It's Time to Have a Real Legislature
By David Gurney
Fri, 09/14/2007 - 3:20pm
I know we live in Texas, home of the free and land of the terrified of government, but I think it might be time to acknowledge that we live in a big state.
Texas isn't just geographically enormous, it is also heavily populated. We're the second largest state in terms of population. Texas is home to some 23.5 million people. We have thousands of miles of roads, telephone lines, fiber optic cables and garden hoses all expected to pass whatever their medium is on demand. Our schools educate millions of children and our hospitals tend to thousands of sick and injured every day. Running all that sure seems like a big job to me.
Why does our legislature meet only once every two years? Why, exactly, do we not pay them but a pittance? Our legislators are paid an annual salary of $7,200. I know, they get $128 a day for special sessions, but isn't it time we acknowledge that we need a full time legislature? Texas schools are in trouble. Our health care system is abysmal. Our infrastructure, both state highways and telecommunications, need tending to. Despite a relative lack of legislative attention, Texas has managed to keep itself running pretty well. It's high time we make the leap into the twenty-first century.
Texas needs a full-time legislature that pays its members a living wage. Without it, only people that can afford not to work can really run for office. Texas must be led by the People of Texas... all the people of Texas. That means the lower and middle classes need to be able to get in there and pass laws that apply to their constituencies, and look out for their interests.
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Don't Mess with Texas
By David H Gurney
Sat, 09/15/2007 - 1:47pm
Texas is indeed home of the free, but Texans are far from terrified of government. In fact, I am reminded each winter on the black diamond slopes at Vail that Texans are terrified of nothing at all. It is no accident that "Texas has managed to keep itself running pretty well." The state that governs best, does indeed govern least and our legislature and its low overhead is the envy of the union. California is the only state with a greater population than ours and as I look at the Balkanization, strife, and intrigue of their legislature, I murmur with relief, "God bless Texas." Limited government is one of the hallmarks of greatness and discipline that marks Texans as an unusually proud and independent breed.
David Gurney
Amazing coincidence
By George Nassar
Sat, 09/15/2007 - 8:03pm
Isn't that something, about the names and all?
If you look at the "Balkanization, strife, and intrigue" of the California legislature and think it was somehow worse than our speaker-despotic, legislator-manhandling, phantom-voting, bill-railroading session this year, you're simply not watching closely enough. Sorry. That was the sort of political theatrics that make for stories to future schoolchildren teaching about government by bad example. It was an embarrassment and an atrocity. California had nowhere near the near-coup that we experienced here.
Governing best by governing least has always failed the test of common sense -- it makes much more sense to say, to paraphrase another writer: elect those who think government is bad and you get bad government.
almost darn near impossible
By markcoomes
Mon, 09/17/2007 - 11:49am
The state constitution would have to be amended. I doubt the current crop of legislators, who benefit from the disjointed biennial sessions, would be so bold as to offer up such an amendment to the voters. Preferably the entire document would be written and I certainly do not want the current crop of legislators doing that. If a progressive majority were ever elected to the legislature then maybe the notion of a full time legislature would be a moot point or at most one that meets annually as the two year crystal ball looks cloudy in months 13 through 24. I have said if before and I'll say it again, what I really dream of is a legislature that meets not once every two years for 140 days but rather every 140 years for two days.
Democratically yours
Mark Coomes
http://markcoomes.com
The Texas Legislature - You reap what you sow or in this case you cannot sow if you do not reap.