Tag Archives: Texas Legislature

local news, State news

Now, about that statewide texting ban

Let’s call this election right now.

Four Price is going to win re-election Tuesday to a third term in the Texas House of Representatives from House District 87.

There. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to insist that the Amarillo Republican pick up where he and his colleagues left off in 2013 regarding a statewide ban on texting while driving motor vehicles.

Price has said he supports a ban. He’s voted for it twice. The 2011 Legislature — where Price served as a freshman — approved a bill banning texting while driving and sent it to Gov. Rick Perry’s desk. But the governor said it was too “intrusive,” or some such nonsense and vetoed it.

The 2013 Legislature, spooked by that veto two years earlier, didn’t get it approved.

Well, Gov. Perry is going to be gone in January. He’ll be polishing himself up and getting ready for another run for the presidency — unless he gets convicted of abuse of power back home in Texas.

The door is open once again for Price and his 149 House colleagues to do what they should have been able to do by now.

Ban the use of texting devices while motorists are driving their vehicles on our state’s highways.

Price is gathering some seniority in the House. He’s no stranger to the legislative process. His pal John Smithee, another Amarillo Republican, is one of the House’s senior members. He’s returning, too. The two of them can team up to strong-arm their colleagues to get this issue done.

Send the bill to the new governor’s desk and insist that he or she sign it into law.

It’s good for Texas.

 

 

State news

Ban texting and driving

To be honest, I had to blink hard a couple of times when I read what state Rep. Four Price said regarding texting and driving.

He favors a statewide ban. The Amarillo Republican also said he believes the issue will come up in the 2015 Legislature and that absent an overt threat by the new governor — whoever he or she is — to veto it, that it is likely to end up on the governor’s desk at the end of the session.

I’m all for it.

Price is a self-proclaimed small-government conservative who said he’s voted for the statewide ban in previous sessions. He told the Amarillo Globe-News that motorists driving through our huge state are subject to varying municipal ordinances. Motorists need to be aware of what each city and town allows or prohibits regarding the use of telecommunications equipment while driving.

“I really believe it would be a wise thing to have a common standard across the state,” Price said.

You go, Four!

Lame-duck Gov. Rick Perry has kept his veto pen handy during previous attempts to enact this wise legislation. He complained about government overreach when he vetoed a bill calling for a statewide ban in 2011. The next Legislature didn’t bother to pass a bill, fearing yet another veto.

Perry will be out of office in January. The new governor — let us hope — won’t threaten a veto and scare off the next Legislature.

A statewide ban won’t prevent idiots from texting while driving, which is why some people still oppose this reasonable law. Still, a law that gives police authority to cite dimwitted motorists and then enables cities and counties to enact harsh punishments might deter some folks from endangering themselves and — even worse — other motorists or pedestrians.

local news, political news, State news

A new Holocaust … in Texas?

West Texas’s newest state senator might be forgiven for being quite excited about his new elected office.

Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, however, did put a disgraceful twist on what he called the spiritual struggle he says is occurring today in these United States.

He sought to compare it to — get ready for it — the Holocaust.

http://www.texasobserver.org/new-senator-charles-perry-living-holocaust-ii/

Yeah, that Holocaust. The one that killed 6 million Jews in Europe. The on-going event that destroyed families and was perpetrated by the 20th century’s most monstrous tyrant in an effort to exterminate an entire religious community.

I’m not at all sure what the new senator is trying to suggest, but drawing any comparison to what’s happening today to what occurred during Europe’s darkest time in the previous century is, shall we say, more than a stretch.

Perry won a special election after Bob Duncan left the Senate to become chancellor of the Texas Tech University System. Duncan, also a Republican, routinely was rated by observers as being among the Legislature’s most effective members. Texas Monthly routinely honored Duncan by placing him on its “Best Legislators” list.

Something tells me that Perry isn’t likely to join that list any time soon, if at all.

Here’s a taste of what he said after taking his oath:

“There were 10,000 people that were paraded into a medical office under the guise of a physical. As they stood with their back against the wall, they were executed with a bullet through the throat. Before they left, 10,000 people met their fate that way.”

Here’s more:

“Is it not the same than when our government continues to perpetuate laws that lead citizens away from God? The only difference is that the fraud of the Germans was more immediate and whereas the fraud of today’s government will not be exposed until the final days and will have eternal-lasting effects.”

