GOVT 2306

State and Local Legislatures

This is the first of three sections designed to give an overview of the

three branches of Texas Government.

This section contains background information about the legislative

branch in general, as well as some description of the legislature at the

state level.

But the point here is to get used to what a legislature is all about, and what role in plays in the governing

system.

Special attention is given to the unique role that state legislatures

play in the federal system.

For an overall look at the legislature, you might want to click

through the Wikipedia entry on legislature. They also have a page

on the Texas Legislature, and if you look to the bottom of the page

you’ll notice separate links to each of the 82 sessions held by the

legislature.

The Texas Legislature entry in the Texas State Historical Association website provides a good historical

look at the development of the legislature overtime.

The Texas Senate also has a booklet available that briefly

explains how the Texas Legislature works.

There are many similar resources available, I’ll provide links here and

there.

You might also find this website worth looking through. The NCSL is an interest group that focuses on

issues important to state legislatures.

National Conference of State Legislatures

Legislatures also exist on the local level. Cities however are the only local government that has what

can be clearly defined as a legislature.

They are called City Councils.

Other local governments are headed by commissions and

boards that do not have a similar legislative function. They have limited powers defined by the

state.

Counties are headed by a locally elected commissioners court, and single purpose governments are

generally headed by elected boards.

Their functions are restricted by state law – more on this below.

Question:

How much power should a legislature have? Since the

legislature is specifically tied into the general population, this is also

a way to ask, how much power should the general population

have in governing?

Professional

v

Amateur

A variety of states have legislatures that are designed to meet regularly between elections, pay legislators

full time salaries, and provide funds for large staffs to allow for

effective constituent service.

These are professional legislatures. Legislators are considered to be

full time employees.

They tend to be in states that have more of an activist orientation

towards the role of government.

Other states, including Texas, have legislatures that meet for short

periods of time and are paid small salaries.

These are used in state that want a more limited legislature.

These are amateur legislatures. The idea is that legislators should

work part-time and spend the majority of their time working their regular jobs in their home districts.

This is a simplistic analysis, but states have at least two different

ways to look at the role legislatures should play in the

governing process.

One quick point:

The legislature is the democratic branch of government. It is

specifically designed to represent the diverse interests that exist in

the state (or whatever unit of government it exists in).

While this is a simple point, the process for providing democratic representation can get complex

quickly.

As on the national level, legislatures are generally

composed of people (called legislators) elected from separate districts spread evenly across the

political unit in question.

This helps explain why state and local legislatures can be

contentious.

Like the US Congress, state legislatures, with the exception of Nebraska, are bicameral. They

contain a House which is closely connected to the people and A Senate which is further

removed from it.

This reflects an ongoing conflict regarding the best way for a legislature to represent the

population. Should it be responsive to immediate shifts in public preferences, or

should there be some distance between the preferences of the population and actions of the

legislature?

Houses of Representatives are designed to be closely connected

to the general population.

Terms of office tend to be short, and each legislator represents a district with a small number of

people.

The 150 members of the Texas House each serve 2 years terms of office and represent approximately

150,000 people.

Senates are further removed further from the electorate.

Terms of office are longer and the districts are larger.

The 31 members of the Texas Senate represent about 800,000

people for four year terms.

The terms overlap, so roughly half of the members of the Senate face

the voters each election.

Notice that the districts in within each chamber are about the same

size in numbers. This is a consequence of a series of court that saw equal court districts as

being necessary in order to provide equal representation.

Unequal representation violates the unwritten principle of “one

person, one vote.”

This was established nationally in Baker v. Carr, and applied to the

states in Reynolds v Sims.

Key point: In a bicameral legislature, each chamber has the power to veto the decisions of the

others.

Laws can only proceed to the executive for a possible signature if it is accepted by majorities in both

chambers.

Many cities – especially larger ones – have city councils.

They tend to not be very large, and their specific function can vary

depending on the specific design of the government under the city

charter.

City council members tend to represent one of two types of

districts:

At-LargeSingle Member

In an At-Large District the city council members represents the

entire city while in a Single-Member District they represent a specific district carved out within

the city.

At one point most districts at the city level were at-large, but this was demonstrated to allow for discrimination since minority

populations were unable to elect any members of their groups to

office.

By carving the city into smaller districts, these groups could be

drawn into a specific district and then they would be far more able

to represent one of their members to office.

The federal government, through the Voting Rights Act has required

cities in Texas – especially the larger ones: Dallas, Houston and

San Antonio – to use single member districts in its city

councils.

Most contain a mix of the two.

Houston has 5 members elected at large and 11 elected from single members districts. Alvin has 2 at

large members and 5 elected from single member districts.

