The Best and the Worst Legislators
For 140 days the seventy-seventh legislature searched for its personality without finding it. This was a budget-trimming session in which money was tight. No, it was a free-spending session in which state expenditures increased by $14 billion.
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Sorry about that, but we just can't leave you off. You had a great session in the toughest job there is—leader of the opposition—and your performance was masterful. You were always philosophical and never personal, never questioning the motives of others nor providing cause for others to question yours. You were the most articulate spokesperson for conservative principles (fiscal restraint, individual responsibility) that the House has seen since Ray Hutchison in the mid-seventies. By advocating things that government ought to do—including protect the rights of mobile home owners, come to the rescue of financially troubled nursing homes, and require insurers to cover birth control prescriptions for women, as they do Viagra for men—you paved the way for the time, not far distant, when Republicans will take up the burden of running the House. Best of all, you didn't try to kill the important bill that expanded Medicaid services, even though you warned that it could sink the state budget in future years, but instead negotiated a compromise to contain costs and supported it in floor debate. That's leadership.
There will be folks on the left who won't like seeing you on the Best list either. They haven't forgotten—who could?—the Memorial Day Massacre, four years ago, when the Democrats stalled an abortion bill late in the session and you retaliated by killing an entire calendar of bills. "The worst of the worst" we called you that year. But we put that memory to rest when, at 2:18 a.m. on the last night for passing House-originated legislation, you moved to resurrect a Democratic colleague's bill that Republicans had killed earlier. Congratulations on completing rehab!
Judith Zaffirini
In the midst of heated negotiations with house members over the state budget, Senate Finance chairman Rodney Ellis received an unexpected package from his colleague, Judith Zaffirini. Though she sent no note, the gift conveyed an unmistakable message to Ellis to stand his ground on the Senate's priorities. The box's contents? A pair of brass balls.
Never, never underestimate Zaffirini, or Lady Z, as she is called by her colleagues with . . . affection? No, it's more of a grudging respect. After all, this is a woman who, when asked to reach an agreement with two colleagues on a South Texas redistricting plan, rose to announce the place and time—in her office, at five in the morning. No problem for Zaffirini, who gets there each morning at four.
Nor does anyone question whether she knows her stuff. When it came time to debate a complete overhaul of Medicaid, Zaffirini took about five minutes of the Senate's time to explain it and pass it. No one had any inclination to get in the way. Having spent her fourteen years in the Senate mastering Medicaid—the minutiae of court orders, federal regulations, and state budgeting—Zaffirini had won the total confidence of her colleagues.
She deserves great credit for generously increasing state spending on poor children's health care, no easy feat in a tight-money session. She convinced the two Republicans on the Senate's negotiating team that she had wrung the most care out of the available dollars and wore down House leaders with her inimitable relentlessness. Crisp and businesslike, she displays a grating sense of self-importance that should limit her ability to succeed, except that her colleagues know that no one works harder or shoots straighter. In mid-May it was announced that she had cast her 25,000th consecutive vote in the Senate—an unmatched feat, mainly because no one else cares about missing a vote now and then. But Lady Z cares about everything, which is why her colleagues gave her a standing ovation.
Honorable Mention
Speaker Pete Laney (Democrat, Hale Center) tops the list. His coalition of mainstream Republicans, rural Democrats, and minorities bent a bit under the pressure of partisan and ideological differences, but it still held together, perhaps for the last time. His five terms as Speaker have been remarkable for their fairness and their independence of the lobby, notwithstanding the complaints of a handful of disaffected Republicans who have no idea how benign Laney is compared to the Speakers of old.
Fred Bosse (Democrat, Houston) is the best member who has never made the Best list. Quiet and unassuming, he handles big projects such as the oversight of state agencies in the Sunset process without a misstep.
Kim Brimer (Republican, Fort Worth) passed a major economic-development bill offering school property-tax breaks as an incentive for companies to move to Texas. He even won over the education community, which usually looks askance at tax breaks.
Judy Hawley (Democrat, Portland) served as the chair of the rural caucus and quietly orchestrated the passage of a package of bills to help rural Texas.
Senator Steve Ogden (Republican, College Station) saw the big picture on hate crimes and was the first Senate Republican to support the bill. He also sees the little picture, as one of the few senators who pay attention to the details of legislation.
Senator Royce West (Democrat, Dallas) has a keen, practical understanding of criminal-justice issues. A former prosecutor, he has credibility with both sides on issues like his bill prohibiting racial profiling.
