1337 TX Ch.7 The Legislature

How a bill becomes law 1

1. Introduction to the Texas House. Only a representative may introduce a bill in the House, and only a senator may do so in the Senate. Sometimes a senator and a representative agree to introduce the same bill in each of their respective chambers to speed the process. The first bill introduced in the House of Representatives is the state appropriations bill, designated HB 1. 2. Assignment to a committee. The speaker assigns bills to committees in the House based on their content. 3.House committee action: In both the committee and the subcommittee, witnesses who support or oppose the bill may be allowed to testify.

How a bill becomes law 2

4. House calendars. A bill that is reported favorably by the committee is placed on one of the house calendars by one of the calendars committees. This establishes the approximate order in which the whole House will consider the legislation. 5. House floor. The speaker of the house has the power to recognize representatives on the House floor and also to interpret the rules and points of order. The representative who sponsored the bill reads the bill before debate or voting begins. "Yea" votes of only a simple majority of members present and voting are necessary for a bill to be passed. 6. Introduction to the Texas Senate. 7. Assignment to a committee. The lieutenant governor assigns each bill to a Senate committee

How a bill becomes law 3

8. Senate committee action. 9. Senate calendar: The Senate calendar is rarely followed. In the usual procedure, a senator makes a motion to suspend the regular calendar order and consider a proposed bill out of sequence. 10. Senate floor: The Senate then debates the bill, perhaps adding amendments and passing the bill by a majority vote. 11. Conference committee. If the Senate makes changes in the House-passed version of a bill, a conference committee is necessary to resolve the differences between the two houses. 12. Final passage. The compromised version of the bill is sent first to the chamber where it originated and then to the other chamber for final approval.

Passing Bills

A bill may be introduced in either chamber of the legislature; it is designated by the abbreviations HB (House Bill) or SB (Senate Bill) according to where it was first introduced and carries the same designation throughout the legislative process. A bill must be passed by both houses by a majority vote and be presented to the governor to be signed into law. Bills fall into three categories: special, general, and local. Special bills create exceptions to laws already enacted; general bills apply to everyone in the state; local bills usually apply to a single unit of local government and usually pass at the request of legislators representing the area.

Concurrent and Joint resolutions

A concurrent resolution needs both the House and the Senate to agree by simple majority and is sent to the governor, who then has the option to either sign it or veto it. A joint resolution requires approval of both houses but does not require action by the governor. Examples of joint resolutions include proposals of state constitutional amendments, which require a two-thirds vote of both houses before being presented to voters for ratification.

Campaign Funding

A primary qualification for winning legislative office is access to money. Along with candidates' incumbency and their party affiliation, campaign funding is an outstanding predictor of general election victory—the legislative candidates who outspent their opponents won most of the time. Contributors frequently give money to the winner even after election day—so-called "late train" contributions.

Ad Hoc and Select Committees

Ad hoc and select committees are temporary committees as opposed to permanent committees. Ad hoc committees are designed to address one specific task in the legislative process, such as conference committees that have the task of ironing out differences between the House and Senate versions of a bill; they are temporary and are disbanded once they have completed their assignment. Select committees are also temporary committees, usually created to study a particular issue or problem and give advice to the legislature.

Passing Resolutions

Another responsibility of the legislature is to pass resolutions. A resolution is a formal expression of legislative sentiment, such as recognizing people, memorializing events, or making decisions that do not involve passing statutes. Resolutions can be simple, concurrent, or joint, each with a specific purpose. A simple resolution may be passed by a single house of the legislature; it affects only that house and needs no action by the governor.

Gerrymandering techniques 2

Another technique of gerrymandering involves concentrating, or packing, the minority party into as few districts as possible to minimize the number of legislators it can elect. A third form of gerrymandering is a practice called pairing. Pairing is a redistricting technique that combines two or more incumbent (currently elected) legislators' residences and parts of their political bases into the same elective district.

Analyze legislative processes, the committee structure, and how a bill becomes a law.