Recall that Texas is covered under Voting Rights Act

An important obvious point needs to be made about districts:

They have to be drawn. This process is exceptionally

contentious. Every state has its own way of doing so, but

ultimately the process is up to the state legislature.

In Texas, this function has been delegated to the Texas Legislative Redistricting Board, and as with all other aspects of electoral laws in the state, their decisions have to

pre-cleared by federal judges in a process outlined in the Voting Rights Act.

This includes the redrawing of state and federal districts.

Some state have independent redistricting commissions which attempt to remove political

people from the process.

Ballotpedia has information on state-by-state redistricting procedures

.

After every census, the apportionment of members of

Congress to each state is changed in order to reflect population shifts. Each state is given the

power to determine what to do with these seats. All have opted to assign each member of Congress

to represent a single member district.

Since Texas has steadily grown over its history, the number of

seats apportioned to it has grown over time. The question for the

Texas Legislature has always been, where to allocate these districts in the state? What will their borders

look like? Who will be represented?

The same questions pertain to State House and Senate districts.

Drawing the borders of districts allows for manipulation. The name

give to this process is gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering can defeat the democratic nature of

representation by altering how different populations are

represented. Population centers can be carved in such a way that a group may be underrepresented.

They are especially effective ways for powerful interests, that are becoming minorities, to break

apart majorities so they can retain power.

Here are examples of techniques:

Cracking

Dividing up a sizeable group into several districts to deny it the

power to elect a representative to a legislature

Packing

Concentrating the voters of some group (racial, partisan or whatever)

in a single district in order to minimize the possible number of

districts those voters can dominate.

Gerrymandering – controversially – can also be used to boost minority

representation.

This can be problematic because if the minority in question is a racial minority,

taking race into consideration can violate the equal protection clause. Race is a suspect classification according to the

Supreme Court.

A second quick point:

Legislative branches have the power of the purse.

This means that they have special power over the collection of

revenue (the establishment of taxes), the level of spending, and

the treasury (the passage of appropriations bills).

It makes sense that the institution designed to be closest to the general population has the

greatest control the purse strings.

This process will be covered more fully in later sections.

Let’s go over the basic functions of a legislature.

Let’s look at five

Law MakingRepresentation

Constituent ServiceExecutive Oversight

Amend the Constitution

here’s a quick comment on each:

Law Making

The most common description of the legislature is that it is the law

making branch of government.

The purpose of the legislature is to provide a venue where laws are proposed, considered and either

approved or disapproved.

That last point is very important because legislative institutions contain internal

procedures that actually make it difficult for laws to be passed. There are many

stages in the process where bills can be stopped.

We will discuss these procedures – the bill making process - more thoroughly later.

A small percentage of the bill introduced are passed into law.

Nationally, roughly 160,000 bills are introduced each year while only

25,000 pass. In 203, 5,592 bills were introduced into the Texas Legislature,

1,384 were passed into law.

Various types of bill that are considered. Here three basic

categories in Texas:

General, Special, Local

A general bill deals with a general matter of public policy and applies to everyone and everything in the state, a special or local bill deals

with the needs of a specific person or group, or in the case of local

bills, a specific defined geographical area.

In addition to bills, legislatures can also pass resolutions, which are

defined as a “formal expression of opinion or decision” by one or both houses of the legislature.

Representation

As the democratic branch, it is expected that the legislature will

provide the opportunity for all interests in society to have their

grievances heard.

The appropriate question to ask is whether this is in fact the case.

Let’s look at two ways to look at representation:

1 – socio-demographic2 - principal - agent

Socio-Demographic representation refers to whether the legislature contains within it the same socio-demographic breakdown one sees

in the general population.

This is rarely the case.

The breakdown of state legislators according to gender, race,

occupation and level of income rarely matches that of the overall

population.

While legislatures have become more diverse, they are still over-

represent males and Anglos.

And legislators are far more likely to not only be highly educated, they are far more likely to be

lawyers and/or business people.

They also tend to be more wealthy than the average American.

Click here for membership statistics

for the Texas Legislatures 82nd Session.

Some of these differences – especially regarding lawyers and business people – are interesting

to note. They both tend to be more tapped into existing political networks that can channel them into politics and elected office.

But the greater point is that legislatures tend to not reflect the socio-demographic breakdown of

the general electorate.

So does this mean they fail in providing adequate

representation?

Some argue that it does, they will be more likely to focus on the

interests of the wealthy.

Those who have the ability to provide them the contributions

necessary to stay in office.

