The Best and the Worst Legislators 1991
(Page 4 of 5)
The crowning achievement of his career is his own self-perpetuation. He wangled his way onto the House redistricting committee in 1971, in 1981, and, yes, in 1991. This year he traded in a minor committee chairmanship to ensure his seat on redistricting, knowing full well that his colleagues would enthusiastically eviscerate his district if he were not in position to protect it. And protect it he did. Some unfortunate legislator in Finnell’s northwest Texas neighborhood was destined to lose his district because of population losses. One of the great injustices of the session is that it won’t be Finnell. The House redistricting bill throws two good members into the same district—Republican Troy Fraser of Big Spring and Democrat David Counts of Knox City—while Finnell escapes unharmed.
Among his colleagues Finnell is a negative legend. No bill of consequence bears his name. (He is unduly proud of establishing a toll-free number for people to call when they see malfunctioning railroad-crossing signals.) He is best known for (1) maintaining the largest stash of hair spray this side of the Clairol factory—and making frequent trips to the members’ rest room to make use of it; (2) his imperious treatment of staff (a former House aide tells the story of how Finnell summoned a sergeant at arms to wash off an apple, which the sergeant duly did—in a bathroom fixture other than the sink); and (3) his fear of casting a vote that might defeat him for reelection. “Every vote is a thousand deaths for Finnell,” said one lobbyist. Some veteran members suspect that Finnell watches how they register their votes on the House’s electronic scoreboard before casting his own vote; one sometimes switches sides at the last moment to fool him.
To no one’s surprise, Finnell voted against the tax bill, although the special session hung in the balance and the Democratic leadership desperately needed votes. After the bill had narrowly passed, Finnell went up to the Speaker’s podium to inform Gib Lewis that he would now vote “aye” on a procedural move to start collecting the taxes immediately. “I don’t care what you do,” said Lewis, who almost never has a harsh word to say to a member. “I lost faith in you long ago.”
Ernestine Glossbrenner: Robin Hood’s messenger
Democrat, Alice, 58—Yes, life is unfair. How can someone as decent, as caring, as well motivated as Ernestine Glossbrenner be on the Ten Worst list? Unfortunately, politics sometimes demands more than a good heart. As chairwoman of the House Public Education Committee, Glossbrenner had the hardest, most important job of the Seventy-second Legislature—to end the school-finance crisis in a way that improved the shameful quality of education in Texas schools. But the House lost confidence in her ability to lead. Now taxpayers, parents, and schoolchildren all over Texas must live with the consequences. “Bless her heart,” said a sympathetic colleague, “Ernie was the worst one to lead that committee out of a hundred and fifty members.”
Three times Glossbrenner took the lead on education issues: the school-finance bill, an education-quality bill, and a reorganization plan for the state education agency. Three times the process turned into a mess. The criticisms were always the same. “She doesn’t know how to negotiate,” said one member. “She doesn’t understand how to build a consensus,” said another. “She just has an ex-teacher’s point of view and can’t see the big picture,” said a lobbyist. On it went: “She’s too indecisive” “She’s taking everything personally” “I think if the House voted on whether they wanted to hear Ernie say another word about education, she’d lose one-forty-five to five.”
Speaker Lewis named an informal committee to come up with a school-finance bill that had broad support; the committee fell apart because Glossbrenner wouldn’t compromise. One plan was defeated by the House after she wouldn’t even give opponents some face-saving amendments. The final bill—the notorious “Robin Hood” plan that has already caused Dallas students to walk out in protest over teacher firings—passed only because the courts would have taken over the schools if it had failed. The quality bill turned out to be no such thing; Glossbrenner’s intransigent opposition in committee to education reform drove advocates of change to despair. The bill never reached the floor for debate. The reorganization bill also died after Glossbrenner lost control of it.
And so an opportunity was missed. The moment was right for change, but change did not occur. And the principal reason that Texas will spend billions of dollars on the same old education system is—sad but true—Ernestine Glossbrenner.
Gene Green: Potomac fever
Democrat, Houston, 43—If you want to know what’s wrong with the Texas Senate, look no further than Gene Green. Consumed by ambition, indifferent to public policy, and unmindful of the distinction between his political business and his personal business, Green epitomized the Senate’s fallen standards.
So many of Green’s problems can be traced back to his hunger to run for Congress. He demonstrated the truth of the old adage that no creature is more dangerous than a politician in search of publicity—especially if the politician is waving a handgun. Preying on Houston’s hysteria over crime, Green proposed one of the all-time bad legislative ideas: making it legal for everyone to carry a concealed handgun. Senator Ted Lyon, an ex-cop, had just enough votes to block this police nightmare, but Green waited until Lyon went to a funeral and then passed the bill. (It died in the House.)
