Holdovers and Leftovers

School started last week, so why is Texas still without a new commissioner of education?

The Houston Chronicle asks the question, and it is as fair as any:

Gov. Rick Perry's campaign Web site touts public education as a long-standing "top priority" of his, but the school year began this week with teachers and administrators still wondering who will be the next commissioner of education.

That question mark is one among many with nearly 400 expired gubernatorial appointments this year alone to state boards, commissions and universities.

Senators — worried that Perry is dodging their constitutional role of confirming most gubernatorial appointments — are crying foul.

The drift of that story primarily concerns the state senate feeling as if Perry is pulling a fast one, avoiding making new appointments to many, many posts to avoid the Senatorial confirmation process. It seems like their concerns are well-grounded. Appointments made after the Lege skipped town are delayed for approval until the next session, which is a long ways away in 2009. Holdovers — appointees with expired terms who have yet to be replaced — can stick around, becoming "holdovers."

Legislators commenting on the issue say it is a gross expansion of executive power and everyone vows to address the issue with laws — say, laws requiring new appointments within thirty days of an appointment's end, for instance — will be instituted. However, similar measures died this last session, and if Perry plans to run again in 2010, I can't imagine he wouldn't work a deal to veto such legislation.

Legislative oversight of the executive is an axle upon which many democratic governments turn, and many executives struggle to assert their power as conditionally existing outside the need for or reach of such oversight. It is a tale as old as time, and it is almost always to the detriment of the system they serve within. Outside of the big political theory questions, though, remains the fact many positions have yet to be reappointed after expiration. State Senator Rodney Ellis is after Craddick and Dewhurst to put together an in-between session committee to address the issue, but I don't think that will happen unless either one of those guys wants to pick a pretty big fight.