The Best and Worst Legislators 1993
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Starched-looking even in midnight meetings, Montford nonetheless has a low-key likability that makes him accessible to his colleagues. In an institution bursting with careening egos, the fact that he is Bob Bullock’s anointed senator inspires no jealousy or rancor. At the end of the session, Bullock was consulting Montford so routinely on down-to-the-wire issues that he cleared a work area in his office for Montford. That clinched what the Senate had already accepted: John Montford is, for all practical purposes, the deputy lieutenant governor.
David Sibley
No Gridlock
Republican, Waco, 45. The unofficial minority leader of the Senate. He was as important for what he did not do as for what he did. For the first time ever, Republicans had enough votes to block gubernatorial appointments and to keep any bill from coming to the floor for debate. David Sibley had it in his power to make the session a nightmare for Ann Richards and Bob Bullock and to create Washington-style gridlock in Austin. He was under constant pressure from Republicans outside the Legislature to do just that. But partisanship for partisanship’s sake is not Sibley’s style. Republicans would only look foolish, he argued, to oppose the Democrats’ no-new-taxes budget just because it was the Democrats’. He saw no reason to tie up a Senate in which Republicans had key committee chairmanships and were sponsoring important bills.
Sibley himself took the lead in health care. Saying “We don’t need more family-practice physicians in North Dallas, we need them in rural areas,” he passed a bill to forgive medical school loans of doctors who agreed to serve their residencies in areas with a shortage of physicians. Another Sibley bill set up pilot programs using young doctors to improve medical care for indigent Texans. He put $10 million in the state budget to fund his proposals. The former Waco mayor was the best member of the committee that screened the governor’s nominees to boards and commissions. He asked tough questions based on policy, not politics, and approached controversial appointees with an open mind. He demonstrated his fairness by grilling Texas Water Commission chairman John Hall, whose intervention in the Edwards Aquifer dispute had angered many Republicans, and when Hall’s answers satisfied him, he helped pave the way for Hall’s confirmation. “If you told me one year ago I would be rising to encourage people to vote for John Hall, I would not have believed it,” Sibley told the Senate. But when Richards tried to appoint Corpus Christi legislator Eddie Cavazos, a pro-labor Democrat, to a slot on the Texas Employment commission that is reserved for advocates of employers, Sibley called foul and forced her to put Cavazos in the slot reserved for the general public instead.
Sibley did fire one shot across the Democrats’ bow. When they tried to ram through what he considered to be a partisan judicial redistricting plan under the guise of being fair to minorities, Sibley orchestrated a GOP boycott. With the Republicans absent, there was no quorum, and work stopped. But Sibley brought his troops back, relying on Bullock’s word that there would be no trick plays. Sibley didn’t have to flex his political muscle again. He had made his point: Nonpartisanship has to work both ways.
John Whitmire, Allen Hightower, Allen Place
Go Directly to Jail
Together they passed the bill that may finally ease Texas’ crime problem: a lock-‘em-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach to criminal justice that will make the streets safer. The highlights: (1) Violent offenders will stay in prison twice as long as they currently do; to be eligible for parole, they must serve 50 percent of their sentences instead of the current 25 percent. (2) To make room for the bad guys, nonviolent criminals will serve shorter sentences in a new system of state jails, which are cheaper to build and operate. (3) A $1 billion bond issue will help pay for 32,000 new prison beds.
Whitmire (Democrat, Houston, 43), whose only previous contribution to the Senate was a series of one-liners, was the class clown who made straight A’s when he finally decided to do his homework. After being confronted by an armed gunman in his own garage, Whitmire got serious about an overhaul of the entire penal code. His smartest move: fending off opposition in advance by lining up district attorneys and prosecutors from around the state to back his bill.
Hightower (Democrat, Huntsville, 47), the longtime chairman of the Corrections Committee, is they type of member who makes the House work—conservative by instinct, moderate by necessity. His sincerity and country-boy humor have earned him enormous credibility with his colleagues. When minority legislators objected that it was wrong to debate prison bonds while school finance was still unsolved, Hightower responded in typical fashion: “I won’t let the things I can’t do today keep me from doing the things I can.”
