AUSTIN, Texas — With the deadline to pass legislation closing in on the Texas House, representatives are tackling calendars with hundreds of bills each day, even pushing their work into the weekend.
The chimes to register attendance called members of the Texas House to the state Capitol over Mother’s Day weekend. Legislating on the weekends is expected at this point in the session, but political squabbling is raising questions about the Legislature’s effectiveness in the session’s final weeks.
“They put all the Republican bills we care about at the very end of the calendar, or not at all, and then hope that people back home will believe their lies that they really tried, but that the clock just ran out of time,” said state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian.
For the first 60 days of the session, lawmakers could only work on the governor’s legislative priorities, but lawmakers like Harrison say the Legislature could get more done if they hadn’t taken long weekends earlier in the session.
“It actually moved at a relatively leisurely pace, which it tends to do during March, and then puts itself in this crunch time in May, where it has, right now, only a few days to pass, legislation, to a third reading,” said Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University.
Harrison and a group of more conservative representatives are frustrated because they say not enough conservative bills are moving thorough the chamber and now believe it’s too late. The deadline to pass a House-sponsored bill out of the lower chamber is Thursday at midnight. But House Speaker Dustin Burrows said the chamber is on track to pass many conservative victories before the clock runs out.
“There are a ton of conservative priorities that are passing,” said Burrows. “I’m very happy with where we’re at. I believe lots of conservatives are very proud of what the Texas House has done and will be very proud at the end of session.”
As representatives spend long days on the floor, many people are milling in the Capitol waiting to testify on bills that still have a chance in committee. Emily Witt, with the Texas Freedom Network, has spent a few nights at the Capitol this session.
“It’s always been hard, but this session has been particularly hard. We’ve seen for a lot of hearings that legislators know there’s big interest in, that they will cut off registration for testimony around 10 a.m. sometimes or noon, and then they won’t actually hear that bill in committee sometimes until technically the next day,” said Witt.
Witt believes there’s room for a smoother hearing process.
“When you know that hundreds of people are here for a bill, hear that bill first. It’s really not that hard,” she said. “And a huge state like Texas, we should have an online way to register your support or reject a bill from anywhere.”
Harrison’s solution to speed up the process is to change leadership.
“I led the motion to vacate the chair and try to put in an actual Republican as speaker, because we are all the deadline is not really Thursday. The deadline was days ago when you wanted to get a bill on the calendar,” said Harrison.
His motion to vacate the chair failed.
Political scientists note that the legislative process is unlikely to change, as it is designed to make it easy to kill bills.
“The Texas Constitution was designed, so that you didn’t have a very active Legislature, and that it wouldn’t be a would be an office to pass the budget and whatever else it could do in the, approximately five months and then go home,” said Jones.
Long-time Capitol observers say no matter who the speaker is, legislators who don’t see their bills move fast enough complain the system needs changing.