Funding For Texas Legislative Staffers Is Set To Expire Oct. 1. How Far Will Gov. Abbott’s Veto Go? – Houston Public Media

[ad_1]

Empty seats can be seen in the House Chamber of the Texas Capitol on Tuesday, July 13, 2021, in Austin, Texas. The Texas Democrats left the state to block sweeping new electoral laws, while Republican Governor Greg Abbott threatened arrest if they returned.

Almost two months after Governor Greg Abbott vetoed the legislature’s budget – a move to punish Democratic lawmakers who blocked a vote on his priority electoral law at the end of the regular term – that veto remains on the second special session in Texas, and was upheld by the state Supreme Court this week.

The governor and other heads of state recently came up with a temporary solution, but that doesn’t resolve what some lawmakers are calling a constitutional crisis.

Abbott announced the temporary funding agreement last Friday in a joint statement with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, Senate Treasury Chair Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, and Budgets Committee Chair Greg Bonnen. R-Friendwood. It is not entirely clear where the provisional money for the legislature will come from following the governor’s veto of Article X of the state budget, or under what authority Abbott and other leaders move the funds.

The bottom line, however, is that the legislature will continue to work until October 1st.

That postpones at least a doomsday moment for more than 2,100 full-time government employees, a scenario outlined in a memo from Chairman of the Republican Administrative Committee of the House of Representatives, Will Metcalf of Conroe.

These staff include legislators, legislative support staff such as the Legislative Budget Board and the Texas Sunset Commission, and service staff such as the Capitol ground staff and security guards. The salaries of the legislators themselves are guaranteed by the Texas Constitution.

Houston Public Media reached out to both Metcalf and the governor’s office. Both declined to comment.

The threatened cut would not only affect employees’ salaries, but also insurance benefits.

“I have a really rare brain disease that I go to the Mayo Clinic for, so it’s a little worrisome … that we’re going to have to pay COBRA,” said a legislature who refused to be identified. “I’m lucky to be in a position I can, but I have a lot of my colleagues who can’t and a number of women in the legislature that I know will be in late summer or early fall Expect children. ” and it affects them. “

Many of these staff write the bills Abbott counts on legislators to vote on in the special session.

Then there is the question of constituent ministries.

“Most of what we do in our offices every day is taking care of our constituents, solving people’s problems, helping displaced people, helping people in need, and helping them with their government problems every day That will be gone because these offices must now be closed, “said Houston Rep. Gene Wu, one of the many Democratic members currently breaking the quorum.

Houston Wu – who had just returned to Texas from Washington, DC to challenge Phelan’s arrest warrant for enforcing his presence at the Capitol – said a longer-term concern was that state credit rating agencies could downgrade Texas’ bond ratings.

“That would end up being hundreds of millions of dollars in increased costs not just for the state but also for the counties and cities because you are now a government within the government that is unstable,” Wu said.

Dallas-based director of S&P Global Ratings, Oscar Padilla, was skeptical that the stalemate would drag on long enough to jeopardize the creditworthiness of Texas, which is currently rated AAA by all three major rating agencies.

“Does this change our view of the willingness or ability of the state to meet its financial obligations? In that case, I would initially say clearly no,” said Padilla. “If so, we would have another conversation.”

But Padilla admitted that the situation could change.

“It would certainly be unusual if at the beginning of the fiscal year they started with no (legislative funding) in the budget and the state broke new ground for which we have no precedent, and at that point (we would have to) assess to what extent, if at all, disrupts state operations, “said Padilla.

In fact, there are few precedents for a governor to veto funding from another branch of state government.

Ann Bowman, who teaches at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service, said the most recent notable example came in 2017 in Minnesota, when the Democratic governor vetoed the abolition of House and Senate operating budgets

“The Supreme Court sided with the governor, saying the governor has the power, the veto, to wipe out the legislature’s budget,” Bowman said. “Basically, legislators have agreed to come to an agreement with the governor to get back to work and restore funding retrospectively.”

All of this assumes that the Texas Democrats hold their strike and deny Republicans the quorum to vote on anything in the House, including funding the legislature itself. However, there is a real possibility that enough Democrats will return to run the House Facilitating business – some have already done so.

When that happens, expect both houses to vote quickly on restoring legislative funding.

But perhaps the greatest lasting impact of Abbott’s veto on funding the legislation has been to disrupt the separation of powers between the three branches of state government.

“This really is something of a nuclear option in terms of the relationship between the branches,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “This fits in with (first) the ongoing efforts by Governor Abbott to strengthen the executive branch within the Texas political system, and second, legislative resistance has been fairly weak.”

That is not to say that there was no pushback. For example, Republican Senator Kel Seliger of Amarillo is angry about Abbott’s action.

Seliger drafted a bill to remove the governor’s right of veto. It’s not on the special session agenda, so it’s out of the question this summer, but he believes that after Abbott’s action, the legislature will have to pass at some point in the future.

“It is absolutely destructive to the separation of powers between the three branches, and it was a terrible idea from the start,” said Seliger of the governor’s right of veto. “It’s awful now. Nobody knew how awful it was, but now we know.”

Subscribe today in Houston

Fill out the form below to subscribe to our new daily editorial newsletter from the HPM newsroom.

[ad_2]