the Senate’s version of the budget, a maneuver that required both chambers to approve the bill without making changes. Amazingly, the plan worked. Little groups of lawmakers gathered in rooms throughout the Capitol during the last week of the session, working on different segments of the budget late into the night. Montford moved from room to room, overseeing everything with the grace under pressure of a kindergarten teacher facing chaos, putting it all together, and standing firm against wholesale cuts in state universities.
Montford’s skill at solving problems extended beyond the budget. One senator was determined to kill a bill handcuffing the Public Utility Commission, saying that there was no way to fix the legislation. Montford found one. The Senate redistricting plan took revenge on hardworking Republican senator Cyndi Krier of San Antonio for campaigning against Lieutenant Governor Bullock; Montford quietly found a way to fix that too.
Trim, buttoned-down, and bespectacled, Montford has been criticized for being too senatorial. Some lobbyists complain that Montford won’t twist arms to pass his own bills. He has taken heat from back home for saying that a state income tax would be preferable to higher property taxes. In a Senate that seems to grow more partisan and ideological with each election cycle, Montford runs against the tide—conservative on business issues like reducing liability for torts, liberal on social issues like supplying water to border colonias, and sometimes just plain unpredictable (he wants to deregulate insurance and utilities). He is the thinking man’s senator.
Carl Parker: The bully pulpit
Democrat, Port Arthur, 57—We never thought we’d say this, but … thank the Lord for Carl Parker. Granted, he’s a bully and a showoff. He’s too close to Oscar Wyatt and the plaintiff’s lawyers. He has too much appetite from the game of politics and too much cynicism about reforming it. But in a Senate that was virtually bereft of talent, Parker had to bear a load that would have broken Samson. During the regular session, the 28-year legislative veteran carried almost every major bill: school finance, insurance reform, oil spill cleanup, a new environmental superagency, a recycling bill to reduce municipal garbage by 40 percent, new bank foreclosure rules. All are now law.
How did he do it? No one knows better how to pass a bill or how to kill one. When Parker grabs his microphone on the Senate floor, belly jutting and nostrils flaring, he brandishes it like a beer bottle to crack over someone’s head in a barroom brawl. But his words usually have just enough humor to soften the blows. When archconservative Republican John Leedom of Dallas began a question to Parker with the comment that he’d seen a lot of progress in his years in the Senate, Parker bellowed at him, “I know. And you voted against all of it.” When he turns up the volune on his Port Arthur accent, he has the righteous fervor of a Cajun evangelist. “This bill’s like what the Baptist preacher said about dancin’,” Parker began one speech. “It’s not the dancin’ that’s so bad—it’s what it might lead to.”
Too often Parker behaved like a schoolyard tough—particularly when he was negotiating with House members, whom he regards as one step above protozoa on the evolutionary ladder. (“The number one rule in negotiating with Parker,” said a House veteran, “is, Never negotiate in front of an audience—and one person is an audience.”) Parker’s salvation is that his mind is as sharp as his tongue. “He follows every sarcastic comment with a suggestion of how to solve the problem,” said a Senate staffer. “That’s the difference between whiners and doers.”
He knew when he could win and when he had to compromise. When the House sent a complicated insurance-reform bill to the Senate, Parker seized control, deciding what amendments should go on the bill and keeping lobbyists at bay. After an education-quality bill died in the House, Parker attached some of its provisions to another education bill. When stunned House members asked to negotiate, Parker refused. Take it or leave it, he said—and they took it. This is not the way legislation gets written in the civics textbooks, but sometimes it is the only way to make the system work. And no person made the system work more often this year than Carl Parker.
Bill Ratliff: Engineering solutions
Republican, Mount Pleasant, 55—A Republican has as about as much chance of thriving in the Texas Senate as a bluebonnet does of growing in August. Bill Ratliff beat the odds. In a body without a single Republican committee chairman, Ratliff, in just his second session, quietly established himself in the Senate’s top echelon. His ideas about how to solve legislative problems made so much sense that even partisan Democrats could not overlook him.
Ratliff brought something new to the Senate—the mind of an engineer, his chosen profession. “He sees things with an engineer’s clarity,” says a Democratic colleague. When other senators were bewildered by the complexities of school finance, Ratliff sketched diagrams of issues and proposals. Early in the deliberations he advocated a formula to govern how school districts could qualify for state aid; he bided his time until other ideas played out and then resurrected his plan at just the right moment. It became part of the final package, largely because Ratliff allowed other legislators to embrace it as their own.
With his scholarly wire-rimmed glasses, immaculate silver hair, and erect carriage, Ratliff maintains a crisp appearance and a tidy desk that enhance his engineer’s persona. Every solution that he proposes has structural integrity, whether he’s advocating a bipartisan ethics commission, special rules for the East Texas oil field, or a statewide approach to controlling hazardous waste. No wonder Ratliff was the only senator named by Lieutenant Governor Bullock to every House-Senate conference committee negotiating a major bill during the regular session.
Ratliff’s stature rests on a single trait that sets him apart from the great mass of the Senate. He’s a totally free man—free of partisanship (he cast a rare Republican vote to raise taxes, but he protested to Bullock when no Republicans were named to a crucial conference committee), free of egotism (a Ratliff press release qualifies for the rare documents collection), free of ambition, free of the lobby, free to act as every senator should but few actually do: Look at every issue from both sides and decide what is right.
Jack Vowell: Do the right thing
Republican, El Paso, 64—A spectator in the House gallery could easily mistake Jack Vowell for somebody’s visiting grandfather rather than an influential legislator. He doesn’t walk around the floor slapping backs and shaking hands. He doesn’t huddle with lobbyists. He doesn’t issue press releases or preen for the TV cameras. All he does is worry about how to improve the most resistant, frustrating area of state government—welfare and social services. That is more than enough.
Why would a Republican care so much about welfare? It accounts for one fifth of the state budget and is rife with waste; why not make it work? And Vowell did. He crafted and passed what everyone hopes will turn out to be the most important bill of the year—a mammoth reorganization of thirteen state health and welfare agencies that are infamous for their bureaucratic intransigence and lack of accountability. Vowell’s plan creates two new agencies (one for health, one for families and children) with one commissioner who controls the money, the rules, and the procedures for both—and can be fired by the governor. If it works, it will both save money and start the state toward a cabinet form of government.
My Library
