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and welcome to the Texas Tribune trip Cast for May thirtieth, twenty twenty three.
My name's Matthew Watkins, Managing editor for News and Politics of the Texas
Tribune, and we're here for a special post sity dye slash now first day
of Special Legislative Session trip cast. Lawmakers had so much fun talking about Dave
Feelings abs and Kin Paxson's countertops that they decided to come back and do it
a little bit more for thirty more days. And We've got a nice group
here to talk about it. I'm going to go down the line and introduce
them. First. We have Patrick's Fetech Politics reporter for the Tribute. Hey,
Patrick, correct, it's actually the second day of the special SETI yeah,
because it's technically started nine o'clock last night. That's right, already already
running corrections. Off to a great start here, and then we got to
Patrick's left Brad Johnson, a senior reporter for The Texas Hey, Brad,
thanks for joining us, Thanks for having me, guys, all right,
And then to his left we have Rinzo Downey, the lead writer of The
Blast, the Tribunes Insider politics newsletter. If you're not familiar with the Blast,
i'd recommend you check it out. He's been doing great work over this
past session, kind of digging into the details of every day of the legislative
session, and he just found out he'll be doing it for maybe twenty nine
thirty more days. So hey, n morning. And we have demographics reporter
and longtime legislative watcher Alexa Uday. Alexa, it just makes me sound old,
so I will point out special Session number one. Well, the Governor's
email this this session aged me about ten years. So I think we all
feel old, whether we are or not. Yes, So it was a
wild legislative session, um, featuring a lot of you know, major bills
that will impact the lives of Texans. You know, some that I've I've
written down as highlights, bills to ban puberty blockers and home hormone treatments for
transgender children. UM, you know, loans to upgrade or build new gas
fueled power plants, make voting ineligible, UM, voting wild ineligible punishable as
a felony, eliminating d EI offices on college campuses, toughening penalties for people
who sell fintyl. We had some you know kind of you know, major
financial allotments done, you know, three billion dollar endowment to fund public universities,
one billion dollars for water infrastructured improvements, one point five billion for broadband
access. Community colleges saw their funding mechanisms changed. So a lot of things
that happened this session. But really on the last weekend. Oh yeah,
and our attorney general was indicted in case you missed that as well, So
that was a big one. Impeached. Sorry, yes, and exactly.
And we also but you know, the last weekend, at least the last
day really focused on what didn't happen, and that was a deal on a
border bill. Something you would have thought, you know, Republicans in this
state would have been able to rally at round and maybe something you would think
they would be able to rally around even more is a deal on property taxes.
And that is why we are here today getting ready, you know,
some of us to go back into the capital for that special session where Governor
Rabbott has called them back to consider property taxes and a border secure initiative.
Patrick, How is it possible what happened in that crazy day that they could
not get a deal on cutting taxes? I thought Republicans love to cut taxes,
right, I mean, as you pointed out, going into this legislative
session, all of the big three, the you know, the governor,
Lieutenant governor, the speaker, all agree that property tax relief was a top
priority for this session, if not the number one priority. And so it
is pretty stunning that they ultimately could not come together on some compromise. And
I think the fact that they were holding out hope for a deal in really
the final hours of this session, even on the last day of the session,
when you typically don't see dealmaking on big priority issues, I think that
underscored their desperation to get something done because they knew how bad it looked that
they'd be, you know, if they were to walk away from this regular
session without a compromise. And I know that they're Brad and some other reporters
maybe fall the specific policy details a little closer in recent days and throughout the
session, But to me, it just seems like the House and Senate fundamentally
weren't able to solve this difference of opinion on the best way to deliver property
tax relief. The House wanted to tighten appraisal caps, the Senate wanted to
increase the homestead exemption. The House, you know, later in the session,
you know, showed openness to increasing the homestead exemption, but I think
the appraisal caps, you know, still were a sticking point. So it
just seems like, really the issue that divided them on property taxes for months
continue to divide them up until the last minute. Right I'm I'm an optimist.
I was, you know, watching the feeds yesterday thinking they're going to
figure this out. They're going to figure this out. They never figured it
out. How close did they get? Do you think I thought they were
going to figure it out too? I was hoping that we wouldn't be here
today having to go back to the Capitol at least get a bit of a
break in hindsight, I don't know if they were really that close, because
the House really wanted the appraisal cap reduction and extension. The Senate and Lieutenant
Governor Patrick said that was a total nonstarter. From the beginning, there was
a report that there was a meeting between the governor, Lieutenant Governor, and
the Speaker about a comprehensive plan that include compression, homestead exemption, the Senate's
original proposed homestead exemption, and then a seven and a half percent appraisal cap.
