The Best and the Worst Legislators 1995
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He passed a major tort reform bill limiting forum-shopping by lawyers trying to get their cases before friendly judges (getting the language right, Montford said, was “like trying to shake hands with an octopus”) and a death penalty reform that speeds up the appeals process but also provides attorneys for indigent death row inmates. He was one of the few senators who worked as hard on his colleagues’ bills as he did on his own. Two such bills that were on the fast track—one to allow landowners to sue the state over regulations that diminished the value of their property, the other to let professional sports teams build new stadiums with state tax dollars—screeched to a halt when Montford amended them to limit their effects on the state treasury. When minorities and Republicans reached an impasse over an affirmative-action provision, he led an effort to resolve the problem, going through six drafts before finding language acceptable to both sides.
Like a driven piano student who has to be shooed outside for fresh air, Montford loves nothing more than playing the legislative process. He is widely thought to be considering a race for lieutenant governor if Bob Bullock retires in 1998, and there was a little grumbling in the Senate this session that his statewide aspirations had made him more cautious than usual. He seemed much like the Montford of old, though, on an evening in late May when he leaned against the brass rail by his desk and said to an onlooker, “There’s no place else I’d rather be.” Except, perhaps, in that big chair on the podium, just a few feet away—but oh, so far.
A Perfect Team
Bill Ratliff and Paul Sadler
Bill Ratliff—Republican, Mount Pleasant, 58. Paul Sadler—Democrat, Henderson, 40. Hercules slew the Hydra, cleaned the Augean stables, and brought back Cerberus from the underworld. Big deal. Bill Ratliff and Paul Sadler rewrote Texas education laws from top to bottom, slew the stand-pate special interest groups, cleaned stultifying state regulations from the books, and—maybe, just maybe—found a way to bring public schools back from the dead.
The chairmen of the Senate and House education committees were a perfect team: Ratliff the engineer, Sadler the lawyer, both of them small-town East Texans with calm, logical demeanors and old-fashioned notions of public service who somehow rose to prominence in the Legislature without losing their idealism. Neither was beholden to the jealous factions—teachers, administrators, superintendents, and school boards—that stubbornly resist education reform. Both embraced Governor Bush’s desire to return power to the local level and make schools more accountable to parents. Though they came from different political parties, they cared more about policy than partisanship.
Before the session, Ratliff held hearings on reform proposals, letting all the groups have their say. Then he went back to Mount Pleasant and wrote a 1,100-page draft on his home computer. The document was not the usual hodgepodge of recommendations designed to appease particular interests (“He kinda ignored us all equally,” said one education lobbyist); rather, it represented his own philosophical approach to deregulation. He kept a few state requirements that he thought were important, such as the no-pass, no-play rule and the 22-to-1 student-teacher ratio, but provided for school vouchers and local choice of textbooks.
When Senate and House negotiators met to work out the final version of the bill, Ratliff set a new standard for putting educational considerations above personal interest when he opposed giving special education students the same diploma other students receive. Noting that his own grandson is a special education student, Ratliff said, “My grandson is a delightful kid, but the education system of Texas would be judged badly if in twelve years he is handed the same diploma as any other person. As much as it tears my heart because of who it is, that’s still the case.” Later he fashioned the crucial compromise that dropped vouchers from the final bill but kept a modified version of the 22-to-1 ratio for low-performing schools.
Sadler’s role in education reform went far beyond sponsoring the bill. Two years ago he prepared the way for change by helping pass a bill that repealed most of the state’s education laws. This session he fought not only for reforms but also for a teacher pay raise. When house budget writers initially made no provision for a pay hike, Sadler told the House, “I ask the question, When will we stand up and do what is right for education in this state…. For what group of children will we answer that question? For mine? For yours? For our grandchildren?” In the end, he won a $271 million raise for the state’s lowest-paid teachers.