Any legislator may propose a piece of legislation, but the idea for much legislation originates with interest groups or the executive branch. Once introduced in the House or Senate, the bill is sent to a standing committee for initial review. Committees review proposed legislation, gather information by holding hearings, and mark up bills. Before the bill can become law, it must be scheduled for floor debate. The two houses use differing means to place legislation on the floor for a vote: the Senate uses a three-fifths rule, and the House uses the calendars. A bill must be passed by a majority vote before it is sent to the other house, where it follows similar steps through committee, scheduling, floor debate, and final vote. The presiding officers may appoint a conference committee to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions before a bill is approved and sent to the governor to be signed or vetoed.

Representing their Constituents

As delegate type representatives, members may interpret their role as being in the legislature to represent a majority of voters' interests. Delegates may rely more heavily on the use of polls and other collective information to make decisions. As trustee type representatives, members see themselves as being elected to use their judgment in making decisions in the best interest of the state as a whole regardless of public opinion.

Reapportionment

Based on the principle of "one person, one vote," this decision mandated reapportionment—a redistricting, or redrawing of district lines, after every census to reflect the actual population changes over the previous decade; it required that district lines be drawn so that the population of all districts is approximately equal. In practice, the population of state legislative districts can deviate plus or minus 5 percent from the average, but not more.

Recorded votes

Casting oral votes did not provide constituents with a way to know how lawmakers voted on bills because their votes were not recorded. A state constitutional amendment finally ended this practice by requiring recorded votes at least on a bill's final passage; members' votes must now be entered into the official record of each house.

Interim Committees

Committees that meet between legislative sessions are called interim committee; they play a crucial role in the Texas Legislature and help to sustain the biennial legislative cycle.

Geographic Districting

Each legislator is elected from a single-member district, with the state representative districts being quite a bit smaller than the senate districts. If the legislature fails to redistrict, the state constitution requires the Legislative Redistricting Board to redraw the lines. This board is ex officio, which means that its members hold offices or positions automatically because they also hold some other office.

Floor Action

Floor action refers to action by the entire House or the entire Senate to debate, amend, and vote on legislation. To take official action, each house requires a quorum of two-thirds of its membership to be present. During floor action, the Texas Constitution requires that bills must be "read on three consecutive days in each house."

Chubbing

For example, knowing that a bill they oppose is scheduled to come up for debate, opponents may engage in chubbing, which slows down the whole legislative process. Chubbing includes debating earlier bills for the maximum allotted time, asking the bill's sponsor trivial questions, and proposing so many amendments and raising so many points of order that the house does not get around to the bill to which they object—the ultimate goal being that the session ends before the bill can reach the floor for a vote.

Malapportionment

Geographic districting uses census data to divide the population into approximately equal districts for every elected position, but this has not always been the case. In the 1960s, U.S. Supreme Court decisions in several cases, including Reynolds v. Sims, outlawed malapportionment, the drawing of district lines so that one district's population is substantially larger or smaller than another's.

Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is the practice of drawing district lines in such a way as to give an advantage to candidates from a certain party, ethnic group, or faction at the expense of other groups. It should not be confused with malapportionment because gerrymandering is possible even when the population of every district is equal; it is more a matter of which people are drawn into each district rather than how many.

Special session 2

Governors, however, may call the legislature into as many special sessions as they wish, and some have called several back-to-back sessions when the legislature has failed to pass their agendas. Although the governor is empowered to call special sessions, the House and Senate can call an "impeachment session" for the sole purpose of deciding the impeachment and removal of state officers from their position.

Occupation & Economic Status

In the Texas Legislature, 57 members are business owners or executives, slightly outnumbering the 56 members who are lawyers. Together, these two professions account for more than 60 percent of the legislators. Texas lawmakers are required to report their sources of income, real estate assets, and stocks

Senate Floor Action

In the Texas Senate, all floor action is presided over by the lieutenant governor. Only rarely does a senator opposing a bill resort to a filibuster—a prolonged debate to delay passage of a bill—on the senate floor. Senators may use a filibuster either to attract public attention to a bill that is sure to pass without the filibuster or to delay legislation in the closing days of the session.

Demographic Identity

It is one of the few states with a majority minority population, meaning that the majority of the population are members of an ethnic or racial minority group. Descriptive representation is the idea that elected bodies should accurately represent not only constituents' political views but also the ethnic and social characteristics that affect their political perspectives.

