The Best and the Worst Legislators 1991
(Page 5 of 5)
After three terms, Repp has yet to catch on to the legislative game. He sponsored a bill to give new legal protection to people who kill intruders in their homes, but he agreed to add an amendment without knowing what it did. What it did was totally gut the bill. The performance was typical Repp—hopelessly inept, but nice. To his credit, he is not mean, spiteful, or hypocritical. But he is an example of why most Republicans remain so ineffective in the Texas Legislature. The destiny of those who oppose without offering an alternative is defeat.
Dalton Smith: Who do you trust?
Republican, Houston, 44-What is this guy doing in politics? How did anyone so rude, arrogant, and contemptuous, and self-righteous ever get anybody to vote for him? For that matter, why did he come back for a second term in a body that he finds so loathsome? His behavior calls to mind an observation about a long-ago member of Parliament named John Horne Tooke: “Provided he say a cleaver or spiteful thing, he did not care whether it served or injured the cause.”
The essence of politics is to bring together people of opposing viewpoints in an atmosphere of mutual respect. But to Smith, every fight is personal, every duel is to the death. He reacted to any proposal to keep nonviolent criminals out of the state’s overcrowded prisons—which has cause thousands of violent criminals to be paroled—as if the idea were high treason. When a member proposed sentencing nonviolent felons to work programs instead of prisons, Smith denounced the idea as “the drug dealer’s relief act.” The bill was voted down after a long and acrimonious debate, but its sponsor asked his colleagues to reconsider. “I have felt deeply and personally attacked,” he told the House. Sure enough, the House reverted itself, more as a rebuke to Smith than as an endorsement. “That bill didn’t have a prayer until Dalton got on it,” chortled a gleefly Smithophobe.
Smith’s number one archfiend was Corrections Committee chairman Allen Hightower—an ill-advised choice, since Hightower is one of the most popular and sincere members. Smith tried to orchestrate a partisan vote against a proposed prison budget in committee, but the plan unraveled when Hightower sniffed it out. Later in the session, Hightower made the mistake of joking privately with Smith about overcrowded prisons; Smith promptly repeated Hightower’s comments to the widow of a lain Houston police officer, who called a press conference at her husband’s grave to demand Hightower’s resignation. The next time Smith attacked a Hightower bill, Hightower told the House, “You can trust me or Mr. Smith.” The vote: Hightower 134, Smith 8.
Even easygoing Speaker Lewis found Smith too much to take. During debate over the tax bill, Smith interrupted a colleague so many times Lewis had to gavel him down. “Mr. Smith, would you show the kindness of allowing Mr. Earley to finish his answer before you interrupt him?” So Smith interrupted Lewis. Boom! went the gavel. “Mr. Smith! Would you show the House the courtesy to keep your voice down?”
Perhaps there is a use for Dalton Smith after all. Instead of holding freshman orientation before the 1993 regular session, the Legislature could just send incoming members videotapes of Smith in action. Once they know what not to do, the rest will be easy.
Jim Tallas: Out of the Shadows
Republican, Sugarland, 54—Poor Jim Tallas. For years he escaped notice as a nondescript backbencher, enjoying the camaraderie and shunning the limelight. But when Speaker Lewis thrust him into prominence as chairman of the Financial Institutions Committee, Tallas folded under scrutiny like a Texas S&L’s loan portfolio.
His fatal affliction was laziness. His chairmanship forced him to carry important bills, but nothing could force him to study them. Invariably his bills ran into trouble on the floor. An exchange over a bill setting new rules for foreclosures was vintage Tallas. Question: What is the purpose of language on second liens? Tallas: It doesn’t change current law. Question: If it doesn’t change current law, then why are we doing it? Tallas: Er, that’s a good question. Question: Isn’t it a fact that you don’t know what it does?
His only defense was a perpetual sheepish look. Once he justified a provision transparently designed to aid bankers as “just a protection for the consumer”—a description so ridiculous that derisive laughter swept through the House. Colleagues began treating him with open contempt in floor debate. When he limped though an explanation of an amendment to a trucking deregulation bill, a questioner asked, “Are you through reading that printed form TMTA [the lobbyists for regulated truckers] wrote for you?”
Trouble seemed to follow Tallas around. After his committee tilted toward bankrupt borrowers at the expense of federal taxpayers, FDIC chairman William Seidman issued a stern warning against approval of a pro-borrower bill. “Terrible bills come out of Financial Institutions,” said a member of the House Calendars Committee, which schedules bills for floor debate. The rest of the House apparently agreed. At the end of the regular session, a Tallas proposal to let S&L’s become state savings banks went down to defeat. No one had lobbied against the bill before the debate; the vote was simply a referendum on Tallas’ credibility.
Carlos Traun: Special Exemption
Democrat, Corpus Christi, 56—With one exception, Carlos Traun was his usual ineffective self this year—the Senate synonym for a self-serving, time-wasting windbag. During a heated floor debate, one senator hurled the ultimate insult at his opponent: “You sound like Carlos Traun.” Just in case anybody missed the point, up jumped Carl Paker to drive it home: “We don’t allow personal slurs on the floor.”
