Even without the poison of congressional redistricting, legislators return next week with a bad taste from the last session. Many believe they cast a number of bad votes; some out of ignorance, some out of coercion.
For instance, the House overwhelmingly rejected college tuition deregulation several times last session. But in the end, Speaker Tom Craddick insisted it be inserted in the final appropriations conference committee bill which gets only a straight up or down vote. Many members felt they were misled by assurances of minimal tuition hikes from university officials and are still angry at the parliamentary procedure by Craddick used to coerce the vote they did not want to cast.
And anger over Gov. Rick Perry's toll roads are not just a Central Texas issue. Most legislators had no idea what was in the behemoth transportation bill last session and were as surprised as their constituents around the state when they discovered what they had voted for.
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Legislative challenges
Legislators should look to the past before heading into the 79th legislative session.
 
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Cuts to the government-subsidized Children's Health Insurance Program helped defeat two prominent Republican legislators in the last election. Health care needs of the poor and working poor did not go away. They just got shifted to the vastly more expensive and inefficient emergency rooms that you and I pay for through county property taxes.
One price of leadership is that pressure must sometimes be used to get legislators to take unpopular positions. But the huge freshman class of 2003 has now learned that legislative politics is not a team sport, even if one party is in supposed control. Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Craddick have their own interests, ambitions and constituencies which are frequently at odds with those of representatives and senators.
The most important function of state government is public education. Based on their experiences from two years ago, legislators would be well advised to sustain a healthy skepticism as they take up school finance this year.
The Legislature functions best when members are not docile to the leadership. After all, they are there to represent the people who elected them. The independence that characterized legislators in the 1990s was a rare commodity two years ago.