The Lieutenant Governor apparently wanted to raise that to eight percent. The Speaker
would not budge after already budging from five percent to seven and a half percent,
and thus talks broke down. And so now entering the special session,
the Governor has specifically said, oh, compression is it. That's all we're
going to do. So now we're basically back to square one. This whole
fight over appraisal caps was all for not and now at least if the Governor
gets his way, we are going to have just all of this money,
you know, between sixteen and twenty billion dollars, depending on how much they
actually want to put towards this just too rate compression, and there are arguments,
especially from the more right wing of the Republican Party, that that is
the only way to do things, because it is the only way that actually
puts downward pressure on property tax bills for everybody, whether it's home people at
own homes or commercial properties. And so I don't know how things are going
to shake out. Somebody's going to have to give on something or they're just
gonna have to throw it all away and go with compression, which that's kind
of what it looks like right now, Alexa. You and I sometimes look
back at the twenty seventeen session where the bathroom bill was the big issue,
and we talk about that one day in the Capital where there were the dueling
press conferences, and I believe it was you running back and forth between the
two sides of the Capital to hear you know, Dan pass Trick and Joe
Strauss kind of trash each other, you know, in front of the microphones
and everything like that. This time it was dueling tweets, I guess,
you know they were. They were tweeting out their proposals, negotiating via social
media, which is never an encouraging sign. It's interesting to me looking back
at that twenty seventeen session where you saw a similar kind of back and forth
at falling apart at going to a special session, that being on a big
kind of social issue. This session, the big social issue fight was cleared
up, you know, fairly easily and early in the session, and property
taxes, the kitchen table issue is the one that goes to the end.
Is that just a result of the changing dynamics of the legislature. What's going
on here? You know? I was, I was looking back on that
dueling night of press conferences when many of us left the capital at eleven PM,
kind of wondered what we were doing with our lives, and it was
that hasn't changed, That's true, but it was actually it was Friday,
was six years to the day of that which was an eventful day in many
other ways this time around. But I remember thinking back to that night and
thinking that there probably wasn't much more room for the dynamics between the Speaker and
the Lieutenant Governor to become more heated or more pitched than it was at that
time, and particularly that night where they were so clearly and openly kind of
sniping at each other, but still kind of doing it through legislation, right,
it was still a little bit more tied to the specifics of the bill,
a little bit less of about personalities. There was no you know,
California Dad at the time. There was no mention of anyone's abs at the
time, and it was just sort of but I remember thinking like, it
can't get much worse than this, can it? And I think this session
has you know, I think Speaker Feeling said, get I'm coming through,
get out of the way, and I'm going to stand for what I want
my chamber to push for. I think the question is at the time,
Speaker Stiles was very clearly trying to hold his members from taking a vote they
didn't seem to want to take. It seemed like there was general consensus.
That seems to be mostly the case on property taxes. But this time around,
it feels like Speaker Feeling has taken a much more prominent role in the
actual negotiating, whereas last time Stiles sort of said, here's an alternative that
we're willing to pitch. We're not willing to negotiate at all on this,
and that was sort of the end of it. This time, this sort
of last day negotiating was pretty unusual, but I think also showed that didn't
actually matter that they're willing to negotiate, because they were at odds the whole
time. Anyway. Yeah, and the reason this was so kind of tense
on this last day. Usually the last day is sort of a ceremonial day.
The rules say you can't pass bills. But the reason that that was
a little bit different this time around was because this idea was so popular in
the legislature that they had enough votes to suspend the rules and go around it.
If I'm not mistaken, both of these both chambers version of the versions
of these bills passed unanimously or if not unanimously, then very close to unanimously.
But they couldn't come together on something that was so popular to kind of
save this session. And so Renzo, we go to a special session.
You know, very you know, people were out having their siny Die parties
last night, and you know, some of us were at one, and
it was you know, it reminded me of a scene now I'm going on
a big tangent here, but on the Show Down to Navvy when they were
at this lawn party and the patriarch of the family announces to everyone that England
has declared war and going into World War One. It's the same thing.
Someone just shouts out we're officially in a special session, and everyone just kind
of groans and goes on from there. But what do you think changes in
this now June special session? How do they come to some kind of agreement
we set reset the clock here and what everyone? Someone gets less dug and
then they were on the past one hundred and forty days. Yeah, well
it's you know, definitely that reset, right, and also you know,
putting that compression guardrails on it, it really streamsline the streamlines this process.
Explain that what what, how does how is this different? And what do
you mean by the compression and guard rail? Yeah, well now they kind
of have like a you know, their bullet point list of what they can
address, right, and so you know they're not going to be able to
go off and push their own agenda's here, right. Yeah, So Patrick,
this was a pretty i think a smart gambit by by Abbott. He
you know, in the special sessions, the governor determines what the lawmakers can
and can discuss. It's not like the regular session where pretty much everything goes,
and he set two items for the special session agenda, property taxes and
border security. But for property taxes, I'm reading from his press release last
night, legislation to cut property tax rates sold by reducing school district maximum compressed
tax rate in order to provide lasting property tax relief for taxpayers. So basically
what we saw was an argument over appraisal caps or homestead exemptions. Here he's
basically saying, do it this other way, and let's take out these two
items that yare y'all are fighting about already. Yeah, it's it's a pretty
bold move. I mean, as we just acknowledge, you know, it
eliminates the two proposals that were on the table that divided the House and Senate
the most to homestead exemption an appraisal cap. And so we already saw the
Lieutenant Governor say yesterday in one of his tweets, you know that it would
be unacceptable to the Senate to have a special session on property taxes that only
included compression. So you already have a divide between Abbott and Patrick and the
Senate there. It seems like the House is more on board with a compression
only special session I know we were all kind of tuning out yesterday, but
I did see a top House leader, Dustin Burr, tweet compression in all
caps from the exclamation point. So it seems like the House maybe a little
more on board with that. But you know, it does put up a
real meaningful guard rail, though. Can I jump in on that. One
other interesting dynamic at play over this whole debate was within the business community.
