The Best and the Worst Legislators
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Roger Smith Booby Prize
To Randy Pennington (Republican, Houston). Named for the chief executive officer of General Motors, the award is given to the legislator who displays the most displeasure with H. Ross Perot’s involvement in state government. After Perot had persuaded Bill Clements to soften his stance against new taxes, Pennington stormed into the governor’s office, insisted that Clements reconsider, and said, “I’m tired of Ross Perot running Texas. GM gave him eight hundred million dollars to leave the company. Let’s give him a billion to leave Texas.”
The Bermuda Triangle
Three of the Legislature’s brightest members are missing from the Ten Best list this year. They plotted a course to solve the state’s fiscal crisis but discovered, too late, that their heading took them into a legislative Bermuda Triangle, from which there was no hope of accomplishment or escape.
Mike Toomey (Republican, Houston), the brilliant budget cutter of 1985, helped devise Bill Clements’ strategy to hold the line against new taxes without reducing services. The Toomey plan depended upon finding ingenious ways to raise money without raising taxes. Unfortunately, the things he came up with (such as raiding educational trust funds) butchered cows more sacred than any bovine in India. The Legislature didn’t give them serious consideration, and neither did Toomey. His reputation as a budget cutter was tarnished when he failed to propose a single spending reduction during House debate on the appropriations bill. Instead, he tried to pass the buck with a motion to send the bill back to committee. It was soundly defeated. For all his mastery of numbers, Toomey still hasn’t figured out how to change one of the basic assumptions of legislators—that programs with large, vocal constituencies are off-limits to the knife.
Rick Williamson (Democrat, Weatherford) was the catalyst for the formation of the Pit Bulls, a group of eight sophomores on the House Appropriations Committee who challenged Chairman Jim Rudd’s business-as-usual approach to the budget. “Pit Bulls” referred both to their location on the lower tier of seats in the committee room and to their tenacious hounding of witnesses from state agencies and colleges. Perhaps the hardest-working member of the Legislature, Williamson envisioned himself as another Toomey, but while he had Toomey’s drive to ferret out waste, he lacked grace and sometimes facts. He quickly alienated the Capitol establishment with his hostile attitude toward the big boys (UT, A&M, the Highway Department); they call him Nitro. Williamson was the dominant figure of the session while the budget remained in committee, but when the Pit Bulls brought their ideas about financial accountability to the floor, they found that they had no following. Williamson’s reputation had preceded him: he was brainy but erratic. Soon the Pit Bulls were renamed the Pit Puppies.
When the Pit Bulls faltered, they turned to Stan Schlueter (Democrat, Killeen), the House expert on taxes and a Machiavelli in boots. In hush-hush meetings in Schlueter’s office, they developed a compromise budget and tax plan that offered a realistic solution to the crisis. It called for a modest sales tax increase (and provided Bill Clements with a face-saving way to accept it), while funding state agencies adequately but not generously. Some of Schlueter’s own pet legislation found its way into the package, including a ban on income taxes. Schlueter was the only person in the Capitol who exercised any leadership on the only issue that really mattered, but he couldn’t sell Stan’s Plan, as it became known, to the Clements-Hobby-Lewis triumvirate. As the case always seems to be with Schlueter, his work will come to fruition after the regular session; he remains the best member of the Legislature never to make the Ten Best list.
Render Unto Pharaoh That Which Is Caesar’s Award
Speaking in favor of the abortion restriction bill, L.B. Kubiak (Democrat, Rockdale) perorated: “You know, in Roman days the gladiators used to get their men down, their opposition down, and they’d look up to Pharaoh, and they’d look for a signal—give ‘em life or give ‘em death.”
Best Nickame
Because of her insistence that lobbyists speak to her staff and not to her, Democrat Judith Zaffirini got dubbed the Junior Senator from Laredo. Her chief aide, naturally, was the Senior Senator from Laredo.
Please Don’t Tell Us About Your Private Life Award
When criticized for sponsoring a bill to create a new underground water district in order to keep a hazardous waste dump out of his county, Cliff Johnson (Democrat, Palestine) replied: “If they had pictures of me doing a homosexual act with a gorilla in a zoo, I’d still carry this bill.”
