After the members of the House took the oath of office this afternoon, they heard from two of the state’s leaders. One was Joe Straus, who had just won a third term as speaker, this time by acclamation. The other was Rick Perry, who is presumed to be running for president in 2016.

If you didn’t know them, you would have thought Straus was the one running for higher office, not Perry. The governor spent a little bit of time reminiscing about the days when he was in the House and recycling issues he has championed in the past: a stricter constitutional limit on spending that did not get much traction when he first pushed it; requiring drug testing for people seeking welfare and unemployment benefits (which would ultimately punish the children of the state’s most vulnerable citizens, if a parent is denied benefits); a bill to prevent abortions in the first twenty weeks based on the unproven argument that a fetus can experience pain at that stage of development; and a vague proposal for “tax relief” in a state whose residents already enjoy the lowest tax burden in the country. I had the sense that he was mailing his remarks in.

Straus challenged members to address the biggest issues facing the state, starting with profound demographic change. “Our rapid growth requires a steadfast commitment to the core responsibilities of government,” he said, “such as a quality education, a reliable water supply, a healthy transportation system, and an honest state budget.” He received a loud ovation for his attack on standardized testing: “Teachers and parents worry that we have sacrificed classroom inspiration for rote memorization. The goal of every teacher is to develop in students a lifelong love of learning, and we need to get back to that goal in the classroom. To parents and educators concerned about excessive testing — the Texas House has heard you.”

This stance will, in due course, bring Straus into conflict with Perry, who, along with various business groups, has been a strong advocate of the state’s accountability system based on standardized tests. If last session is any guide, Perry will ensure that his agenda receives action by labeling his proposals as “emergencies,” thereby bumping them up to the top of a special calendar. Yet one issue that Perry did not raise in his remarks to the House was school choice, the pet issue that has been embraced by Senator Dan Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst. Whether the omission was deliberate or by chance remains to be seen, but it was probably wise of Perry to avoid it. The House has a long history of being a burial ground for school vouchers, with members as diverse as Charlie Geren and David Simpson among the opposition.

As I watched Straus speak, I felt as if he was going from presiding over the chamber to leading it. His emergence as a leader raises the stakes for the session. For the first time in awhile, one of the state’s leaders has stepped forward to grab the state’s biggest issues by the throat.

This first day definitely hinted at conflicts to come over the next 139. The session is setting up as a battle between those who want to address the state’s biggest issues and those who want to rachet down spending even after the comptroller’s revenue estimate validated predictions that the state would have a large surplus. In other words: Straus v. Perry.

Tagged: 2013, Joe Straus, rick perry

As Yogi Berra is reputed to have said, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Tea party members made the rounds at the Capitol today, as they did on the day before the 2011 session started, in the hope of persuading lawmakers to oppose the reelection of Joe Straus as speaker.

Why do they oppose Straus with such intensity? It’s a mystery to me. He is a public servant of high integrity. He wants to tackle the biggest issues on the state’s agenda, while other politicians showboat about people on welfare and unemployment. The rap against Straus is that he isn’t a “true” conservative, but that argument falls apart when measured against the record of the House in the 82nd Legislature, which produced legislation near and dear to the far right.

The fact is, Straus is the rare office holder in his party who is in touch with the times and understands that the state and the country are changing, and that the state Republican party’s ideology needs to evolve beyond fealty to the social issues to embrace meaningful reforms that are essential to the state’s future. Rick Perry has driven state politics toward the extreme right for ten years, and it has cost this state dearly. Where are the highways that should have been built? Where are the water projects the state needs to avoid a drought-plagued future? Ten years in which little was done to improve the public services of this state.

The stage has been set for some early battles; some folks are calling for the business tax to be repealed. This makes little sense because the tax was created to fill the hole in the budget that existed following a one-third reduction of property taxes. The failure of the business tax to perform up to expectations has created a permanent structural deficit in the budget amounting to around $4.5 billion every biennium. It is bad enough to ignore it; it’s even worse to relieve businesses of the responsibility of paying an existing tax that they supported.

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The session that begins tomorrow will mark the 25th in which I will be a participant–one, eons ago, as a reporter for the Daily Texan, one as a House staffer, three as a Senate committee clerk,  and the rest as a staff writer for TEXAS MONTHLY. No theater does a better job of putting human strengths and weaknesses on public display. Ever since, my standing assignment has been to help pick the Ten Best and the Ten Worst legislators, an annual feature of our legislative coverage, session after session.

In 1975, just three months after I joined the staff of TEXAS MONTHLY, I worked on the story for the first time. In those years Texas was a one-party state, overwhelmingly Democratic. For me, having spent much of my career as a staffer in tiny offices, encountering the Legislature in action was love at first sight. The average person who has little regard for politics has no idea of the skills required to succeed. The Best and Worst legislators story isn’t about the foibles of  Republicans and Democrats, or liberals and conservatives; it’s fundamentally about the influence of personality on politics. Politics is about figuring out who does his or her homework, who plays well with others, and who you can trust and who you can’t.

This session I’m pleased to say that we have beefed up our political coverage, which has long been a hallmark of the magazine. Brian D. Sweany will oversee our four-person staff. Brian will head up all of our political coverage in the magazine and online, and he will cover the House with me (you can follow him on that thing called Twitter @brian_sweany). Erica Grieder is new to our staff but has already made a great impact. She is a former Southwest bureau chief for the Economist, and she will cover the Senate (follow her @EricaGrieder). In addition, Sonia Smith, whom some of you know from her work on the TM Daily Post, will also be covering the Senate, in addition to other reporting and editing duties related to the session (find her @sonia_smith). (For the record, you can follow me @paulburka, and I promise to try to tweet more this year.) I will miss my colleagues whom I worked with last session, Patricia Kilday Hart (now with the Houston Chronicle) and Nate Blakeslee, who covered the Senate last session, but I’m enthusiastic about expanding our coverage with this new team–and continuing to have you as a reader on Burkablog for the 83rd legislative session.

Tagged: 2013