Legislative Salaries and Compensation

Legislators receive an annual salary of $7,200 plus $190 per diem, an amount paid for each day a legislator is working, during both regular and special sessions and during the interim when committees meet. Texas lawmakers are among the worst paid large-state legislators in the country and have not received a salary increase since 1975; they have, however, found ways to offset their living expenses through very lax rules governing how a legislator earns money while in office

Retainer fees & consulting fees

Legislators who are lawyers can accept retainer fees from a variety of clients, which may include those who do business with state agencies or may have lawsuits against state agencies. Lawyers and non-lawyers alike can receive consulting fees from business clients and can act for their clients based on information that they obtain from lobbyists and other information that they gain from their own specialized knowledge of pending legislation, thereby helping their clients benefit from legislation being considered. Like 34 other states, Texas does not limit the number of terms legislators may serve.

Senate Calendar

Officially the senate has a calendar system that advances bills systematically. In practice, bills are taken off the calendar for senate floor consideration by a suspension of the rule, setting aside the rule that puts bills in chronological order so that other bills can be considered. The process goes something like this: The first bill placed on the senate calendar each session is called a blocking bill; it is usually a bill that will never be considered by the full senate. The blocking bill is never taken up on the senate floor; its only purpose is to stop floor consideration of any other bills except by the three-fifths vote to suspend the rule requiring chronological consideration of bills.

Conference Committees

Often the House and Senate pass differing versions of the same bill and a temporary conference committee must be appointed to resolve differences between the two versions. Conference committees are made up of five senators and five representatives, and a separate conference committee is appointed for every piece of legislation that passes both houses in differing form.

Legislative Staff

Powerful special interests and administrative agencies have a distinct advantage when it comes to staffing. The need for research data, advice, expertise, and other services obtained from interest groups and administrative agencies makes legislators dependent on these groups for information and advice.

Describe the limits on the Texas Legislature and evaluate the concept of the "citizen legislature."

Since the time the Texas Constitution was written, citizens have mistrusted institutions of government, including the state legislature. As a result, Texans have limited their state legislature to meeting only once every two years in regular session and not allowed the legislature to call itself into special session. Regular sessions are limited to only 140 days, and special sessions can last no more than 30 days. Legislative salaries are among the lowest in the nation, and legislative staffs are so restricted that legislators have become dependent on outside interests for both income and information.

Subcommittees and joint committees

Some of the standing committees have been further divided into subcommittees, which specialize in particular categories of legislation. The membership of any joint committee is made up of both senators and representatives. Sometimes referred to as boards, these committees can be either temporary or permanent and usually serve a specific function, like the Legislative Budget Board (LBB)

Sessions

Texas is among only five states with biennial legislative sessions. Unlike most legislatures, the Texas Legislature may not call itself into a special session or determine its agenda. Low salaries and limited sessions make it difficult for the Texas Legislature to function as a professional institution and may make members more dependent on interest groups for income and research on public policy.

Legislative Terms and Sessions

Texas representatives are elected for two-year terms, but senators are elected for longer four-year terms that are staggered or overlapping. That means that the entire House and half the Senate (15 or 16 senators) are elected every two years. All senators are elected in the first election following redistricting (every 10 years). Texas legislators may serve as many terms as voters choose to reelect them. Short and infrequent sessions contribute to the "citizen" status of the legislature.

Analyze the selection of Texas legislators, their qualifications, and the impact of campaign financing and redistricting on elections.

Texas representatives must be U.S. citizens at least 21 years old who have lived in the state for two years; senators must be U.S. citizens at least 26 years old with five years of state residence. The Texas Legislature meets in odd-numbered years for 140 days, and has 31 senators and 150 representatives. The legal requirements to run for the legislature obscure the fact that most legislators are business or legal professionals and male. The legislature does not mirror the population of Texas as a whole. In addition, a lack of campaign funding makes it more difficult for the average citizen to be elected to the legislature.

Biennial legislature

Texas's is the only legislature among the 10 most populous states to meet on a biennial schedule, once every other year. The limited biennial sessions tend to work against professional and deliberative legislative practice and ultimately may work against the public interest

The legislative council

The 14-member Legislative Council is a joint legislative committee that supervises a staff that provides research support, information, and bill-drafting assistance to legislators.

Scheduling

The House of Representatives has two calendars committees that handle the schedules of all bills that come out of their standing committees: the House Committee on Calendars and the House Committee on Local and Consent Calendars. The calendar schedule includes the time for floor debate and for when the vote on the bill will occur. If the bill is important or urgent, it may be scheduled on the Emergency Calendar or Major State Calendar, with debate and a preliminary vote scheduled early in the session.

