Sen. Burton takes off on wrong track on public’s paid lobbyists
New state Sen. Konni Burton says she won’t meet with lobbyists hired by local governments because of her concern that the issues they would address might be in conflict with what citizens want.
In my 20-plus years of serving in city government, just the opposite is the case. Locking out the paid representatives of municipalities and school districts could result in citizens not getting what they want.
Before explaining further, let me say that I’m glad that a conservative now occupies the District 10 seat in the state Senate and that policies of the left are no longer being promoted from that desk.
However, the freshman representative of the big urban Senate district that is home to more than 40 percent of the people of Tarrant County is on the wrong track with her belief that local government lobbyists are working against the public will.
In the last session of the Legislature, almost 6,000 bills were filed. That’s lots and lots of proposals for new law that our representatives in Austin must work through in deciding on how they will cast their votes.
The reason counties, municipalities and school districts are so interested in what is contained in those bills is because some will impact their sovereignty and threaten to diminish the home-rule authority of local citizens.
As much concern as there is about the influence of lobbyists, they are actually the players in lawmaking whose role is that of protecting the rights of self-government.
Most local governments spend a great deal of time in preparing to advance the cause of local control prior to each convening of the Texas Legislature. Their mission is clear: defend and protect their citizens’ rights in pursuing a higher quality of life as they themselves define it.
Agendas are set by those elected to serve their communities. The very process produces the results of local representatives doing the will of the people.
Those unpaid local officials have neither the experience nor time it takes to keep up with all the moving parts that often and quickly change. So the next thing they do is to find an expert in traversing the complicated and sometimes mysterious maze of the workings of the Legislature.
When contracted, that professional practitioner is assigned the task of doing just what the locally elected officials have assigned to them and reporting regularly to them on how that task is working to achieve the desired objectives.
It’s not the lobbyists’ policies that are being pursued; it’s that of their clients — representatives of the people who just happen to be mostly the same folks who sent the legislator to Austin.
That so many people recoil at the image of back-room maneuvering, deal-making and influence-peddling that appears as the stock-in-trade of lobbyists, the lure of bashing them is hard to resist for those wanting to bolster their standing with voters.
It’s also a good example of the practice of demagoguery that is actually much worse than the role of petitioners plying the halls of the Capitol on behalf of cities.
Instead of appearing to play on the emotions and prejudices of the body politic, Burton would be well-advised to take a position that her door is open to anyone interested in legislation she will have to consider.
In the end, she still has complete control of that one vote she gets to cast and may do so in any way she pleases as long as she holds her office.
Which, of course, will ultimately be decided on the question of how well her actions please those who will have the final say at the next election.
Richard Greene is a former Arlington mayor and served as an appointee of President George W. Bush as regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. mayorgreene@mayorgreene.com
This story was originally published February 20, 2015 at 7:26 PM with the headline "Sen. Burton takes off on wrong track on public’s paid lobbyists."