The Lege This Week: Bitterness and Brinkmanship
Amid the theatrics that consumed the final full week of session, lawmakers still haven’t finalized much of their already-lackluster winter storm response.
The Texas State Capitol Building during the 87th Legislative Session at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas. Matthew Busch
Amid the theatrics that consumed the final full week of session, lawmakers still haven’t finalized much of their already-lackluster winter storm response.
The Texas State Capitol Building during the 87th Legislative Session at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas. Matthew Busch
Texas Observer Staff
May 28, 2021, 9:25 am CST
Welcome to the 87th Legislative Session. Since the last session came to a close in June 2019, Texas has been hit by an unrestrained pandemic and a crippling economic crisis and now the fallout from deadly blackouts. Under unprecedented circumstances, lawmakers are faced with a number of urgent challenges. The
This Week in the Texas Legislature: Behind Closed Doors
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The Rightward Lurch
The 2019 legislative session was applauded for being a relatively sane session that stayed laser-focused on comprehensive reform of the state’s school finance system. In the wake of multiple statewide crises, many hoped that legislators would maintain a similar focus on serious policymaking.
No dice. The legislative session has swerved to the right with Republicans pushing hard for a raft of conservative bills that have long been a priority for the party’s base. That lurch accelerated this week as Republicans in the House and Senate advanced a number of key bills on abortion, permitless carry, and voting restrictions.
The Capitol’s Toxic Culture
News broke last weekend that the Texas Department of Public Safety was investigating an allegation that a legislative staffer had been drugged by a lobbyist who works for one of the most powerful firms in Austin. On Thursday, DPS and the Travis County District Attorney’s Office announced in a statement that DPS conducted its investigation and that “we have concluded that there is not enough evidence to support these allegations and that criminal charges are not appropriate. No crime occurred in this instance.”
The allegations had prompted several lawmakers to ban lobbyists from that firm or lobbyists altogether from visiting their offices this week. But many who work at the Capitol said that there must be a bigger reckoning with the Capitol’s longstanding toxic culture of sexism, discrimination, and harassment. “Legislators banning this lobbyist and his firm is not enough. Change the culture,” San Antonio Representative Ina Minjarez tweeted
House Republicans Reject Medicaid Expansion
Texas has the highest rate and number of uninsured people in the country, by far. Hundreds of thousands more Texans lost their coverage during the pandemic. Rural health care is in crisis across the state, with the most rural hospital closures in recent years anywhere in the county in large part because they can’t continue footing the bill for uncompensated care of uninsured people. Yet Texas lawmakers again rejected a proposal on Thursday to draw down billions in federal funds to expand insurance coverage to more than 1 million Texans.
After just a few minutes of debate on the House floor on Thursday, Republican members voted down a budget amendment from Representative Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat, to accept the federal funds available under the Affordable Care Act and create a version of Medicaid expansion modeled after plans in other conservative states.
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