When Morgan Meyer presented HP two, the House's original plan, you saw all
these really big business organizations come out. TAB was one of them. I
think TAM was there as well, and state their preference for the Senate's homestead
exemption led aspect of this. Now, the Senate also had a business side,
the inventory tax credit and a business personal property tax increase. But then
during that same hearing you saw smaller businesses come in and prefer the House's plan,
stating that they wanted to see a cap on their appraisals. As far
as compression goes, I think that breakdown is probably no longer there because everybody
will prefer the direct compression of rates. But I suppose it's possible that we
see another rift in the business community on that, depending on how things develop,
right, And the way that you can use compression is basically, because
there's so much money in the state coffers right now, so so much rays
from tax revenue and everything like that, they're essentially able to take some of
that those dollars, put it towards school finance, use that money that would
have otherwise come from property taxes, thus lowering the property tax rate in order
to do so. The other part of this is whatever they allocate, they
have to be able to reallocate in two years, and so that raises a
lot of very difficult questions. Are we going to have this even close to
this records or plus that we did this time? That's an open question.
I think. The other part of this is that in twenty seventeen, when
the House and the Senate were at ledge over the bathroom Bill, the House
was very much fighting against something. This him around, they're both fighting for
something. And I don't know about y'all, but the sort of legislating by
Twitter that we saw yesterday didn't leave me much hope about where this could go,
particularly when you think about the compressed timeline of a special the increased attention
on only one issue and the involvement of the governor, who I think we
can say historically has not been sort of the strongest hand legislatively, where we
have had this pattern of legislative session of special sessions almost in every session he's
been in charge of that, he's overseen as governor rather and so I think
there's the dynamics of a special are always kind of weird. Everyone's upset that
they're still here or had to come back. They'd rather be with their families.
There's been all of this sort of public sniping and back and forth.
There's the dynamic of they're both having to fight for something and someone's going to
be seen as giving up on something in one way or another. I just
think specials are really weird legislative monster, and I'm not as hopeful as maybe
others that they will actually reach a deal. I hope they prove me wrong,
but I don't. I wouldn't sort of count on this being a like
five day session in and out and we've got a deal on this. I
was I was a little surprised that he didn't kind of give them a cooling
off period, which seemed like something maybe the lawmakers might have benefited from.
Even if it was just a week to just like go home, be with
your family, forget about how mag you are about the person on the other
side of the capitol and kind of, you know, come fresh and happy.
But you know, Renzo, we're diving diving right into it, right,
So what do we watch for in this debate? I mean, is
there a I mean, is is there even really room for there to be
that much disagreement here or is it mainly just about how much money do they
want to spend on this now? Well, my impression would be the they
would try to hammer this out kind of the back room that they've been doing,
right, and not come forward with proposal until they're you know, maybe
and present their initial plans. But then kind of the same process we've been
having, everything plays out at that top level, and so it might be
pretty quiet until we actually get to the end here. So the other big
kind of abbot priority that's that's left out there, not on this special session
agenda, but we expect it to be coming for another one is school choice.
It not the same kind of drama this time around. It just sort
of faded away. Of course, we have the Senate kind of gambit where
they attempted to attach it onto a broader school funding bill that would have included
teacher raises and you know, billions of dollars to the school districts. That
obviously did not work. The House did not go for that. We're looking
at possibly, you know, maybe later in the year a special session on
that topic. But Patrick, I mean, I think the big question is
where where are the votes in the House going to materialize for something like this
to pass. The House has had many opportunities to kind of state their feelings
on this bill, and every time they've had the opportunity, they voted in
a way to suggest that they do not like the idea of school choice.
Yeah, we we we saw support for this grow in the House this session,
but not in a way that at least in my view, suggests that
there's a surefire path to actually passing it off the floor. And so I
think this is one of the issues for a special session that will require a
serious regrouping by the Governor's office and figuring out, you know, basically,
how to how to change that that math. I mean, unlike with property
taxes, you know, you know, property taxes, they all agree it's
a priority they're just you know, fighting over the best way to do it.
On this issue, I mean, you have widely divergent views within each
chamber about whether it should even be done period. So I mean that is
an issue that I think we all expect to be in a special session later
this year, potentially a single issue special session later this year. But I
think that's one where the Governor's office is really going to have to regroup and
reconsider, you know, it's approach. Brad. How happy do you think
Abbott is with how the session has gone so far? Well, looking back
last night on where things all fell, only three of his emergency items actually
passed, and you know, if their debates within the Republican Party itself on
how sufficient those actually are, but nominally the legislature passed three, so at
least four on the table. Still, I imagine he's pretty upset about that.
School choices the big question mark, I think all the other stuff.
