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Article Excerpt
THINK OF THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH Texas Legislature as an adolescent phenomenon. Republicans, giddy about their new driving privileges, leaped behind the wheel and careened down the road, hitting a few curbs and cats along the way. Democrats, their car keys confiscated, muttered a lot about living under a dictatorship. * In some ways, two sessions happened simultaneously. Let's just say that the Texas House is from Mars and the Senate is from Venus. Temperatures soared so high in the west side of the Capitol that Democrats fled to Oklahoma, whereas the Senate's equanimity was preserved by its self-imposed rules requiring bipartisanship. * Democrats were cheered by constant sniping among the all-Republican leadership--Governor Rick Perry, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, and the first GOP Speaker in 130 years, Tom Craddick--over the state budget. While Perry defined the session's mission (balancing the budget, enacting tort and homeowners' insurance reform), what he chose not to work on--namely, school-finance and tax reform--spoke volumes about his administration's priorities (repaying contributors, enhancing party power, ducking tough decisions). * The criteria for our lists of Best and Worst legislators have remained unchanged for thirty years. The Best legislators work hard, understand the process, check their egos at the door (usually), and tall the truth. The Worst legislators don't do any of the preceding. This session, especially, the pickings were slim, but somehow we found 10 good folks. As for the remaining 1717 Well, we hope it's just a phase.
Have Mercy
BEST! Teel Bivins
REPUBLIC, AMARILLO, 55
He was the point man for the good guys on the most important issue of the session. He spent his days and nights fighting the bad guys, and it almost did him in. With the Legislature facing a $9.9 billion shortfall, it fell to Teel Bivins, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, to fend off the ax-wielding House and the cleaver-waving governor's office and produce a budget that met the state's needs without raising taxes. * Budget hearing can be monotonous affairs, with bureaucrats droning on in endless acronyms. Bivins changed the course of the debate by scheduling hearings to portray what a pared-down budget would look like and who would be hurt the most. One afternoon, as the committee listened to more testimony about proposed health care cuts, the doors to the hearing room swung open again and again to the soft hum of electric wheelchairs. Soon the aisles were jammed with paraplegics who had come to beg lawmakers not to cut state funding for home health aides. The faces of committee members registered deep empathy. Reality had sunk in. * From that point on, the Senate focused on needs, not numbers. With the help of Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst, Bivins produced a bipartisan list of 23 senators who favored more spending without raising taxes (for instance, using money from the Rainy Day Fund and postponing some state payments). House members, seeing that they were about to be forced to vote for draconian cuts while the Senate was getting credit for making them unnecessary, demanded that their budget writers loosen the purse strings. The course was set toward a budget that would show as much mercy as possible. * The final budget negotiations with the House were excruciating. The level of spending was lower than Bivins wanted, but at least he had a deal. He asked himself, "Was it enough?" Late one night, when all but a few details had been worked out, he sat in his office and wondered if he could have done more for higher education, kids needing health insurance, the disabled, and the elderly. "I didn't want to let egos get in the way," he sighed. In a capitol brimming with lawmakers greedy for attention, he never let himself forget that writing a humane budget was a task too important for gamesmanship.
She Cares
BEST! Dianne Delisi
REPUBLICAN, TEMPLE, 59
Dianne Delisi has a peculiar idea about politics: She thinks that you can succeed just by coming up with good ideas, working hard, and being nice. Well, that might work for the president of the PTA back home, but everybody knows that the way to get ahead in the Capitol lies in making powerful friends, raising the flag of your ambition, valuing loyalty over independence, and learning how to manipulate the legislative process to your benefit. The system is particularly cruel to women who are classy and--dare we use a description that's deadly in politics?--sweet. So here's to classy, sweet Delisi. Patronized and punished in the Democratic years (she helped Speaker Craddick mount electoral challenges against incumbent D's), she had a great session, doing things her way. * She came up with good ideas. Delisi solved one of the session's biggest dilemmas: how to fund the state's red-ink-stained trauma hospitals when no money was available. A staffer came across a New Jersey plan to assess points against drivers who speed, cause accidents, or get ticketed for DUIs; drivers who accumulate six points must pay large penalties to the state to have their licenses renewed. The rationale is that bad drivers cause trauma injuries, so they should help pay for the treatment. The program will raise $200 million in the first two years after the law takes effect, then $240 million a year after that. * She worked hard. She lobbied colleagues to co-sponsor her bill, signing up more than two thirds of the House in support of it. In the meantime, she had to fend off the governor's office and later the doctors, both of which cast greedy eyes on that huge pot of new money. * She was nice. When Senator Florence Shapiro, of Plano, likewise discovered the New Jersey plan, she wanted to use the revenue to fund Governor Perry's traffic-mobility bill. Delisi and Shapiro reached a handshake deal to split the money. * Delisi has become more partisan over the years, which is not surprising: Her son, Ted, is a Republican consultant and her daughter-in-law, Deirdre, works for Perry. But she remains a conservative who cares about education and health care and talks about helping the "kiddos." Says a Democratic colleague: "She cares. She tries. If all one hundred fifty cared and tried, we'd be in great shape."
Leader
BEST! David Dewhurst
REPUBLICAN, 57
For thirty years our policy has been that presiding officers are not eligible for the Best or the Worst list except in exceptional circumstances. These are exceptional circumstances. David Dewhurst began with the lowest of expectations and ended with the highest of praise. The former land commissioner's election as lieutenant governor last November touched off speculation that senators would strip him of the powers of the office. Everyone assumed he would take his cues from the more experienced members of the Capitol triumvirate, Governor Perry and Speaker Craddick. Yes, he had been a successful businessman, but did he have the brainpower and the political savvy--not to mention the personality--to handle the job? Could a starched and somewhat rehearsed ex-CIA agent crack the fraternal code of the Legislature? * Yes indeed. He met with every senator, not to talk but to listen, and flabbergasted them by taking notes. He told lobbyists who had supported his Democratic opponent, John Sharp, that he would not hold it against them. He assembled a superb staff. And he made committee appointments that delivered on his pledge to engage R's and D's alike and take the best ideas from each. * Having put himself in a position to govern, Dewhurst then made the defining decision of the session: While Perry and Craddick pledged to erase the mammoth budget deficit through spending cuts, Dewhurst announced that he would instead identify "essential services" and look for ways to fund them without raising taxes. A huge sigh of relief went up all over Texas. * Dewhurst and the Senate kept hitting the bull's-eye. They cleaned up the House's tort-reform mess. They avoided the blowup over redistricting that brought the House to a standstill. They even came up with a school-finance bill that slashed property taxes in half, as if...
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