This is like the Holocaust? Nope.

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Split the power in Texas government

An acquaintance asked me the other day about my thoughts regarding the upcoming election for Texas governor.

“Does Wendy Davis have a chance?” he asked. I had to think about it for a moment. “Well, she has a chance, but not much of one,” I answered. The Democratic nominee for governor is likely to lose to Republican nominee Greg Abbott — if the election were held today.

My concern about Davis is that she doesn’t yet have a message that resonates with voters. For that matter, Abbott hasn’t yet found a theme, either, other than he’s a Republican running in a heavily Republican state.

Then the talk turned to the lieutenant governor’s campaign between Republican Dan Patrick and Democrat Leticia Van de Putte. “That race,” I suggested, “presents the Democrats a better chance.” Why? my acquaintance asked. “Because Patrick is more likely to self-destruct than Abbott,” I replied.

Will the fiery GOP candidate for lieutenant governor implode? Beats me.

But the effect of two-party control of the top of the state government would do the state well. It might produce some pretty good governance, as it did during the time when Republican George W. Bush was governor and Democrat Bob Bullock served as lieutenant governor.

Democrats still controlled the Legislature and Bush developed good working relationships with Bullock and House Speaker Pete Laney of Hale Center. There was no running over the other party the way we’ve seen in recent years — and when Democrats held all the power in the state prior to the state’s shift to GOP control.

I’m intrigued by the notion of a Democrat presiding over the Senate and a Republican serving as governor, although a Lt. Gov. Van de Putte would have limited influence over a body that is likely to comprise mostly Republicans after the November election.

Well, I guess we can look at the election in a certain way: A week is a lifetime in politics and since we’re still about three months away from the next election, anything can happen.

In Texas, “anything” has been known to occur.

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State missing road-building opportunity

Perhaps you’ve noticed over a period of time that I like referring to Paul Burka’s blog on Texas Monthly’s website. It provides grist for my own commentary.

His latest item refers to Texas road construction and maintenance.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/road-nowhere

I believe Burka, who’s a smart guy and well-versed in all things relating to Texas government, has glossed over an essential point in extolling the need for the state to pump more money into its highway fund.

It is this: Texas’s economy is built significantly on fossil fuel exploration and development. Therefore, it is in the state’s economic interest — at this time and likely for the foreseeable future — to enable motorists to travel safely on its roads, highways and bridges. Why? Because the vast majority of motor vehicles traveling through the state are powered by gasoline, which comes from those fossil fuels pulled from the ground in Texas.

Burka notes that the state hasn’t raised its gas tax since 1991. He adds correctly that given the mood of the state political leadership, it seems unlikely the Legislature would increase the tax. It’s a matter of politics interfering with good policy.

Do I want to pay more for gasoline when the need arises? No. However, if the revenue were to bolster the state highway fund and create a safer driving environment for my family and me, then I’m all for it.

It’s not that the state is doing nothing. As Burka writes: “The Legislature has proposed a constitutional amendment, to be voted on by the public in November, to provide $1.3 billion for highway projects. Even so, the dollars provided by the amendment will be a drop in the bucket for roadbuilding.”

Texans comprise a mobile society. Those of us who live out here in the vast expanse of West Texas understand that you have to drive some distance to get anywhere.

Road construction and maintenance ought to be a no-brainer for a state as vast as ours — and a state that still relies heavily on fossil fuels to power its economy.

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Ideology paints non-ideological campaigns

Glenn Hegar is the Republican nominee for Texas comptroller of public accounts.

He wants to be the state’s bean-counter in chief. Hegar also wants voters to know that he’s a strong conservative. Does he necessarily tout his financial credentials? Not exactly. He talked during the primary campaign about his pro-life position and his religious devotion.

Interesting, yes?

Ryan Sitton is the GOP nominee for railroad commissioner. He said the same thing about himself as Hegar. He mailed out campaign literature touting his strong conservative credentials, including his strong support of gun owners rights.

Also interesting.

What’s strikes me, though, about these two examples is that the principals are seeking offices that have nothing to do with abortion, or God, or guns ownership. Hegar wants to be the comptroller, whose main job as defined by the Texas Constitution, is to provide legislators and the governor with an accurate accounting of the state’s fiscal condition. The job Sitton seeks is focused even more narrowly. Railroad commissioners regulate the oil and natural gas industry. That’s it. Heck they don’t even set policy for railroads or rail cars, which used to be part of their job.