Furniture
The term “furniture” first came into use around the Legislature to describe members who, by virtue of their indifference or ineffectiveness, were indistinguishable from their desks, chairs, and spittoons. It is now used casually and more generally to identify the most inconsequential members. Here is the furniture list for the 70th Legislature:
New Furniture
Bill Arnold (Democrat, Grand Prairie)
Weldon Betts (Democrat, Houston)
A.R. Ovard (Republican, Dallas)
Glenn Repp (Republican, Duncanville)
Used Furniture
Roy Blake (Democrat, Nacogdoches)
Ben Campbell (Republican, Lewisville)
Eldon Edge (Democrat, Poth)
Ron Givens (Republican, Lubbock)
John Leedom (Republican, Dallas)
Gregory Luna (Democrat, San Antonio)
Roman Martinez (Democrat, Houston)
Irma Rangel (Democrat, Kingsville)
Randall Riley (Republican, Round Rock)
Garfield Thompson (Democrat, Fort Worth)
Antique Furniture
Charles Finnell (Democrat, Holliday)
Charge of the Light Brigade Award
Two days after the House had voted for a constitutional amendment banning income taxes, Senfronia Thompson (Democrat, Houston) asked the House for permission to introduce a bill authorizing an income tax. The normally routine motion was voted down.
Dishonorable Mention
Bob Leonard (Republican, Fort Worth). He carried one of the session’s worst bills in one of the session’s worst ways. The bill exempted nonprofit-religious-group affiliates from financial disclosure requirements. Among the organizations exempted were nonprofit hospitals, some of which (such as Houston’s Methodist Hospital) have come under heavy fire because of press investigations of just the sort of records that the bill would have made unavailable. Getting into the spirit of the bill, Leonard practiced a bit of nondisclosure himself: He neglected to tell colleagues working on the bill that he had a special interest in it (he’s on the board of directors of a hospital holding company whose records would be closed by the bill).
The bill had passed the Senate and was on the verge of passing the House when those nasty reporters struck again. The Houston Chronicle and the Dallas Morning News revealed what the bill did and what Leonard’s interest was. Just as the bill came up for a vote, Steve Wolens of Dallas raised a point of order against further consideration. Speaker Lewis upheld the maneuver, killing the bill, but he neglected to cite which rule had been violated. “What rule?” someone shouted. Wolens shouted back: “The bad bill rule.”
Best Insights
Foster Whaley (Democrat, Pampa), during a long and frustrating Appropriations Committee conference, observed: “We got too many people on this committee, and I might be one of them.”
Gwyn Clarkston Shea (Republican, Irving) made this attempt to send an Insurance Committee bill to the full House for approval: “I move that a … Mr. Patrick’s House Bill 523 be reported back to the a … Wait, wait, wait. Make a motion that House Bill 523 pass and recommend … I don’t know what I want to do.”
Most Improved
How did the session go for Ron Wilson (Democrat, Houston)? There was a little bit of everything: enough good to make him a contender for the Ten Best list, enough bad to remind us that he made the Ten Worst list in 1985, and enough in between to keep him from winding up in either category.
Wilson’s foremost contribution was to restore the reputation and independence of the Liquor Regulation Committee, of which he was the chairman. Two years ago the joke circulated through the Capitol that Wilson’s predecessor as chairman had lost the ability to walk, so much time did he spend being squired about in the liquor lobby’s fabled van. Wilson chased the money changers out of the temple and took the committee away from the lobby. He even passed the law that bans drinking while driving.
Last session Wilson used his mastery of rules to play self-indulgent games. This time he used the rules the way they’re meant to be used—sparingly but lethally. The AT&T deregulation bill was greased to slide through the House when Wilson threw a parliamentary pile of sand on it, causing the final, fatal delay that forced AT&T to swallow a distasteful compromise.
On the downside, Wilson lost three bills on the floor. His constitutional amendment establishing a state lottery went down to a surprising early defeat, but he may get a chance to change that result during the upcoming special session. He lost control of his bill to chastise Houston’s metropolitan transportation authority when the floor debate turned into a free-for-all, but he did change that result when a later version came up for a vote. The really bad news was Wilson’s bill allowing Texans to carry concealed weapons. Last session the bill’s sponsor made headlines by saying, “Every black man in Houston carries a gun.” So why was Ron Wilson carrying this bill? It’s all right to play games, but not with loaded weapons.
My Library
