http://www.texastribune.org/2013/01/23/slow-start-to-legislative-session-part/
The Texas Legislature meets every other year for 140 days. That’s about five months’ time to get lots of business done for a state of 26 million inhabitants and one of the world’s largest economies.
Yet as it always happens, our 150 state representatives and 31 state senators lollygag around for far too long, getting into a rush at the end to try to wrap up the business for which they have so little time to complete.
It’s happening again in this session, apparently.
I have been watching this spectacle unfold since 1984, when my family and I first moved Texas, first to Beaumont and then to Amarillo. I simply don’t get it.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, given that we pay our “citizen” legislators so little money. They earn $600 a month. In addition, they get a per diem expense payment while the Legislature is in session. It’s less than $200 daily and it’s supposed to cover ancillary expenses related to the job, such as lunches with special interest representatives and the like, office supplies, staff expenses … those kinds of things.
It’s probably unrealistic, then, to expect our legislators to hit the ground at a full sprint when they’re sworn in at the beginning of the session. I don’t doubt that our state lawmakers – Reps. John Smithee and Four Price, and Sen. Kel Seliger, all of Amarillo – work hard while they’re in Austin.
It’s just that the collective legislative body seems to cram so much work into so little time. Do they have time to read at the last minute the volumes of text contained in legislation? I suppose that’s why they have staff members and chiefs of staff. It’s their job to do the heavy lifting, which includes plowing through those gazillions of words.
Still, a part of me wishes the Legislature could get down to serious business earlier than it does. The result might be thoughtful laws that make sense, which is a key component of good government.
That assumes, of course, that Texans still believe in such a thing.