Elizabeth Ames Jones used to serve on the Texas Railroad Commission.
Once, while visiting Amarillo, she paid a visit to the Globe-News, where I worked as editorial page editor.
During our conversation, the Republican former state legislator, made a fascinating and totally sensible proposal. The Railroad Commission needed to change its name. It has nothing to do with railroads or trains. It doesn’t have anything to do with trucking regulations, which it used to have. The name “Railroad Commission” is an archaic term that has zero relevance to what the agency does today, which is regulate fossil fuel production.
http://www.texastribune.org/2015/04/20/texas-mulls-railroad-commission-name-change-again/
Why not change the name, she said, to something like the Texas Energy Regulatory Commission — or TERC, for short?
Why not, indeed?
The RRC is the state’s oldest regulatory agency, but as the Texas Tribune noted, it scrapped railroad regulation long ago.
That hasn’t persuaded the hidebound interests who still run many things in Austin to change the name of an agency devoted to energy-related issues.
It’s not an easy solution, as the Texas Tribune reports: “The change would require an amendment to the Texas Constitution, since the document mentions the agency by name. That means two-thirds of lawmakers in each chamber must approve before putting the question to Texas voters.”
Why not refer it to the voters in the form of a constitutional amendment proposal? The Legislature needs a super-majority of lawmakers to do it. My hunch is that too many of them are strangely devoted to the Railroad Commission, perhaps out of nostalgia if no other reason.
If Texas is going to continue its evolution into a modern state that recognizes that change occurs here from time to time, then it should change the long-ago obsolete name of an important regulatory agency.
Oil and natural gas are important to this state’s economy. Why not give itsĀ governing agency a name that everyone would recognize?