If he decides to put it on on the special and we see property taxes
and border on this one, I think there's a pretty clear path to getting
something done. But he's put so much political capital into school choice. You
know, once the rubber really meets the road on an actual vote in the
Texas House on a school choice play. Because we haven't had that, we've
had test votes. How much does Abbott push the envelope on moving maybe tentative
yesses to full yesses in the House among Republicans or people that are on the
fence to his side. I don't know what we're We don't really know how
much the governor. He wasn't on the House floor a lot this session,
and so I would probably guess that once we get to that school choice special,
he will be more present on this, especially for this issue, because
it has been such a pet project for him. I will say justly,
looking over the past several sessions, the House has always kind of been,
you know, bedeviling to Abbott, and he's tried many different tactics already to
try to exert more influence on the House. You know, he's played the
inside game, you know, having private meetings with lawmakers and private small group
meetings with lawmakers in the House. He's played the outside game, you know,
trying to campaign against you know, campaign against members who don't get along
with his agenda. You know, the big tactic this session was to go
to individual state House districts and hold these public rallies with parents advocating for education
savings accounts, and so I think that's very pessimistic for Abbot going forward,
and that you know, he's had this very i think complex and strained relationship
with the House for many years now, and he's tried a lot, and
you know, I don't know what other trick could be in his toolbox to
try to gain more influence with these House Republican members whose votes he needs for
this kind of a plan on vouchers. I think the other component is that
these folks have to go back home and defend these votes, right, And
you could argue maybe having the governor as a sort of forceful endorsement of a
member would give them some cover going back and you know, the financial support
he can provide during campaigning season. But I'm not sure that that has emerged
as sort of a way to maybe entice folks to come over to his side
on some of these issues. He's an incredibly popular governor with Republican voters,
and so you could argue there's quite a bit of sway he could do when
supporting some of these members, but they would have to if that offer were
made, they'd obviously have to trust that he'd follows through on that, And
I think there have been instances in the past. I think it was the
PreK funding from way back when, where folks maybe didn't feel us supported by
him as they thought they would. So it's a complex set up for him
when he's trying to get these votes. And we also have of, you
know, people in this realm who are really supportive of this idea, who
are willing to spend money and maybe back potential primary challengers. There are members
of the House who might already be worried about some push from the right based
on their vote on impeachment. You know, there are some leavers to you
know, maybe not even Abbot specifically or Abbot you know, explicitly, but
for folks who are supporting this to try to kind of put some pressure on
these lawmakers in the next few months if if we do indeed get a fall
special session on this topic. I mean the other thing, you know,
you and I Patrick have talked about this before, the idea of like does
is there another kind of shoe to drop in terms of a leverage play here.
We all remember in twenty twenty one, when Democrats broke quorum to stop
the voting bill, he vetoed the legislatures funding in the budget with a line
item veto, kind of forcing them to come back. You know, that's
a little bit harder of a move to defend if you're doing it around like
school funding or something. But is there some kind of you know, thing
that we're not even thinking about right now seeing right now that he might be
able to pull, to try to kind of, you know, kind of
turn up the pressure on these folks. I guess, I guess we'll see
what happened. I can't speculate what it is, but it is true that
Abbott is a governor who has been tried to get very creative with deploying his
executive power when it comes to legislative log jams or controversies. So whether it's
you know, the veto power, bully pulpit power, or just the we
just I mean, we kind of just saw an instance of it last night,
where, through his power to call a special session and set a specific
agenda, he set an agenda on property taxes that eliminated, that took off
the table two of the most divisive proposals that were dividing the House and Senate.
So I can't speculate what it is, but it is true that Abbott,
you know, when confronted with these legislative crises before, has tried to
use his executive power creatively and aggressively, like I heard the Democrats feeling after
this session. You know, I think when you look back to the end
of last session, with the quorum break that came to the Sunday before siny
dye, and then obviously they were gone for quite a bit of time there
there, I think it's still an open question how successful that even was to
their end. Right, obviously the voting bill was going to pass either way.
They sort of put their confidence that Congress was going to act in some
way or another, and then they didn't, and it was all sort of
for not Then they come back this session after redistricting and they don't have any
gains, They don't have a whole lot of power, and so I think
that if you look at the session as a whole, there were some big
moments for them where they used the procedural rules, particularly in the House,
to bring down legislation. You could argue that HB seven, the Border Enforcement
Task Force going down not not ultimately being passed is a big win for them.
I think they would probably all would say that I thought it was notable
that the item on the special on the Governor or special Session agenda is a
pretty I would know how to characterize it. I guess it's a pretty simple
measure compared to what some Republicans were after this session. But I think it's
a mixed bag. I think that it depends on how you sort of measure
success if you're a Democrat in the Texas legislature. They definitely were able to
keep at least one big priority item. That doesn't mean it won't come back
though, right, And so whether that win is sort of temporary, well
we'll have to wait and find out. But you know, when you are
so outnumbered, and I think this was a session that sort of reminded us
that when you are so outnumbered, even when you are able to defee things
like they originally did on the border bill, it come they came back and
just added it to another bill, right, And so it's it's sort of
h you always have to be sort of measured in in deciding whether the Democrats
had any sort of big wins or not, especially when you're still out numbered.
