Saturday, February 17, 2001

Legislature is in middle of a hurry-up game

AUSTIN - Texans visiting House or Senate sessions these days might wonder what state lawmakers are accomplishing.
   After all, legislators are spending considerable time proposing and passing resolutions that honor Texans for wedding anniversaries, birthdays or other milestones. Lawmakers often mill around and don't appear interested in the business at hand.
   A recent day in the Legislature was a prime example.
   House members passed a three-page resolution honoring Secretary of State Henry Cuellar, the former state representative from Laredo. One lawmaker interrupted and asked if they could just adopt the resolution without a full reading.
   "She's almost through,'' House Speaker Pete Laney said as he allowed the clerk to finish reading it.
   Then they adopted a resolution recognizing Texas Federation of College Republicans Day at the State Capitol.
   That's what visitors see.
   What they don't see is the behind-the-scenes work which involves long hours of research, hearings and negotiations by legislators, staff and state employees.
   Thousands of lives are basically put on hold and focused on legislative matters for the 140 days that lawmakers are in session every other year.
   With the help of lobbyists and staff, lawmakers file dozens of bills daily and those are being referred to the appropriate committees. Lawmakers assigned to committees are considering the bills and deciding whether to send them to the full House and Senate.
   Texas legislators are trying to push through hundreds of bills before the U.S. Census Bureau releases population figures in March or April. That's when legislators will devote a lot of their time and attention to redistricting.
   Preparations for redistricting have been going on for months and some lawmakers have already drawn up maps based on preliminary Census numbers. As one observer put it, the Legislature is in a six-inning baseball game this session, trying to accomplish as much as possible before redistricting consumes their time.
   While redistricting will dominate the last part of the session, the House Appropriations and Senate Finance committees are doing the most important work now. These committees, which determine state funding of programs, begin working early in the morning and often stay late into the night.
   This creates a lot of activity at state agencies, which must justify their budget requests to lawmakers. State agencies spend months preparing budget requests. There are dozens of meetings among agency personnel and with the Legislative Budget Board staff, which makes recommendations on state agency budgets.
   And no one knows how legislators will react to the budget requests and what type of questions they will ask.
   State agency officials have been appearing before these committees for several weeks and lawmakers have grilled them on everything from the type of vehicles their agency owns to the ethnicity of their employees.
   This is good because state agencies that spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money should be held accountable.
   Testifying before a legislative committee is no easy task, but it is crucial for state agencies. The credibility of the agency is on the line and failing at this task could mean a budget cut or worse.
   After they testify, however, the work at state agencies is not done because lawmakers often request more information.
   And no matter what the request is, state agency employees nod their heads and say they'll get the information to lawmakers as soon as they can. Agencies realize that you don't slap the hand that feeds you - even when you feel like it.
   So, if you visit the Capitol and see the full House and Senate seemingly doing nothing, don't be concerned. The real work at this point of the session is at the committee level - and at state agencies that are working to justify their budgets.
  

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Ty Meighan is chief of the Scripps Howard Austin Bureau. You can reach him by phone at (512) 334-6640 or by email at meighant@scripps.com.

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