He got off to a later start than Ratliff and incurred more resistance from his colleagues. Prodded by Speaker Laney to finish his committee’s deliberations and get a bill to the House floor, Sadler said that the issue was too important to rush. He conducted marathon meetings that ran well past midnight three days a week, met frequently with Bush, and ultimately produced a bill that went further toward embracing the governor’s view of deregulated home rule school districts than Ratliff’s did. Minority members protested vigorously that Sadler’s power-to-the-parents approach didn’t address problems in urban districts, where many families are fatherless. But Sadler—and Ratliff—had managed to convince the normally cautious Legislature that the uncertainty of change was preferable to the mediocrity of the status quo.
Respecting the Difference
Sylvester Turner
Democrat, Houston, 40. He was the voice of the loyal opposition, and he found a lot to oppose. Three of the four big issues in Governor Bush’s program—juvenile crime, welfare reform, and education reform—seemed to be aimed directly at minorities. Day after day, week after week, Turner stood before the House and waged his lonely fight, often in anguish but rarely in anger. He knew that he couldn’t change the outcome; the best he could hope for was to make people understand. “Until you have walked in the shoes of those who you’re trying to regulate,” he said during the welfare debate, “it makes it very difficult to try to tell other people how to do things better.”
Typically the House is not a place where opposition is welcome. Its culture is “go along to get along”; when members linger too long at the microphone, voices shout out “Vote! Vote!” to hurry the proceedings along. Yet whenever Turner took the floor, the buzz in the chamber died out and was replaced by the silence that signals respect. He put on a good show, punctuating his speech with sharp movements of his hands and index fingers, like a conductor wielding a baton to mark the beat of his own words. Here’s Turner on juvenile justice: “If the people in the system had the hearts of mothers and fathers, I would not be standing here.” On cutting welfare benefits: “Penalize the mother, penalize the irresponsible father, but do not penalize the children of the state of Texas.” On local control of education: “[It] provides enough boats to take some of the kids off the burning ship, but it leaves most of the kids on that ship that’s on fire.” And he reminded his listeners that he was one of them too, a participant in the deliberative process: “I know we differ, I respect the difference, but let me come here with my own experiences, my own background.”
Turner did manage to amend several of the bills he fought and passed an open-records bill, but opposition was his forte. His most memorable moment came during the House debate on education reform, when he predicted that unchecked local control could turn back the clock to the segregated schools of the fifties. “A hopeless generation is a dangerous one,” he warned. “And when their leaders lose hope, they lose hope, and when their leaders become frustrated, they become frustrated.” As he spoke, black and Hispanic members gathered around him in a show of unity. For two more days the debate over education continued, finally ending after midnight on a Sunday morning. A few hours later, Turner and two colleagues caught the early plane to Houston. “Will I see you in church, Syl?” asked one as they deplaned. “No,” said a weary Turner. “I’m going straight to Bedside Baptist.” He’d earned it.
The Worst
Life is Unfair
Gonzalo Barrientos
Democrat, Austin, 53. He didn’t want to be in the Senate this session, and he acted like it. He had bided his time for years, waiting to replace Jake Pickle in Congress, only to see destiny snatched from his grasp when Lloyd Doggett resigned from the Texas Supreme Court to seek the seat and got the backing Barrientos had been counting on. So he spent the session sulking and pouting, mulling on the unfairness of life and making the Senate pay for his disappointment. Among his grievances:
The education reform bill. When Senator Ratliff detailed how far he had gone to inform colleagues about his bill, Barrientos contradicted him. “I beg to differ with you just a little bit. I do not think that all of the members are sufficiently enlightened about the bill to perhaps feel comfortable voting on it,” he complained. Maybe he was unaware that there had been two special briefings for senators, since he didn’t attend them. Then he proceeded to offer a succession of doomed amendments. When Lieutenant Governor Bullock hinted that he gesture was pointless—all the amendments were being defeated by the same large margin—Barrientos again groused. “If the parliamentary process will allow me to close,” he sniped.
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