At Capitol, eco stalwart Smith readies successor
Environmental lobbyist retiring after 3 decades engaging lawmakers.
Meet at the Capitol with Tom Smith, the bearded crusader with the white straw hat who has long worked the environmental angle on bills making their way through the Legislature, and it’s hard to
get through more than a few sentences without a passerby — a lawmaker or a lobbyist — patting him on the shoulder or waving hello. “I thought you retired,” they say
with a laugh, as if they expected Smith, known affectionately as Smitty in these corridors, never to bother, barter with or cajole them again.
Technically yes, last year, after three decades on the job, he announced his retirement as the director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a government watchdog group that joins up with the pack of environmental activists who prowl the halls during the session.
But as a kind of Shaolin master, he revisits the Public Citizen office and the Capitol now and then to train his successor, Adrian Shelley, a man about half his age who might be twice as book smart. If Smith earned a political education as an organizer on the streets of Chicago, Shelley, who was raised in a Houston suburb, gained his chops at the University of Texas Law School and as a lawmaker’s aide.
That’s how they first met, as Smith was preparing to ready members for a piece of legislation.
“He had answers to questions I didn’t even think to ask yet,” Smith says. “It’s the mark of a good staffer, when one says, ‘And the other thing you need to know . ... ’ ”
The heart of Smith’s knowhow, what he’s trying to impress upon Shelley, he says, is technique and timing: These are the people on the Calendars Committee, this afternoon is when to catch them, and this is where the play is going to be.
“He has instincts and strategic knowledge,” Shelley says. “I can read a bill and put together talking points. But there’s an understanding that comes from being around this place for 30 years.”
Most lobbyists who want to catch the attention of lawmakers on the House floor mill outside a velvet rope; Smith knows which ones prefer to come in the front way and which the back entrance. “Lobbying is like fishing,” he says. “You got to know where the holes are.”
Small victories
It’s a lonely kind of job, being among the few to carry water for the environmental movement among lawmak- ers who have long shown themselves to be more sympathetic to business interests than green ones. When Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick took up the Senate gavel two years ago, he ordered that the Senate Natural Resources Committee change its name to the Senate Natural Resources and Economic Development Committee — the kind of small change that speaks volumes about how state government views its mission.
“Those of us native Texans have a kind of irrational love of Texas. You talk about it with people from Califor- nia, or the East Coast, you get looks of surprise,” says Shel- ley, 34, who most recently was executive director of the environmental group Air Alliance Houston, and who met his wife while doing anti-coal activism in Kentucky. “But there’s an endless opportu- nity in Texas for problems that need solving.”
Victory often involves partnering with industry on mutually beneficial legislation: Smith played a key role in getting the wind industry off the ground, for example, as part of a sweeping 1999 utility deregulation law. And he backed efforts to sprinkle subsidies to manufacturers, refineries and oth- ers to replace old, polluting machinery with newer, cleaner upgrades.
Some of the fights haven’t changed much — just as he did three decades ago, Smith has opposed the burial of radioactive waste in Texas.
Smith and Shelley, along with environmentalists with Sierra Club and the SEED Coalition, worked lawmak- ers ahead of a vote on House Bill 2662, which would have eased the way for Waste Control Specialists to expand the amount of radioactive waste it could take at its West Texas facility.
In the end, pressed by lawmakers on the issue, bill author Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa, amended the bill to what’s known as a “study bill,” one that orders state agencies to take a closer look at the issue.
At Public Citizen, a delay like that is treated as a success — even though it might come again in the next legislative session. That afternoon, Smith and Shelley were outside the House entrance, by the velvet rope, trying to get members up to speed on HB 1927, or what they call the Toxic Alerts bill, one that, as drafted, would have developed a statewide system to inform the public about chemical emergencies on their cellphones.
The bill was having trou- ble getting out of the House Environmental Regulation Committee, and Smith and Shelley wanted to clue in a couple of holdouts about what it would do: Showing the give-and-take at the Leg- islature, the measure, carried by Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, was being recrafted as a study bill of its own, to make it more likely to get to the House floor. It died, never having gotten a vote in the committee.
Respect from all sides
All over the place in the Capitol, people stop and greet him.
Here, in the subterranean Capitol Grille, is Robert Duncan, formerly a Republican state senator from Lubbock and now a chancellor of the Texas Tech System, visiting the Capitol, greeting Smith — who, in turn, introduces him to Shelley.
“You’ve got big shoes to fill,” he tells Shelley. Then, turning to Smith: “You did a great job for Texas.” A long-term oil and gas lobbyist — an antagonist on many a bill over the years — walks by with a smile and a wave.
The Texas office of Public Citizen — the organization is most closely associated with Ralph Nader, who began it as a consumer rights group — is the only major office outside Washington. Offices in California, Georgia and Florida all were opened and shuttered during Smith’s tenure. It’s hard to imagine he will fully step away, but Smith, 67, says his blood pressure has dropped 20 points since he left the Capitol full time: No more of the long days stretching into long nights, none of the battles or frustration. Now he hangs out on a creek by the South Austin house he shares with his wife, Karen Hadden, also an environmental activist.
“There used to be a real debate, with decisions based on policy, not fear,” Smith says of how the Legislature has changed. Lawmakers are “too scared to stand up to the oil and gas industry. Rational people who stand up get driven out. The reign of terror of the Tim Dunns and Empower Texans” — key financiers and groups associated with the tea party wing of the Republican Party — “that misinforms people of what’s going on on the House floor, the tweet storms that stir fear — that leads to a craven Legislature.”
Neither Dunn nor Empower Texans responded to a request for comment.
And now, outside the House entrance, as Shelley and Smith wait to pepper lawmakers with information, state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, gives Smith a handshake: “I thought you were Willie Nelson,” he jokes. And then: “Aren’t you retired?”