Dysfunction or Democracy?

The problem with a $32.7 billion budget surplus that greeted lawmakers when they began the 88th regular session of Texas Legislature in January is that it sets up high expectations. Dreams take more work than doom.

Would lawmakers fund public schools adequately? Give retired teachers a cost of living adjustment? Fix a broken foster care system? Provide meaningful tax relief to Texans hit hard by rising costs?

None of those things came to pass. Though property tax relief enjoyed broad support and got $12.3 billion in the budget, the specifics have eluded the chambers.

Instead, less than three hours after the gavel fell Monday night in the House and Senate to mark the end of the regular session, Gov. Greg Abbott was already calling lawmakers right back for the first of several special sessions.

“Many critical items remain that must be passed,” Abbott said, echoing the widespread frustration among lawmakers and advocates.

Each session has one or two big takeaways or key moments — Wendy Davis wearing pinkish-red running shoes as she filibustered abortion restrictions in 2013, the bipartisan school finance bill that passed in 2019 when Beto O’Rourke’s near-win scared Republicans into focusing on an issue with broad appeal, and the 2021 swing back to the right that delivered permitless carrying of handguns and bans on abortion.

This session won’t be remembered for the desperate tactics of Democrats, such as a whole drove of them flying off to Washington in a bid to block voter restrictions in 2021. This session was about a Republican-on-Republican battle of wills between Lt. Gov Dan Patrick’s Senate and Speaker Dade Phelan’s House that left many of the governor’s priorities undecided. Even proposals that, at least in concept, had broad support, including property tax relief, died after the two chambers couldn’t reach compromises over their different approaches.

“Anytime you enter a session with this unexpected gigantic surplus, you would expect that a lot of high priority items in terms of the voters’ wants, whether we’re talking property tax decreases or access to healthcare or public education you would think that some of those issues would’ve been addressed,” Renée Cross, executive director of the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, told the editorial board. “In that regard, it probably came up short for everyone.”

So, did anything even get done in the weeks between January and June?

Some items did make it across the finish line and to the governor’s desk — some we even applaud, including bipartisan bills that shore up our state’s water infrastructure and expanding broadband access, expanding Medicaid coverage for new moms up to one year after giving birth, giving mental health funding an important but incomplete boost, and creating a $3 billion endowment for emerging research universities including the University of Houston. Other pieces of laudable legislation will protect Black Texans and others from race-based hair discrimination and provide new funding for state parks.

Then there were the near-misses: a wrongheaded ban on tenure, the creation of a new border law enforcement unit and a universal voucher program that will surely resurface in a special session yet to be announced.

Let’s not forget the non-lawmaking wins: the removal of the repugnant and preeminently hypocritical Rep. Bryan Slaton who slept with his teen intern after giving her alcohol, and the overdue impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, ousted at least temporarily after an investigation led by his fellow Republicans seemed to substantiate myriad allegations of corruption.

But the losses were profound: Pregnant women experiencing medical complications will continue to suffer and risk death despite promises from conservative lawmakers that the state’s restrictive abortion ban would be clarified this session. The state’s ban on transgender health care for minors — one of several bills targeting LGBT Texans that passed — again puts politicians between doctors and families facing difficult choices.

What explains the Legislature’s inability to get the big stuff done?

Patrick’s increasingly tight grip on the Senate is partly to blame. Running the chamber with an iron fist, he has shaped it in his populist, arch-conservative image, increasingly at odds with the House speaker, who must balance the needs of Republicans facing primary challengers and keep the support of Democratic members who helped elect him to lead the chamber. The conflict has caused Patrick such headaches that he said Tuesday he’s had to take three Tylenols a day.

That divide has been present now for several sessions, “but that gulf has become wider,” according to Mark Jones, political science professor at Rice University.

What that means for average Texans is that on many important issues, the Senate isn’t just at odds with the House but public opinion.

The advocacy of families who lost loved ones inside two elementary school classrooms at the hands of an 18-year-old who rushed out to buy his assault rifle as soon as the law allowed helped move one piece of gun safety legislation farther than it had ever been. “Just the fact that it did even pass out of the House committee is not to be overlooked or belittled,” Cross said.

But that only made its failure to advance all the more crushing in some ways. Other proposals to support commonsense reforms didn’t even get that far.

The raise the age bill supported by Uvalde families failed not just because the Senate wouldn’t touch it but because the House ultimately shied away too, still beholden to Republican primary voters and not the rest of Texas.

But the real failure seems to be that on the heels of unprecedented opportunity and unthinkable tragedy, neither seemed to move the needle for a legislative session in which political infighting stole the show — and the hopes of many Texans. Can lawmakers redeem themselves in the special sessions ahead? We think so, and not just because they’ll suddenly see the light. The sad eyes and impatient countenances of their kids and spouses awaiting summer vacations will add an extra layer of pressure to finish the work.