But others argue that legislators should be considered in the same way that we consider any other

hired professional, as people with unique skill sets that are hired to perform a function, and can be

retained or removed from office depending on whether they do a

satisfactory job.

In this case it might be beneficial to have people with legal backgrounds, as well as a

history in the legislature, in order to provide effective representation.

They are “agents” that provide a service to “principals” who evaluate their

performance in periodic elections and retain them if they approved of recent

performance.

Constituent Service

“Constituent” is the term used to refer to the people who are

represented by a member of the legislature.

Most typically it refers to the people who live in the district the

member of the legislature is elected from.

You are the constituent of the person who holds the office in the State

House and Senate, and US House and Senate districts you live in.

If you don’t know who they are, you can find out here.

Click here for a list of the types of things a constituent of a member of

Congress might get for being a constituent.

The staff of members of Congress contain people who focus on

constituent service. Less money is available at the state level – especially

Texas – to do similar things.

Texas provides each member of the legislature about $10,000 a

month for staffing.

That ain’t much, so members have little ability to process requests for constituent service. This falls in line

with overall efforts to restrict governmental activity in the state.

Interesting link:

Here’s a website promoting software that helps legislative

staffs with demands for constituent service.

But “constituent” can have more narrow meanings as well.

Members of the legislatures are generally elected by being

members of a political party that promote a certain agenda that is

more likely to benefit certain groups over others.

Their constituency might then be better thought of as being those

people who provide electoral and financial support for the members.

It may be more likely that the legislator is more likely to

introduce and fight for legislation favored by them.

One of the factors that can explain whether a member of the legislature can effectively

represent their constituents is how much they know about the

legislative process, specifically, how much experience they have about how things are done in the

legislature.

Seniority

Senior members – those who have held office for a while – tend to be

more effective then junior members.

Click here for the seniority order of individual members of the Texas

Legislatures’ 81st Session.

This complicates efforts by some to impose term limits on members of

legislatures, because the less members serve, the less

experience they have in the process. They can be ineffective

legislators as a result.

Executive Oversight

The legislature has a special role to play in overseeing the actions of

the executive branch.

This is part of its broader responsibilities with the system of

checks and balances, and it also applies to the judicial branch as

well.

Legislative committees are established and have a direct connection with some of the specific agencies within the

executive branch.

We will cover committees in a future section, but think of a

committee as an official group of legislators charged with reviewing legislation over a specific subject

matter, and then with the ability to oversee how the executive agency

charged with implementing the law is doing so.

Here is a list of committees in the Texas House.

This gives you an idea of the range of subjects covered by these

committees.

Committees regularly conduct oversight hearings – and can do so

when the legislature is not in session. Any discoveries made

during these hearings can lead to future legislation focusing on those

discoveries.

This helps explain why the legislative process – and public policy formation in general – is

never ending.

Amending the Constitution

In previous sections, we looked over the Texas Constitution and

discussed the restrictions it places on governing institutions.

We also looked at the fact that the constitution has been heavily

amended since its original ratification.

This has been done in order to allow government to do certain things it

would otherwise not be able to do as a consequence of constitutional limits.

Click here for a quick description of the process. If you are very ambitious click here for the TLC’s list of amendments

since 1876, as of March 2012.

Ballotpedia provides a description of the amendment process across

all states.

Proposals to amend the Texas Constitution begin with a 2/3rds

vote in each chamber of the legislature, and then must be

approved by a simple majority of the voters in a statewide election.

Note that the governor has no role to play in the process.

Internal Organization

Here are a few words on the internal organizations of state

legislatures.

There will be more specific information about this in

upcoming sections.

Leadership positions

Presiding OfficersParty Leaders

Committee Chairs

Each chamber is headed by a presiding officer.

In the House of Representatives, the position is called the Speaker.

In the Senate – at least in Texas – the position is held by the

Lieutenant Governor.

When we discuss these positions more deeply, we will analyze the factors that make these positions

powerful, or not.

With very few exceptions, legislators are elected to office as

members of one of the two dominant parties in the nation – the Democrats and Republicans.

But while these two parties dominate the US Congress, they

tend not to dominate stet legislatures.

Nevertheless, members of each party tend to meet as members of party caucuses in order to develop strategies for pushing their goals.

As mentioned above, state legislatures have multiple

committees that focus on specific issues.

The individuals who head these committees, occupy positions of

power in the legislature.

State Legislative Elections

Members of all legislative offices are elected. Meaning that they

have to campaign.

Ballotpedia has a section devoted to elections in state legislatures.

Here’s their page focused on Texas elections in 2012.

A little history:

The Colonial Legislatures

Some background reading: The Emergence of Colonial Government

.

A little more history:

The evolving Texas Legislature