Lieutenant Governor 2

The Texas Constitution allows for the Senate to write its own rules at the beginning of each 140-day legislative session, and these rules give the lieutenant governor extensive legislative powers as well as organizational, procedural, administrative, and planning authority. Although not actually a senator, the lieutenant governor can break tie votes on bills, and the Senate rules allow for the entire Senate to convene as a committee of the whole, which allows the lieutenant governor to debate and vote on any bill as long as the Senate is designated as a committee.

Impeachment and Removal from Power

The Texas Legislature can call an impeachment session in which the House of Representatives may charge an official with wrongdoing. The legislature cannot take any other action except for exposing the charges by impeachment and removing the person from office. If impeached officials have committed illegal acts, they may later be prosecuted in regular criminal proceedings. An impeachment session may be called by the legislature without the governor's approval.

The Sunset Advisory Commission

The Texas Sunset Act (1977) was enacted in response to the perception by the public that federal and state government spending was escalating beyond control. To enforce the Act, Texas created the 12-member Sunset Advisory Commission, which recommends keeping, abolishing, reorganizing, or giving new scope and authority to state agencies.

Senate floor action 2

The entire 31-member senate may act as a committee called a committee of the whole, which helps to speed up the process for bills to be considered or voted on. Usually after a modest amount of debate, the Texas Senate takes a vote without the benefit of an electronic scoreboard. Senators hold up a single finger to vote "yea" and two fingers to vote "nay." A clerk records the vote, and only a simple majority is necessary for passage.

Final bill step

The governor. The governor has several options concerning an act arriving on his or her desk. First, the governor may sign it into law. Second, the governor may choose not to sign, in which case it becomes law in 10 days if the legislature is in session or in 20 days if the legislature is not in session. Third, the governor may choose to veto the act, but the veto can be overridden by a two-thirds vote in each house. The governor often uses the veto late in the legislative session, or within 20 days after the session has ended, without fear of the legislature's overriding it because a veto cannot be overridden in a subsequent session.

Legislative Redress and Senate Confirmation Power

The legislature has the power to monitor and police itself by using a form of legislative redress. The Texas Senate must approve of all appointments made by the governor with a two-thirds vote of the senators present

Conducting Bureaucratic Oversight and Investigations

The legislature monitors state agencies to see that these agencies are carrying out public policies as intended—a process known as bureaucratic oversight.

Standing Committees

The most common committees are standing committees, which are permanent committees that function throughout the legislative session. There are two types, substantive and procedural, which do much of the legislative work in both chambers of the Texas Legislature and are part of the permanent structure of the legislature. Substantive committees consider the content of bills that have been introduced; they specialize in various types of public policy, such as taxation, education, or agriculture.

The Legislative Budget Board

The most important of the bills to pass through the legislature is the state's budget, or appropriations bill. The state's budget must be approved for a full two-year cycle and includes items such as transportation, education, health benefits, law enforcement, and state park maintenance. Most states, the U.S. government, and most countries have only one budget, but Texas has two. The LBB operates continuously, even when the legislature is not in session, under the management of an administrative director appointed by the board; its staff assists the senate and house appropriations committees and their chairs and serves as an oversight committee on how expenditures are managed by the state executive agencies and departments.

Powers of the Legislature

The powers of the legislature include passing bills and resolutions, representing constituencies, and conducting bureaucratic oversight and investigations. The Texas Senate has the power to approve or disapprove gubernatorial appointments. Some extraordinary powers, like initiating a legislative redress action or impeachment, are only rarely used.

Lieutenant Governor 1

The presiding officer in the Texas Senate is the lieutenant governor, who serves as the president of the senate. The lieutenant governor is elected independently from the governor for a four-year term in a statewide, partisan election, and is paid a $7,200 annual salary. As part of the executive branch, the lieutenant governor becomes governor if that office becomes vacant through death, disability, or resignation.