I'll add they're probably you know they I think they had some procedural definitely
a procedural wins, like you said, I think there were some substantive wins
too, Like with the the legislation to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage for up to
a year. Um, that was something that failed last time brought up,
you know, the House brought up back this time feeling pretty vocally championed,
and it got across the finish line, and so, um, I think
they had some procedural wins, but also some substantive you know, some actual
legislation getting passed. They sure, absolutely, but they can't really do it
without at least of course in that case, I mean, feeling support was
probably pivotal. All right, let's talk about impeachment this. We're not even
a week I don't think. From when we found out that the House General
Investigating Committee had been looking into Kim Paxton, you know what matter a as
it had been called up until that point, some of us assumed that that
was a completely different matter A. Such a dramatic moment when it was revealed
that had happened, leading up to Saturday, a historic vote in the House
to impeach Rinzo. You were, I believe, in the Capitol that day.
What stood out to you about the vote on Saturday? Yeah, well,
I mean House leadership they seemed pretty certain that they had the votes,
and while you know, some of those speeches that were happening on the floor
made some folks wonder, hey, you know, maybe there's some break here.
You saw moderate Republicans, moderate Democrats them, you know, either voting
against impeachment, Harold Dutton Democrat the present not voting and so it seemed like
I was kind of shifting for a moment there, but then when the vote
it's dropped, I mean, it was pretty resounding, one hundred twenty one
members of the House saying Ken Paxton needs to you know, go to the
Senate trial. So, I mean, it was pretty dramatic to hear it
all laid out there before members. I mean, it was all things that
had been in the news for years, but to hear you know, each
member of that committee lay out you know, the timeline, what you know,
potential laws were violated here. Um, it was you know, bringing
props as well. It was a fascinating you know, four five hours on
the House floor. Yeah, I would say, you know, as someone
who watched this, it was of course shocking studying to see that this investigation
was going on. Um My kind of assumption, as they kind of continue
need to go through with this, is that they wouldn't have gone through with
it unless they were pretty confident that they had the votes to get it done.
So it passes through, you know, they unveil, unveil the details
of their investigation. The GI Committee votes out, recommends impeachment. We're moving
forward. And then the morning of the vote on Saturday, Ted Cruise comes
out against it. And then I think in the first few minutes maybe of
the debate, maybe a couple of the exact timeline I'm not sure on,
but Trump puts on his social media about a half hour before that he's opposed
to it, and so then you're starting to think, huh okay. Then
we see these debates go on. There's a lot of kind of you know,
I thought, fairly effective arguments by the opponents about the questions of due
process, how you know, whether this was kind of rushed and sloppily put
together. You see Travis Clardy come up and speak against it. Okay,
that's interesting. You see Dot and come up and sort of speak against it.
Dutton a Democrat, Okay, And you know, I kind of lose
my confidence here, like, is this actually going to happen? Maybe maybe
this is going to fall apart um? You know, I felt like this
seemed like such a sure thing up until about the last fifteen minutes, and
then they hold the vote and it's one hundred and twenty one to twenty three.
Yeah, a resounding kind of margin there, Brad. I mean,
one thing that I was just really struck by was the confidence of mirror of
I would put feel in in this to kind of bring this to the floor,
and to see it passed by such a wide margin, I thought just
was a kind of striking show of how much control he has wielded over this
cha chamber, of the confidence he's had in these chamber. To bring something
like that forward at such a quick time, well, I think that it
was always going to pass. You know, there's what's sixty four Democrats in
the House, So the delta there to get a majority for impeachment, for
recommending appeachment is eleven Republicans. Because Slayton is no the slatencyat is empty.
So the question was just how close to one hundred and forty can we get?
And I think we saw I know there were members that you know,
we're entered the day at least leaning for impeachment who ultimately did not because they
were convinced by especially the Representative John Smithy speech about exactly what you said due
process. Was this rushed at all? Is there enough question here to warrant
voting against this? And you know that's going to spark a pretty serious backlash
against Republican members who ended up voting. Yes, we're already seeing the messaging
out there about primaries and specifically this was a Democrat led impeachment. Sixty one
Democrats voted for, sixty Republicans voted for. So that's going to be put
on mailers, you can guarantee that. But I think as the big question
of does this impeachment go the full distance is always has always been in the
Senate, the House is no fan of Ken Paxton, Its membership is no
fan of him by and large parts, and it really wasn't. They didn't
need to get a lot of Republicans on board in order for this to move
on. But it was. I think they could have had more votes.
The numbers I was hearing going into it were maybe up to one hundred and
thirty maybe one hundred and thirty five votes. Obviously it didn't quite get to
that point, and that is in large part because of the questions raised by
Representative John Smithy, Travis Clardy, Matt Schaffer, and I think it's up
Republican leadership could have solidified up many of those no votes if they had maybe
not done it. Announced it the week of the impeachment vote. Patrick,
we knew. We've known, basically, you know, since right after he
was elected that Kin Paxon had been under indictment for securities fraud felony indictment.