SPECIAL AWARD
Tomb of the Unknown
One of the most startling developments of the session was the failure of three of the Legislature's all-time best members to perform up to their usual standard. But sometimes even the most valiant fighters cannot achieve their objectives. Sometimes even veteran warriors cannot escape hostile fire. The Tomb of the Unknown commemorates the anonymous legislative hero who, after many years of combat, fell from the heights. It could be Democrat Rob Junell of San Angelo, the longtime chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, who for once was unable to dominate the budget-writing process and had to yield to the Senate. It could be Democrat Steve Wolens of Dallas, the best debater in the House, who tried to defend the indefensible (utility company profits) and was outdebated by Democrat Sylvester Turner of Houston. It could be Republican senator David Sibley (above) of Waco, who, after losing the race for lieutenant governor, spent the first half of the session nursing his wounds, and then, when he returned to action, did so via the low road of partisan politics instead of the high road of public policy. We honor them for past deeds and hope for better things ahead.
THE WORST
John Carona
"You arrogant son of a bitch!" the session's most memorable temper tantrum belonged to diminutive John Carona, who marched across the Senate floor in high dudgeon to confront Royce West, a fellow Dallas senator and a former UT-Arlington football player who looks to be about twice Carona's size. Carona wagged a finger at West, West wagged back, and they exchanged warnings: "Don't poke me!" "Back off! Back off!" A quick-thinking colleague hustled Carona off the floor so tempers could cool, but moments later Carona was back in West's face again, fuming like a two-year-old who had escaped from time-out. Fearing, perhaps, for Carona's life, Lieutenant Governor Ratliff intervened from the podium: "Senator Carona, could you please return to the other side of the aisle?" Just what caused the outburst of passion and anger? A dispute over an emotional public policy issue, like the death penalty or hate crimes? No, Carona was shaking with rage because he wanted to delay a proposed consumer-protection bill for a day so he could check with "industry representatives," and West had offered only a thirty-minute respite.
Poor Carona: A once-promising senator has turned into a tool of the "industry representatives." It's not that he doesn't work hard, it's whom he works hard for: loan sharks and apartment-management firms (he used to own one). A consumer group called a package of Carona bills "the unlucky seven" and charged that they would cost Texans hundreds of millions of dollars. Carona proposed fees that amounted to interest rates ranging as high as 780 percent on payday loans; he fought, unsuccessfully, against state regulation of sale-leaseback transactions (in which the borrower typically pays $33 in fees per $100 borrowed on personal property, such as his own TV set); he tried to increase the fee for automobile title documents from $50 to $75 but was thwarted by a Governor Perry veto; and he attempted to allow landlords and property-management companies to sell renter's insurance without state supervision of rates (the House killed the bill). If he had carried any more dirty water for lobbyists, he would have needed a permit from the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission.
Gary Elkins
In the legislative pond, Gary Elkins is a minnow. he feeds in the shallows, far from the dangerous waters of floor debate and important bills. He's such a small fish that he escaped the Worst list in 1999 with a onetime catch-and-release exemption—even though no less than the Wall Street Journal had documented his efforts to help the small-loan industry, in which he makes his living ("Legislator's Slim Agenda Mirrors His Private Interests"). So what does Elkins do this session? He swallows the hook again. Exemption expired.
Elkins' livelihood is the controversial sale-leaseback business, in which customers, usually low-income, get cash for a household item, which they retain, and pay stiff regular fees until they can repurchase it. The industry claims that these transactions are leases, not loans, and that the fees are not interest payments, which would be subject to regulation. The attorney general's office has sued Elkins' company (unsuccessfully), and the Legislature, after several previous attempts, finally gave state regulators authority over the industry this year—but not without some unseemly shenanigans by Elkins. After the chairman of the House Business and Industry Committee, on which Elkins sits, introduced a bill declaring that sale-leaseback transactions are not loans, a lawyer for Elkins' company testified in favor of the bill—but neither he nor Elkins disclosed the connection. Later, Elkins' name surfaced again involving a bill backed by the payday-loan industry, a competitor of Elkins' sale-leaseback industry. A Nevada company with links to Elkins (but no other apparent Texas concerns) had hired a lobbyist to fight the payday-loan bill. Referring to Elkins, an ethics advocate for Common Cause told the Austin American-Statesman, "If I were a member, any bill [he] had would be suspect to me."
Elkins' involvement in the issue is not illegal but does create the appearance of self-dealing. It gets in the papers and it lowers public confidence in the Legislature. Perhaps he could be forgiven if he made any noticeable contribution to the public weal, but no. He filed ten bills this session and passed one, making it legal to stop, stand, or park your vehicle in your own driveway in a manner that blocks a sidewalk. If only he had quit while he was ahead.
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