Herman: For Texas lawmakers, the end is nigh.
Ken Herman says with the regular session coming to a close, it begs the question — is any session of the state Legislature ever ‘regular’?
AUSTIN — The end is near. We can tell because lobbyists with pending legislation and nagging clients have been clogging the entry to the state House and lawmakers have been tweeting their souls.
“It’s that time in session when you start thinking about jumping,” Rep. Drew Springer, R-Muenster, said in a closingdays tweet of an outdoor photo showing him perilously perched, legs hanging over the side, on the Capitol’s fourth floor.
Don’t do it, Mr. Springer. The session will end soon enough and you’ll be back in beautiful downtown Muenster — which we can only hope is down the road from Cheddar — before you know it.
Over on the Senate side (or, as many senators would prefer to call it, the House of Lords), there was this recently from the usually sunshiny Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, as she ambled by the press table: “Let’s just get this over with.”
We will. Monday is Day 140 of the 85th 140-day regular session of the Texas Legislature, a day appropriate for this rumination: Is any session of the Texas Legislature ever really “regular?”
With the end in sight (though a special session is always possible), it is altogether fitting and proper that this newspaper and other purveyors of real news offer rundowns on what the 85th has wrought. You’ll be reading about what laws your lawmakers made this year. You must learn and live each of these laws, even the dumb ones.
In this space, however, I’m going to tell you about some laws that didn’t get made, focusing on some of the odd and eye-catching measures I’ve told you about in recent months.
You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll wonder why developing nations yearn for this kind of governance.
(A caveat: There’s always a chance that some of these ideas wound up tucked into a semirelated bill as an amendment. In the finest tradition of the Texas Legislature, we’ll inevitably find out a few years from now that it did something that few folks — including lawmakers — knew happened.)
Nuts
Let’s start our review with a nut law. Earlier this year I told you about recommendations from the Commission to Study and Review Certain Penal Laws, created by lawmakers in 2015 to hunt down laws that no longer make sense. Someday a commission will be doing that about laws made this year. The panel issued a 50-page report of recommendations, many of which were bundled into Senate Bill 1822.
The recommendations included one about a nut law. We have a “Thrashing Pecans” statute that allows three months in jail for causing “pecans to fall from a tree by any means, including by thrashing” on someone else’s land without permission. The commission said the $300 fine in the law is sufficient. But the jail time survived the session when SB 1822 died.
Peddling
The commission also had called for repeal of the law allowing 60 days in jail for “peddling of printed matter by deaf or mute persons” and the law that can send you to jail for 100 days for selling a secondhand watch without a mandated label.
A separate measure, SB 350, concerning sale of secondhand watches — the “It’s About Time Act” — also failed. So please be careful when you sell a secondhand watch.
Commemorations
Also dead is House Bill 412 by Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Humble, who wanted to add more than 80 holidays — including Leif Erikson Day, Wright Brothers Day and National Tartan Day — to the list of holidays around which fireworks can be sold.
Rep. James White, R-Hillister, failed with his HB 1359 effort to prevent the moving of state-owned statues and monuments (think University of Texas and Jefferson Davis) without legislative OK.
I can report that one of my favorite bills of the year won final OK in the Senate in the session’s closing days. HB 1644 somehow is needed to move the painting “The Spirit of the Alamo Lives On” from one state office to another. The bill awaits Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature.
But killed were measures to name the cannon the Official State Gun of Texas and the Bowie knife the Official State Knife of Texas.
Cars
Also dead are efforts to do away with vehicle safety inspections. SB 1588 by Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas, was approved by the Senate but never made it to the House floor for inspection.
And Rep. Larry Gonzales, RRound Rock, failed in his effort to get rid of front license plates. This was his fourth try with this idea.
Gonzales says license plates don’t look good on the front of his Corvette. I agree.
Booze
Here’s one I didn’t see coming. SB 404 is dead. It’s a little ol’ bill that would have made it illegal for health care professionals to offer alcoholic beverages in their waiting rooms. Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham and a dentist’s daughter, is horrified by alcohol in the waiting room, particularly for parents of kids undergoing treatment.
She won Senate OK for SB 404 but it died in the House despite no visible opposition.
Sometimes nothing more mystical than time kills bills.
On the positive side, and already signed by the governor, is House Concurrent Resolution 141, which means the boringly named State Insurance Building (which does not house the State Department of Insurance) shall be rechristened the George H.W. Bush State Office Building.
So that’s where some of our favorite bills stand as the 85th comes to an end. Not a bad session, by some measures. Only one lawmaker got indicted during the session. Another got indicted just before it.
Let’s wrap up this wrap-up with an update on the measure that, as the kids say, blew up the internet: “Relating to the regulation of men’s health and safety; creating a civil penalty for unregulated masturbatory emissions.”
(I told you regular is never quite the right word when the Texas Legislature convenes.)
House Bill 4260 died in the House State Affairs Committee without a hearing. There is a God.