We’re hearing a lot of ideological talk among candidates, almost exclusively on the Republican side, who are running for nuts-and-bolts offices.

I understand why legislative or congressional candidates would want to establish their ideological credentials with voters. They seek to write laws. The other folks simply carry out the laws enacted by lawmakers and signed by either the governor or the president of the United States.

I am hoping that as the fall campaign commences we hear more from the candidates about how they intend to manage the offices they seek and less from them about irrelevant ideology.

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75 mph? Hey, no big deal

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My good friend Paige Carruth is going to flip when he gets wind of what I’m about to write next.

I’ve gotten used to driving 75 mph on our highways.

There. It’s off my chest. I feel cleansed already.

Why the change of heart?

Flash back to the mid-1990s. I was writing editorials for the Amarillo Globe-News. Congress had just been taken over by Republicans in that historic Contract With America election. The federal government had enacted since the 1970s a federally mandated 55 mph speed limit on interstate highways. We took the position then that lifting the limit was dangerous on a couple of levels.

The feds had enacted the speed limit to reduce fuel consumption; the Arab oil embargoes of 1973 and 1979 frightened us, remember? Reducing the speed in fact reduced our consumption of fossil fuels. What’s more, it reduced the number of traffic fatalities, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Congress didn’t listen to us. The 1995 Congress removed the federal mandate and gave states the authority to jack up the speed limits. Texas jumped all over it and the 1995 Legislature bumped the speeds up to 70 mph on interstate highways. I was mortified. I said so at the time publicly, in my column; the newspaper editorial policy suggested it was a mistake as well.

Paige — a retired West Texas State University administrator — has never let me forget that I am a slow-poke by nature.

Well, that was true then. It’s not so true now.

I’ve gotten used to the 75 mph speed limit. The state has since boosted its speed to 75 on many highways — interstate freeways and state-run highways.

Allow me this tiny boast: My wife and I today returned from a weekend in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, where we visited our granddaughter — and her parents. We left their home in Allen this afternoon at 1:40; we pulled into our driveway in Amarillo at 7:37 p.m. That’s less than six hours in what usually takes us a lot longer.

The 75 mph speed limit helped us set what we believe is a personal land-speed record.

It helps that one of our two vehicles is a Toyota Prius hybrid that gets stupendously good fuel mileage, which enables us to justify our willingness to press the pedal to the metal. It also helps that the little car — to borrow a phrase used by the late great Hall of Fame baseball pitcher-turned announcer Dizzy Dean — can really “pick ’em up and lay ’em down.”

I feel better already having acknowledged that driving a little faster doesn’t give me the nervous jerks the way it once did.

Let’s not talk about driving 80 mph, which is allowed on some sections of Interstate 10 downstate. And Texas 130, where they allow you to goose it to 85? I’ll leave that stretch of roadway to the fools.

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Text ban is no intrusion

If the 2015 Texas Legislature goes through with reports that it will consider a statewide ban on texting, we’re bound to hear from the righteous among us about the state’s intrusion into motorists’ personal liberties.

Let’s ponder that one for a moment.

* The state requires everyone in a motor vehicle to wear safety belts. That means passengers in the front seat and the rear seat. You have to buckle up, or else.

* Texas also requires children of a certain age or younger to be strapped into an approved motor vehicle safety restraint carrier. That, of course, is the responsibility of the parent or the adult who’s driving the motor vehicle to ensure that the child is strapped in properly. Again, do it or else.

* The state has banned the carrying open containers of alcoholic beverages in your motor vehicle. No more tossing those empty beer cans into the back of your truck, Bubba. You got that?

Does anyone gripe about intrusion regarding those particular laws? If so, they do it under their breath.

But we’ll hear from those who believe — wrongly, in my view — that these texting bans or prohibitions on the use of handheld communications devices will take away one more right of motorists to communicate with loved ones.

Gov. Rick Perry vetoed a texting ban bill passed by the 2011 Legislature, saying that it was too, um, intrusive. The good news is that he’ll be out of office when the next Legislature convenes. I hope the new governor has better sense than the soon-to-be former one.

Cities have enacted the bans. Amarillo is one of them. Enforcing it has been problematic, to say the least, given what many of us have noticed already — which is that motorists can still be seen texting and driving at the same time.

Still, the legislation is worth considering and enacting.

Do it, legislators!