We've known since twenty twenty that his top deputies have accused him of bribery,
of an inappropriate relationship with Nate Paul, an Austin developer. M None of
this was new, None of this, every all of pretty much all of
this. There were a few things home set exemptions that he you know,
may have had on two houses, but you know, the meat of this
impeachment. Everything was known during the twenty twenty one session. Why was this
rushed? Why why did we end up doing this in one week? You
know, at the end of the session why, I mean, the question
I guess is why now, why is this finally kind of coming well?
I mean, and in the words of House leadership, you know, they're
insisting that this was caused by his u taxpayer funded settlement with the whistleblowers that
he pursued with the legislature earlier this year. As part of that process,
he had to come to the legislature and ask them to authorize the use of
state funds to pay for that settlement. Um. The legislature, including the
Speaker, Dad feeling almost immediately balked at that request, you know, expressing
unease with using taxpayer dollars to um, you know, settle this matter.
And so basically the House has said, you know, that gave us the
opening to further scrutinize this range of issues arounding you know that led up to
um, you know, the settlement itself. So you know, that is
their public account of of why they chose of why you know, um we
got to this point. Um. You know, but they clearly, as
far as I know, they're nothing in the law that says that they have
to you know, conducted this level of an investigation that leads to articles of
impeachment. Um, you know, I think they clearly seized a jurisdictional opening
to try to hold this member of their party accountable once and for all.
And as we've said, he's already very unpopular in the Texas House. He
you know, was a former member of the Texas House. He was part
of the rabble rousing you know wing of the Texas House when he was there,
you know, and is continued, I think, not to be a
popular figure among the ranks of Texas House Republicans. And so, like I
said, I mean, I think they seized a jurisdictional and oversight opportunity to
move forward with something, you know, pretty pretty striking. House members have
kind of taken pains to make clear that, you know, this is a
political process. They have. I've seen kind of the words the statement a
few times since the voter, and even before the vote. This is not
about punishing Kinpacts, and it's about protecting the state of Texas. But it
goes to the Senate where it is a more kind of formal trial, Right,
Alexa, help us game out what this looks like in the Senate.
Is there any chance of the Senate actually voting to convict in this, I
think it's really hard to even predict, given the sort of untreated waters we
are in right now. I think by default you might think, Okay,
well, the Senate is more conservative. You know, there were the same
people who were raising issues about due process and how quickly it went in the
House. We're hoping that the Senate would almost do this immediately and quickly and
get through it very very quickly, which I found sort of an interesting and
kind of opposing arguments even within themselves. But I don't think you can look
at the Senate and not see that there maybe are allies or people who maybe
at least may be more aligned with the sort of Paxton faction of the Republican
Party and then with him personally as well. And obviously there is a component
of Senator Angela Paxton being in the chamber and questions about will she recuse herself
from the process, does the law even allow for that? And if she
does, what does that do for his margins in terms of that two thirds
vote he's going to be up against. At the end of all of this,
I mean, it's we are headed into a lot of unknowns. I
think there's a lot about the Senate that works sort of really theatrically, like
everything is almost scripted. There's not a vote that comes up without the Lieutenant
Governor being almost sure of what that vote is. They don't even do the
whole rold call because they already know the votes before they even cast them in
some ways. And so it will be the unopening for the Senate to,
you know, possibly even go off script in the contrast to how the Chamber
usually operates. And I guess the question is how much room is there for
some tension and maybe some surprises there as they take up this matter. Dan
Patrick, you know, in the comments prior to this event, he's he's
actually giving a kind of talk right now. So I don't know, Patrick,
have you seen all right, that's mostly been criticizing the speaker, So
yeah, exactly. Um, but you know, so the comments that he
has given have largely been you know, we're going to be fair and all
this and everything like that. I mean, where do how do Dan Patrick
and also Greg Abbott kind of fit into this? You know, during the
trial, in the run up to the trial, both politically and just in
terms of Paxson's future. Well, Patrick doesn't have a vote in the in
the Senate trial, but it is true that he wields tremendous influence with the
entire chamber and especially with the Republicans in the chamber. And so I do
think that Republican senators, whether privately republic you know, maybe not looking to
but would be receptive to cuse from the Lieutenant Governor about his views on this.
And so, you know, I think he looms large just because of
his influence over the body, just just politically, not constitutionally in this case.
So that's one thing. And where Abbott stands on this is uh,
you know, he's been totally silent on this matter ever since it came up,
hasn't commented on it at all. Under the Constitution, he has the
choice to appoint a temporary intern attorney general. In this instance, he has
so far not announced any appointment, and that appointment is fraught with all kinds
of political considerations because under the Constitution it's just a choice he has. He's
not required to do it. He could be viewed as putting his finger on
the scale just by the act of appointing someone. You know, I think
that I saw you know, some chatter from Paxton supporters on Saturday or Saturday
that you know, if Abbott does choose to appoint a temporary age, they
view that as basically, you know, an endorsement of the impeachment in some
ways. So it's really politically tricky for him. And while you know,
we're pressing him for answers and trying our best, you know, the political
you know, just speaking in terms of politics right now, the incentive for
him to get involved in this right now is is pretty low. All Right,
We're getting close to the time where folks can ask questions if they have
them. We've got a microphone up here. But while we're waiting on that,
Rinzo, I just want to ask to do you think the focus on
this in the last week played a role at all in hampering the ability to
get some of these other priorities done. Did it distract or take up time
that might have been spent getting for instance, property taxes across? Yeah,
I think there's potential. I think there's some you know, possibility of that
early on that like, hey, there might be some tit for tat here.
