Texas agency review process needs a review
When the Texas Department of Transportation was up for its periodic legislative review in 2009, the must-pass bill became a magnet for every legislative idea that had not already passed on its own.
“There were, like, 200 or 250 amendments,” recalled House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, in an interview last week. “I couldn’t even see the parliamentarian for the stacks of amendments everywhere. It was just ridiculous.”
He has a pretty good memory: An aide looked it up and found there were 222 amendments.
The most important thing to remember, however, was that after months of work on one of the state’s biggest and most important agencies, that so-called Sunset legislation failed.
“It makes a mockery of the whole Sunset process, and it makes me question whether or not it still serves a useful purpose,” Straus said. “So, let’s give it a try, to try to refocus and instill some discipline, and see how we do.”
Many of the reviews done by the state’s Sunset Advisory Commission go more or less as intended — about 75 percent of their recommendations have made it into law, by Sunset’s count.
The commission periodically recommends changes in how agencies operate, revisions to their missions and even whether they should continue to exist.
Two dozen agencies are on the list for the next legislative session, and the appointed Sunset Commission and the agency that supports it are already at work.
Straus named three members — including Rep. Larry Gonzales, R-Round Rock, who will serve as chairman, and former Fort Worth Councilman Bill Meadows, who will be a public member — to the commission last week.
In spite of Sunset’s successes, the fate of that 2009 Department of Transportation bill was entirely unsurprising. It’s a big agency with a broad mission, making it vulnerable to hijackers in the lobby.
State agencies must win legislative permission every 12 years to remain open.
Failures are common enough, however, that lawmakers regularly end their sessions with “safety net” bills designed to keep otherwise-dead agencies alive for another day.
Straus has had enough of that. He would like to restrict the lobby runs on Sunset bills.
Generally speaking, the hijackers have one of two agendas.
The first are regulated industries and other interests that want to revise an agency’s operations or mission in a way that benefits them.
An example would be oil and gas industry lobbyists who have battled against moving regulatory hearings from the Texas Railroad Commission, where they have a lot of clout, to the State Office of Administrative Hearings, where they don’t.
The second group tries to save zombie legislation that can’t survive on its own by attaching it to must-pass Sunset bills.
The Department of Transportation is back for review next year. So are the Railroad Commission, a bunch of agencies that regulate medical professions and the State Bar, which regulates lawyers.
About a year from now, when the legislative session is in its last six weeks, Straus and the zombies and the regulated industries will decide whether and how things have changed — if they have changed at all.
Ross Ramsey is executive editor and co-founder of The Texas Tribune.
This story was originally published April 25, 2016 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Texas agency review process needs a review."