Count of Green no to overlook another sure bet for publicity—the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) environmental bill. Green sponsored bills and amendments to prevent an unpopular hazardous waste incinerator from being built in his district. But he had another incentive for opposing the incinerator. Before he introduced the bill, he had been hired as an attorney by a neighboring business to fight the project. The situation so reeked of influence peddling and conflict of interest that Lieutenant Governor Bullock would not allow Green to attach an anti-incinerator amendment to a hazardous waste bill.
In his drive to get to Congress, Green kept trying to amend bills to curry favor with folks back home. Knowing that any amendment to delicately negotiated insurance-reform bill could cause the deal to come unraveled, Green tried to benefit a few insurance agents anyway. He lost. Bye the end of the regular session, Bullock was joking that he needed a lobbyist to take Green on a trip, so that the Senate could get its work done. Anywhere but Washington.
Eddie Bernice Johnson: America’s Loss
Democrat, Dallas, 57—Imagine a two-year-old child on a white silk sofa with a new set of Magic Markers. Add a large dose of glowering hostility and you get the picture of how Senator Eddie Bernice Johnson handled the responsibility of drawing new congressional districts for Texas. Disaster was swift, certain, and complete, and no amount of cleaning could eradicate the damage.
This was not hard to predict. Indeed, two influential senators warned Lieutenant Governor Bullock that giving Johnson the redistricting job was a terrible mistake, to no avail. It didn’t take long to prove them right. Her first plan created a new minority district in Dallas, which she was supposed to do, but—oops!—two white Democratic congressmen were left without a base when their homes ended up in the new district. Believe it or not, Houston was worse: One district had three congressmen in it, another two. When someone asked Johnson why her map had made five congressmen living outside the districts they represented, she blamed… the congressmen. It seemed that they hadn’t supplied her with their home addresses. “You know,” said one senator, shaking his head, “it doesn’t exactly take a private investigator to find out where a congressman lives.”
No one argued with Johnson’s desire to draw a district in Dallas that would elect a black. But Johnson was determined to draw a district that would elect one black in particular. Hint: Her initials were E.B.J. It was her insistence on having her way without any regard for vulnerable incumbents Martin Frost and John Bryant that snarled the redistricting process all summer. Meanwhile, Johnson was negotiating with the same lovable tactic that helped earn her a place on the Ten Worst List in 1989: She threatened to sue her colleagues if they didn’t support her plan.
Redistricting wasn’t all she made a mess of. Only the intervention of other senators kept her from unintentionally abolishing the kindergarten program for three-year-olds. Sometimes even intervention didn’t help. When someone pointed out that her bill prohibiting discrimination by private clubs seemed to exempt the Ku Klux Klan, she angrily replied that she didn’t care; she didn’t want to join the Klan anyway.
In the end, there was no justice. The Senate sided with Johnson and gave her the congressional district she wanted. One of her colleagues explained why: “Many members of the Senate are looking forward to her service in Congress.” Texas’ gain—but America’s loss.
Glenn Repp: the Soothsayer
Republican, Duncanville, 59—In Shakespearean times, Glenn Repp would have made a great soothsayer—the minor character who always prophesies doom, only to go unheeded. When Rep. Repp, as he is known, takes his stand at the microphone, his head cocked to right as if to emphasize the perspective from which he views the world, the one thing certain is that no one will pay any attention to what he says.
Repp is the latest in the long line of legislators on the Ten Worst list who know what they are against but don’t know what they are for. As a result, he is at once noisy and ineffective. (“What was Repp talking about?” one member asked another in the back of the House chamber, referring to a pointless Repp question. “Did he know he was talking about?” came the reply.) Repp’s arguments always seemed to emphasize broad, ideological points instead of specific problems and thus persuaded no one. Sure, the school-finance bill was awful. But there’s nothing to be gained by attacking it as “you worst socialist nightmare”—other members just groan and tune you out. Sure, the House redistricting plan for Dallas County (which put Repp in a largely black district) was a partisan Democratic gerrymander. But while other Republicans were laying the groundwork for attacking the plan in court, Repp lost ground by calling it racist. Once he opposed a bill imposing hiring requirements on school districts because—ideology again—it violated local control. Repp lost, of course. But if he had pointed out that the bill made it harder to fire incompetent business managers, the outcome might have been different.
My Library