You might see some house priorities go down. Might see some Senate parties
go down depending on how this timeline plays out. But ultimately, I mean
it took up, you know, forty eight hours. I'm not sure forty
eight hours really made the difference over the course of this session. And I
mean, yeah, ultimately, I don't think it. I think everything was
kind of set in stone. Nothing was really going to budge beyond what it
did. All right, Very good everyone. I'm sewell Chan with the Texas
Tribute and thank you all so much for coming and welcome Brad, thanks for
joining us. Of all the issues that got of all the legislation that got
passed during this session, which do you think will actually have the most impact
on the lives of Texas is thirty million people? And in all ways,
I think the biggest one will be HB two and two seven, the preemption
bill. You know, the long running feud between municipalities, especially the big
blue ones, and the Republican state legislature. You know, the state created
these municipalities, and so Republicans and the legislature have the viewpoint that what they
gave they can take away, and especially in regards to a lot of these
very progressive regulations that are passed in Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio,
and the jup legislature is tired of, you know, swatting down each
one individually, and so they've taken this field preemption approach. Now on the
flip side, these municipalities believe it is a breach of their local control,
their ability to run their own affairs, and that debate will not end.
It has gone on forever, you know, even when parties were flipped generally
and the Democrats controlled the legislature. There's just always that natural tension because local
officials want to do what they want to do and the state legislature wants to
do what it wants to do. So that one will really have an effect
on the everyday lives of Texans. Whichever way you fall on the merits of
the issue, these local regulations impact businesses a lot more pointedly than say,
just broader state policy does. But now those regulations in nine sections of code
lists, remember it's not the entire the entire code now have to be in
line with what the state legislature lays out. So that was a pretty big
changing of the guard in the way we approach this local government versus state government
issue. I would also just set the budget. You know, of course
that's kind of an obvious and not very financer, but you know, spending,
you know, those those billions of dollars will impact things across But you
know that some of the things I mentioned at the beginning, the three billion
dollars towards public university endowments at the non kind of ut and A and M
kind of system flagship schools, the you know, one point five billion dollars
to expand broadband access, one point one billion dollars on water infrastructure improvements,
the changing how we fund community colleges will have real world impacts. I think
there are questions, you know, those those dollars aren't going to cover every
need to you know, get everyone broadband access in the state, or or
protect our water infrastructure fully to the extent that it needs. But it's a
very significant investment and one that you know, sort of kind of went under
the radar because there wasn't as much fighting about it, right there was people
you know in both parties broadly supportive of it, and you know, a
considerable amount of money to go around to help pay for those things. At
this time, all right, we have another question here. Yeah, Hya,
my name's Claire. I'd be curious to hear more about gun violence in
Texas. You've all day just celebrated there, We're not celebrated. It marked
their one year anniversary of the rob Elementary shooting Santa Fe, the five year
shooting at the high school, we had the Allan shooting. What did or
didn't happen? And do you think government Abbott would ever call a special session
to address gun violence in Texas or what would it take for that to happen.
I think going into the session we knew that politically, you know,
the prospects for proposals to you know, offer new gun restrictions it was pretty
bleak, and you know, unfortunately for people for pushing for that, I
think their expectations were met this session. I think they did have a huge
win. Again that didn't result in legislation getting across the finish line. But
I think everyone on this stage was probably surprised when the House Committee voted out
the proposal to raise the age for certain salt style rifles. I think that
came I don't know, final two months of the session or something like that,
you know, but of course to people pushing for change that wasn't the
passage of legislation. That was just more or less a procedural victory. And
so, you know, I do think that the legislature again declined to heed
the calls for new restrictions on guns. And whether Abbott will whatever call a
special session on that, I don't think that's that's likely. He's repeatedly resisted
those calls over the years. So you know, they're going to continue to
do what they did this past session, which is focused on the concept of
what they call school safety, which is providing more funds to harden schools,
to have armed security on campuses, you know, and to focus on increasing
mental health resources at schools. I expect that to be That was the main
approach this session, and I expect that to be the approach going forward to
the extent there is an approach. One of the bigger reasons why the Republican
legislature, other than just opposing a raise the age in idea for them passing
legislation, is the courts court. Recent court rulings are very much against that
possibility. We saw the constitutional carry law that was originally limited only to twenty
one and up, but a ruling in a district court in Texas said that
that has to be extended to all adults eighteen and up. So the same
dynamics at play there. Now you have a conservative Supreme Court. So if
that issue were to ever get all the way up there, it's chances are
slim denone, I think, but represented Dustin Burrows when asked about it.