Traun’s defining moment in the Legislature came in 1971, the session clouded by the Sharpstown scandal. He was a member of the Dirty Thirty, who opposed Speaker Gus Mutscher, and he has never forgotten it—nor does he let anybody else forget it. Those days are long gone, but not for Truan; he still acts as if most of the Texas political world were out to get him. (In fact, all they really want is to avoid him.) He regards a friend as just a foe in disguise—he once accused Parker, the Senate’s leader in the fight for school-aid equality, of not giving a damn about poor kids unless they were in his own district. A foe is beneath contempt. When a South Texas county judge (an ex-Truan aide) testified for a bill Truan opposed, Truan delivered the tasteless remark of the year to accuse his onetime ally of being seduced by slick city lawyers: “If you were a woman, you would be pregnant many, many times.”
There is more, so much more—for example, the time Truan made a procedural objection to a Senate bill raising credit card interest rates. Tax bills must originate in the House, he said. Right, but what do interest rates have to do with taxes? They are a tax on consumers, said Truan. Get it? The Senate didn’t. But there is no use in adding the dossier. We have decided to give Truan an exemption from the Ten Worst list this session. Why? The one exception to Truan’s incompetence was his filibuster against a bad bill encouraging development of environmentally sensitive South Padre Island. He stirred up enough public outrage that the bill died in the House after passing the Senate. Truan’s reward is immunity. Officially, the list has only nine Worst legislators; wait until next year.
Best Addition to the Legislative Lexicon
“The Bullock Train”—a reference to Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock’s insistence on speed in the legislative process, even if it meant bending the normal rules of procedure, which it usually did.
Best Bill Analysis
Ray Hutchison, Dallas attorney. Listening to a committee consider a bill punishing banks for not lending money in Texas, Hutchison said, “As I understand this bill, it would require banks to lend me money. Why wasn’t there a bill ten years ago to prohibit banks from lending me money?”
Best Instant Joke
Heard on the House floor after the University of Texas budget was slashed by more than $100 million, while UT chancellor Hans Mark watched from the gallery:
Q: What’s the difference between Hans Mark and Elvis Presley?
A: There are rumors that Elvis is still alive.
A Touch of Class
Everyone around the Capitol agreed—this year’s freshman class was different. Elected at the same time as Ann Richards, they shared (and in practice exceeded) her concern about ethics and reforms, regardless of their party affiliation. Deskmates SUE SCHECHTER and DIANNE DELISI represented the best virtues of the ethics-conscious newcomers. Both Schechter (Democrat, Houston, 38) and Delisi (Republican, Temple, 48) expressed a deep disillusionment with a process that too frequently forced them to vote on last-minute compromises that members had no time to study. In addition to Ten Best member MIKE MARTIN, other members of the freshman class who made good impressions were STEVER OGDEN (Republican, Bryan, 41) and PAUL SADLER (Democrat, Henderson, 36) in the House, and DAVID SIBLEY (Republican, Waco, 43), JIM TURNER (Democrat, Crockett, 45), and MIKE MONCRIEF (Democrat, Fort Worth, 48) in the Senate.
Best Nickname
BETTY DENTON, Democrat, Waco, 46. She is known as Lady Napalm because of her incendiary speeches on nonincendiary subjects, such as nursing-home eligibility and financing volunteer fire departments.
Worst Hypocrite
Senator BOB GLASGOW, Democrat, Stephenville, 49. During final negotiations on the ethics bill, he criticized cities that hired lobbyists. On the same weekend, he explained why the City of Irving shouldn’t complain about his hidden amendment allowing the sale of liquor in Texas Stadium: “I guess the Cowboys had a better lobbyist than the city.”
Oscars
Best Supporting Actress: Governor ANN RICHARDS. The trouble is that she was supposed to play the leading role in issues like improving the quality of education.
Best Director: Lieutenant Governor BOB BULLOCK. He showed in the special session that he could command the Senate through respect as well as fear.
Best Script: Comptroller JOHN SHARP. Unfortunately, the actors wouldn’t follow their budget-cutting lines.
Best Short Subject: Speaker Gib Lewis’ career achievements.
Dumbest Amendment
AL EDWARDS, Democrat, Houston, 54. He attempted to prohibit cosmetologists from extending customers’ fingernails more than one-quarter inch (because they might be used as weapons) but was rebuffed.
Republic Insurance Company, Dallas. As the Legislature was considering insurance reform, Republic notified Representative RICK CRAWFORD (Republican, Amarillo, 40), that his personal-liability policy would not be renewed because “politician is an excluded occupation.”
Runner-up: the Texas Senate. It approved a bill allowing Texans to carry concealed handguns on the same day that the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Brady Bill calling for a seven-day waiting period for handgun purchases.
Best Mixed Metaphor
MARK STILES, Democrat, Beaumont, 42. “Why don’t we at least keep the ship in the lake, rolling down the hill.”
Runner-up: MARK STILES. “We can’t go down that yellow brick road and find that there’s no answer at the end of the rainbow.”
My Library