Place (Democrat, Gatesville, 39), the rookie chairman of the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, shepherded the penal code revision through the House so adroitly that not one member questioned the substance of the reforms. All of the excitement was over emotional issues like sodomy. Place handled the tasteless debate with aplomb, but his family, who was watching from the gallery, was appalled. “I’d rather be picking cotton than doing what Allen’s doing,” his father told his wife. She replied: “He’d have made more money and met a better class of people.”
Steve Wolens
Going Nuclear
Democrat, Dallas, 43. A loose cannon who shoots straight and true at the mark of good public policy. Fiercely independent, Wolens will inject himself into any issue and take on any adversary. Mesmerizing in debate, indefatigable in preparation, incisive in analysis, he is the House’s most dreaded foe and most welcome ally. When he agreed to sponsor an oft-defeated bill that made it easier to suspend the license of a drunk driver, a lobbyist for the bill said, “I feel like a Third World country that’s just gone nuclear.” Kaboom! Wolens passed the bill.
After backing David Cain’s unsuccessful bid for speaker, Wolens found himself on the outside when major committee chairmanships were handed out. Rather than accept the lesser posts that Pete Laney offered, he became a roving committee of one on any issue that intrigued him—new House rules, telephone deregulation, expansion of DFW airport, insurance regulation, ethics obligations of fast-food chains toward their franchise holders. He researched the telephone issue until, in the words of one anti-deregulation lobbyist, “he knew more about the companies than their own chairmen.” When Wolens came down against deregulation, it was dead; his intellectual purity—he cares about the principle, not the politics—gives him near-absolute credibility on complex issues. On consecutive days in late April he went head-to-head in floor debate with Calendars Committee chairman Mark Stiles, whose control of the daily House agenda gave him leverage over the entire membership. Score: Wolens 2, Stiles 0.
The son of a clothing merchant who is married to the daughter of the Saks Fifth Avenue chairman, Wolens likes to wander around the House floor examining his colleagues’ clothing whenever he is not debating or reading files. In his seventh term, he finally became one of the gang, not because he changed but because the House did: In a session when entertainment came from debate, not partying or golf, no one served up more goodies than Wolens. When opponents of his ethics proposal to make county commissioners file financial disclosure statements argued that there are no problems going on now, Wolens fired back, “Of course there aren’t any problems going on now. How would you know? How do you know if your commissioner is running up to New York with the bond lawyer for Salomon Brothers?” No member benefited more from Pete Laney’s reforms and work ethic.
The Worst Legislators
Steve Carriker
Trust Buster
Democrat, Roby 42. When Stever Carriker says “Just trust me” during a floor debate, the words jolt colleagues like a cattle prod. Little clusters of chatting senators fly apart as the lawmakers scatter to their desks, determined to inspect whatever it is that he is trying to do. They are even more wary when he describes a proposed change as a “technical correction.” Technical, perhaps. Correct? Not likely.
Carriker is the least trusted member of the Senate. In an institution in which trust is as essential as a heartbeat, his reputation is DOA. He still hasn’t lived down his snookering of Senate heavyweight John Montfor during a budget-writing special session in 1991. Taking aim at Rebublican agriculture commissioner Rick Perry, Carriker told Montford that he had a non controversial last-minute amendment to correct some problems with a program at the agriculture department. In fact, Perry’s office considered the amendment very controversial because it caused problems rather than solved them.
Carriker was up to the same sneaky tricks for partisan purposes this session. When Democrats and Republicans wrangled over when to draw lots to determine which senators would face reelection in 1994 and which would wait until 1996, Lieutenant Governor Bullock worked out a solution that was acceptable to Rebublicans. Carriker, while acting as chairman of the Committee of the Whole on Redistricting, tried an end run by requesting an attorney general’s opinion, which might supersede Bullock’s plan. Bullock found out, of course, and forced Carriker to withdraw his request.
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