Governor Abbott, when asked about it, cited that the court rulings as a
really big reason why it's just a non starter to them. You know,
we did not see a aggressive expansion of gun rights this session, you know,
and maybe that's because they've kind of run out of things to do,
but you know, and twenty twenty one we had the permit list carry,
which was a big major we've we've had um campus kerry in recent years too,
Like it did seem that we used to have a big gun bill every
session. And again like maybe there's there's not any more meat left on that
bone, but we didn't really see any kind of major legislation along. Yeah,
I mean the two points on that, I there's not much left to
do. And if you look at the national conversation, what you know,
gun rights advocates are pushing for Texas has at this point done most of it.
Of course, there's groups that can always find ways to push the envelope,
but I think there's not much left to do. And number two Republican
leaders in Texas and know that it's politically an unpopular issue. It's why you
saw Abbott try to avoid the issue of guns as much as possible in his
re election campaign last year. They see the same polling that you and I
can see internally, and they see that it's it's not a winning issue for
them, and so um, you know that that's I think that's why you
know, the conversation was so limited the set. Yeah, I was gonna
say. I think one of the hardest things about the legislature is that Texans
make a lot of effort to come up to the Capitol and I and to
make themselves heard, to ask for specific things, and very often, not
just on this issue, the legislature votes against with the majority of people who
come to the Capitol ask for. They often vote against what the majority of
public pool of public opinion might show. And it's it's tough because it's it
takes a lot out of folks and I can imagine for the parents of the
children it was a particularly tough thing to go through, to come up and
know that maybe it's not actually going to change. But I think at the
end of the day, for a lot of these folks, it comes down
to the politics, and a lot of these districts are drawn to where the
only thing that matters are primary elections, and this is an issue that very
clearly, at least among primary voters, is a bit of a non starter
for now. Yeah, I do think that, you know, the decision
to put the armed guard requirement back into the school Safety bill, which happened
this weekend, was a pretty significant development. You know, that had been
something that had been proposed in the House, taken out in the Senate,
but but but put back in, you know, in conference committee in the
final version, which I think is you know, clearly a pretty notable development
there. Let's go to our next question, Hi, Jennifer, I am
just kind of curious why is a capital so obsessed with Houston, whether it's
his d takeover and our elections. Who wants to take that? Alexa?
You know a lot about the voting areas here. Let's go to you there,
Houston I think is sort of Houston and Harris County more broadly are I
think, in a lot of ways the sort of epicenter of some of the
political tensions in this state. It wasn't you know, we saw this week
during the impeachment debate that opponents were trying to sort of frame these prosecutors and
this investigative team as sort of Harris County Democrats, when in reality, most
of them worked under DA's when the county was still Republican not that long ago.
I think Harris County used to be a red and then a purple and
now a blue, and it sort of represents this political these political waves that
I think it's safe to stay Republicans are watching for. You know, we
saw in the last round of We're districting how hard they went to sort of
correct some of these suburban districts around the big urban areas that were also starting
to change, where they were trying to hold back some of that and really
short up a bunch of districts that were starting to run away from them.
And so I think Harris County just often tends to be sort of the epicenter
of that. I think it also doesn't help that there there are sort of
easy people to oppose in county. The dynamics around elections and some of the
you know, actual screw ups that have taken place in some of that administration
also makes them an easy target in a lot of ways, where maybe other
counties are able to fly under the radar a little bit more just they don't
have They're just not as easy of a target in that way. I think
the immediate response to that question is, look at the screw ups that happened
in the recent election, something as simple as running out of paper at precincts.
You know that they fumbled the ball on that, and they gave the
Republicans and the legislature who've wanted to reform specifically Harris County elections for a long
time some ammo, and they have taken it and run with it. You
know. Part of it is it's the largest locality in the state and running
an election for what is it, two point three million people is very difficult.
But there have been a lot of a lot of instances of the officials
that are stepping on rakes and causing problems for themselves. That has then led
to ammunition. These state legislators have used against them. All right, one
last question. Great, I'm you're in Shank from Waco, Texas. I
wanted to go back to the local control question. We were talking about it
a group of citizens in my hometown Waco that are interested in approaching the city
council about an anti discrimination ordinance for all folks race, religion, gender,
etc. And I wonder what you thought the impact of that would be visa
what they passed. I've actually advised the group to wait until we see what
the governor signs, because then we can may have a more clear picture.
But what do you think what they've passed will have? What impact will it
have on antidiscrimination local ordinances that are requested for anti discrimination? Zach? Do
you know if that's consider that's part of HB two one two seven? Do
we any of us know? I think there was a discrimination amendment added,
but I cannot recall if it was left in from the conference committee. Yeah,
it may be. I mean HB two one two seven is definitely the
bill that you want to be watching. That's the one that's reaching the Governor's
desk and creates a bunch of new broad categories of preemption, and it could
mention this or could you know be used to try to prevent something like this.
So I think we don't have all the details on that, but that
would definitely be the piece of legislation to keep watching. I'm not aware of
anything else that is reaching the Governor's desk guys of now that may that may
address something like this. Okay, we'll keep an eye on it. Thank
you all right, So that is about all the time we have, so
thank you to our panelists up here, thank you to those in the audience
who came out and joined us, and we will we you know, a
lot more legislative developments to watch, so check out the Texas Tribune, check
out check out Brads Reporting or the Texan and keep listening to the trip cast
for more updates. Thanks everybody. Major sponsor for today's live tribcast is Raise
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