Legislative lessons

Texans have learned to temper expectations when their state lawmakers are at work.

In a Texas Legislature where a payday lender looks after his lending cohorts, insurance agents keep the interests of their industry covered and attorneys take care of their own — that’s expertise, don’t you see — an ethics bill may have emerged from the Tuesday-night scrum as lawmakers tried to beat the clock and get their bills considered. Sponsored by state Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, the ethics bill was one of a handful we were pleased to see pass. A number of other bills should have reverted to pumpkins at midnight but didn’t.

Cook’s bill, reflecting Gov. Greg Abbott’s expressed interest in ethics reform, could have been much stronger, but it’s better than nothing. It requires some politically active nonprofit groups to disclose their biggest donors and prevents lawmakers from becoming lobbyists immediately after leaving the Legislature.

The fact that Michael Quinn Sullivan, former vice president of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and president and CEO of Empower Texans, opposes the bill is almost reason enough to endorse it. Sullivan, who keeps a close and threatening watch on any ultraconservative who might show a tendency to stray from Sullivan doctrine, is king of so-called “dark money” in Austin. Unfortunately, Abbott also has expressed reservations about the disclosure of dark money.

Meanwhile, we were pleased that the Senate approved landmark legislation to create a panel of legal experts and lawmakers to study the state’s high number of exonerations and recommend changes in state laws to keep more innocent people from going to prison. Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said the new Timothy Cole Exoneration Commission, to be established in September, would investigate and identify the main causes of false convictions and make recommendations to prevent such cases from recurring.

State Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El Paso, and state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, found a way to increase the state’s annual roads budget by at least $3 billion. It’s not nearly enough — the Texas Department of Transportation asked for $5 billion two years ago — but it was as much as the two chairmen of their respective Transportation committees could get.

“Getting something that was a ‘Hell, no’ two years ago … shows we’ve come a long way,” Pickett told the Dallas Morning News.

What should have been a “hell, no,” this session, so-called border security, wasn’t. The $800 million boondoggle is essentially taxpayerfunded campaign money, since its primary purpose is to boost reelection chances.

A number of bills beat the midnight deadline that Texas could happily do without, including Senate Bill 11, a bill allowing the concealed carrying of guns on college and university campuses. Despite opposition from university administrators and campus police, as well as from students and parents, the gunsters in the Legislature would not be swayed. The only good thing about the bill that passed Tuesday night is a provision allowing colleges and universities to keep guns out of certain areas, including healthrelated facilities. That provision allows state Rep. Sarah Davis, the Houston Republican whose district includes the massive Texas Medical Center, to address the concerns of the numerous academic institutions in the center.

Perhaps the highest-profile victim of the midnight deadline was Senate Bill 575 by Republican state Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, which would have banned abortion coverage on plans sold on the federal Affordable Care Act’s marketplace. Originally, the bill would have banned abortion coverage on both ACA plans and private health insurance plans.

Two meddlesome bills dealing with undocumented immigration, including a “sanctuary cities” measure sponsored by state Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, got lost in the wash. So did a bill that would have repealed a 14-year-old law that allows some undocumented students to receive in-state tuition at public colleges and universities. That bill was sponsored by state Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, whose hard-line true-believer tendencies frequently diverged this session from the real needs and concerns of her San Antonio-area district.

It could be that Campbell and her tea-party cohorts learned a lesson this session: True representatives of the people, even in a body as deeply conservative as the Texas Legislature, can’t scorn negotiation, compromise and respect for varying points of view if they expect to get anything accomplished. That lesson would be a minor accomplishment in a 140-day legislative session, but Texans learn to temper expectations when their lawmakers are at work.