Speaker of the House

The presiding officer of the 150-member House of Representatives is the speaker of the house. The speaker of the house is an elected representative and has a two-year term with an annual salary of $7,200. The speaker is chosen from among the membership of the representatives, and is usually a member of the majority party in the House. During the session, the speaker maintains order during floor debate, recognizes legislators who wish to speak on the House floor, and decides on procedural matters as the need arises. Unlike the lieutenant governor, as a member of the House of Representatives, the speaker may debate bills and is allowed to vote on all bills and resolutions that pass through the House, although by custom the speaker rarely casts a roll call vote.

Powers of the Legislature and Its Leaders

The presiding officer of the Texas House of Representatives is the speaker of the house and the lieutenant governor acts as president of the senate.

House Floor Action

The speaker of the house presides over all floor action. The floor leaders are the legislators who are responsible for getting legislation passed or defeated. Representatives opposing legislation may bring up points of order requiring rulings by the speaker. A point of order is a representative's formal objection that the rules of procedure are not being followed on the house floor. Late in the session, opponents may attempt to delay action on a bill in an effort to run out the clock on the session.

Analyze the powers of the legislature and its presiding officers.

The state's bicameral legislature is presided over by the lieutenant governor in the Texas Senate and the speaker in the House of Representatives. The presiding officers manage floor debate and are able to use their appointive and procedural powers to control the legislative process. They appoint the members of the Legislative Budget Board, the Legislative Audit Committee, the Legislative Council, and the Sunset Advisory Commission, all of which are integral to the legislative process. They also have control over committee membership in the legislature and have decision-making powers over how bills make their way through the committee structure.

Three-Fifths Rule

This practice affects the senate's entire legislative process because it allows just 13 senators to block a bill. The irony is that although only a simple majority is necessary for final passage of a bill in the senate, a three-fifths majority is needed to get the bill to the floor for consideration.

Gerrymandering techniques 1

Three basic gerrymander techniques are generally used to draw district lines to benefit the majority party. Cracking is the technique of dividing up a minority party's voters into so many geographical districts that their voting power in any one district is negligible; areas that would otherwise support the minority party are split into several districts that the majority party controls.

Qualifications 1

To be a Texas state senator, one must be a U.S. citizen, a qualified voter, and at least 26 years of age and must have lived in the state for the previous five years and in the district for one year prior to election. Qualifications for House membership are even more easily met. A candidate must be a U.S. citizen, a qualified voter of the state, and at least 21 years of age and must have lived in Texas for the two previous years and in the district for one year prior to being elected.

Conference committee report

To reach the floor for a final vote, a compromise proposal must receive a favorable vote of a majority of the committee members from each house to be reported out of the committee and back to the floor as the conference committee report. After a bill has been reported from the conference committee, it may not be amended by either house but must be accepted or rejected as it is written or sent back to the conference committee for further work.

Racial Gerrymandering

Unlike partisan gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court considers a political matter, racial or ethnic gerrymandering is a special legal issue because the U.S. Constitution forbids government discrimination based on race. The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 also prohibits policies intended to dilute minority voting strength, which presented a special problem for Texas legislative districting after the 2010 census.

Special session 1

When work cannot be accomplished or a bill favorable to the governor did not pass during a regular session, a 30-day special session, which can be called only by the governor, may take place after a regular session. The governor sets the agenda for the special session; however, legislators can and often do introduce new bills for consideration during the short session. The legislature adjourns once it has voted on the items in the governor's agenda or when it reaches the 30-day limit.

Apply what you have learned about the Texas Legislature

You explored what it is like to be a Texas legislator from the viewpoint of Senator Rodríguez. You examined what the short legislative session and limited staff means in practice as the senator deals with the details of public policy, and you evaluated the senator's role to determine if he sees himself as a delegate or a trustee.

Qualifications 2

a successful candidate for the legislature must have certain qualities to be elected to the state legislature. These qualities, which include party affiliation, demographic identity, occupation, educational level, and economic status, can almost be considered "informal" or unofficial requirements to win election to the legislature. Perhaps the most important quality of a successful legislative candidate is the ability to raise money and to appeal to those who are willing and able to contribute to campaigns.

Markup or pigeonhole

they can mark up bills, rewriting or changing them by adding or deleting provisions before reporting them out for consideration by the whole House or Senate. They may also allow bills to be pigeonholed, meaning they are set aside and no action is taken on them for the entire legislative session. Because standing committees do the basic legislative work, most legislators rely heavily on them for guidance in deciding how to vote on a bill once it reaches the floor.