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Gerrymandering not always a bad thing

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Whether to gerrymander a congressional district, that is the question.

I’ve been stewing about this for years, believe it or not. It’s not that I don’t have many important things to ponder, but this one has been stuck in my craw ever since I landed in Amarillo back in January 1995.

The term “gerrymander” is named after Elbridge Gerry, who served as vice president during the James Madison administration. It’s come to identify the practice of drawn governmental boundaries in such a way as to protect certain political parties. It’s been vilified as a form of political protectionism.

Is it always a bad thing? I submit that it isn’t always a negative.

Consider what happened to Amarillo back in the early 1990s.

The 1991 Texas Legislature gerrymandered the 13th and 19th congressional districts in a way that split Amarillo in two. Potter County was included in the 13th district; Randall County was drawn into the 19th. The 13th was represented at that time by Democrat Bill Sarpalius; the 19th by Republican Larry Combest. The 1991 Legislature — which was dominated by Democrats — intended to protect Democratic members of Congress. Legislators believed that by carving out the Potter County portion of Amarillo into that district — which contained a good number of Democratic voters — that Sarpalius would be protected.

I came to work as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News, which was in the middle of a furious editorial campaign to put Amarillo back into a single congressional district.

What happened between 1991 and the time of my arrival in 1995? Well, Sarpalius was re-elected to the House in 1992, but in 1994, he was upset by upstart Republican Mac Thornberry, who at the time was serving as Larry Combest’s congressional chief of staff. Sarpalius wasn’t the only Democratic incumbent to lose that year, as that was the election featuring the GOP’s Contract With America.

Interesting, eh? Thornberry took office in 1995, which then meant that Amarillo was represented by two Republican members of Congress. Back when one was a Democrat and one was a Republican, you could count on Combest and Sarpalius voting opposite each other. Their votes and their constituencies canceled each other out. With Thornberry and Combest serving together in Congress, well, you had a two-for-one deal. Both men sang from the same sheet. You got two votes for Amarillo, even though they represented separate congressional districts.

Still, the newspaper kept beating the drum for a reuniting of Amarillo into a single congressional district. Our wish would be granted after the 2000 census and the 2001 Legislature returned all of Amarillo to the 13th district.

I look back, though, a bit wistfully on the time when Amarillo had two members of Congress looking after its interests. Combest was by the far the senior member of the two. He was a big hitter on the House Agriculture Committee and served on the Select Committee on Intelligence. He was a frequent visitor to Amarillo, where he maintained a district office.

I never challenged my publisher’s desire to throw over one of our two congressmen at the time. I wish now I had raised the issue with him.

My thought now is that gerrymandering, while it generally is meant as a tool to do harm, actually can produce an unintended positive consequence for a community — as it did in Amarillo.

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Pro-choice does not equal pro-abortion

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I’ve just finished reading a blistering series of social media responses to state Sen. Wendy Davis’s visit to the Texas Panhandle.

The Fort Worth Democrat — her party’s nominee to be the next governor of Texas — became an instant political celebrity at the end of the 2013 Legislature when she filibustered a bill that would restrict abortions in Texas. The bill became law after a subsequent special legislative session, but Davis made her mark by filibustering the bill to death in an earlier session.

She’s become the No. 1 target of “social conservatives” who will not forgive her — not ever — for taking the position she took. She opposed the law making abortion illegal after the 20th week of pregnancy. Indeed, she opposes government telling a woman that she must complete a pregnancy. She believes that choice belongs to the woman, her physician, her partner and God.

The tirades I’ve read about Davis seem to harp on a single point, which is that Davis condones abortion, that she’s a “baby killer.”

I know this is not going to go over well with some of the more conservative readers of this blog, but I feel the need to make this point.

A pro-choice policy on abortion does not equal being pro-abortion.

A pregnant woman always has the choice on whether to give birth. If she is unable to rear a child, the law enables her to terminate the pregnancy. She also has the choice of delivering that child and allowing someone else to adopt the child. The woman also has the choice of delivering the child and rearing the child herself, or with her husband or partner, or with her parents or some other family member or close friend.

These are choices the woman makes. To suggest that a pro-choice policy on abortion equates to being pro-abortion takes demagoguery to a new level.

My hope is that the campaign for Texas governor will avoid that kind of rhetoric in the months to come. My fear, based on what I’ve seen just today, is that it won’t.