Dwayne Bohac
R Houston
HE HAD ONE OF THE session’s biggest assignments: Pass a proposal capping increases of property tax appraisals at 5 percent per year. A priority item in Governor Perry’s legislative program, it required a constitutional amendment, so Bohac needed a supermajority of at least 100 of his 150 colleagues, a figure he couldn’t reach without some Democratic support. This was a huge opportunity for an ambitious member in just his second term.
But Bohac took time out to play a penny-ante game, proposing a bill to name U.S. 290 in Harris County in memory of Ronald Reagan. Democrats lined up to protest the intersection of highways and politics. “Do we have any freeways in Harris County named after any president from Texas?” asked one. Amendments were offered to name the highway after Dwight D. Eisenhower, LBJ, Lady Bird, Stephen F. Austin, or George H. W. Bush. Someone wondered why Bohac didn’t honor the current president Bush. “[He] is still with us,” Bohac said, “so history is to some degree still out on his success as a president.” Uh-oh. No White House Christmas card for you, buddy.
Such pandering bills are common among back-of-the-pack legislators. The problem is that Bohac wants to be front of the pack but doesn’t understand that it takes gravitas. Instead of infuriating Democrats and embarrassing Republicans—fourteen of whom declined to participate in the amendments battle by registering as “present, not voting”—he should have been rounding up votes for the bill of his life, which would soon be on the House floor. He desperately needed the support of the very members he was alienating. And he didn’t get it, in more ways than one: Three weeks later, appraisal caps went down in a resounding defeat.
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