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Patrick & Phelan
Readers will notice that Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker of the House Dade Phelan are not included in the scorecard. This is simply because they do not vote on legislation so we can’t score them that way. It’s safe to say, however, that they both used their power, position, and privilege to harm Texans across the state. If we were going to give them a score, they would both receive a failing grade.
At this point, most Texans know how awful Dan Patrick is. There’s not much more to say. He acted true to form. He treated the Senate like his own fiefdom, demanding fealty from Senators in exchange for allowing bills to move. He makes up the Senate rules however it pleases him and then uses them to advance his corrosive and harmful agenda. Even when the Democrats picked up an additional seat before the session, he changed the rules again so that Democrats could never block any bills.
Speaker Phelan, however, started in his new leadership position from a supposed pragmatic position, having earned bipartisan support to win the speakership. All talk aside, a willingness to be pragmatic and work on common issues was not what he showed. When it came time to exercise his power, he chose to allow several hateful and harmful pieces of legislation to flow through the chamber, making it dangerously easy to purchase a gun, moving bills to discourage the teaching of Texas’s complicated, racist history, and enabling measures to restrict reproductive healthcare and of course, bills to suppress voting access. We do recognize that on some issues, he did play a more “pragmatic” card, at least compared to the Lt. Governor. As one example, the House removed anti-renewable language from the electric reform bill (SB 3) that had been approved by the Senate.
The Senate is in terrible shape.
You really can’t call it a Senate anymore. It’s more like Dan Patrick’s thunderdome. For multiple sessions now, he has changed the rules so that bipartisan support is never needed to pass bills on his agenda. Speaking of his agenda, there was little Senators could do to pass their bills if Patrick didn’t want them passed. Dozens of good, bipartisan bills that passed the House on water and electric resiliency never even received a hearing in the Senate.
Overall though, there were only two “top performers” - both first term senators - Sen. César Blanco and Sen. Sarah Eckhardt. That’s not to say that those are the only two environmental champions in the Senate. Sens. Zaffirini, Menéndez, and Johnson all worked hard this year on environmental priority areas. However, their scores could only be adjusted so much because of some of the votes they made that really hurt in other areas (like HB 17).
Few lawmakers were willing to stand up to polluting oil and gas interests.
When you examine just the bills we scored in which oil and gas special interest groups were involved, it’s clear that there are a lot fewer legislators willing to go against them - even among the Democrats. In fact, more often than not, Texas Democrats voted with Republicans and sided with oil and gas interests over issues of local democracy and environmental protection. We see this in the votes on HB 17 and related bills. Regarding the most important issue of all - requiring weatherization of gas wells and pipelines and robust enforcement to prevent future deaths in future storms - the Legislature was missing in action. That is not to say some legislators didn’t try. In particular, Reps. Donna Howard and Jon Rosenthal made valiant attempts on the House floor to add “teeth” to SB 3, even as Senators remained largely silent on the issue. We also recognize the outstanding efforts of Rep. Erin Zwiener, who helped kill two anti-environment, pro-gas bills through Points of Order that would have hurt efforts by local governments to combat climate change.
Trading votes for bill movement makes scores hard to interpret.
There are some stalwart environmental lawmakers who have worked hard to make progress on environmental protection. However, this session illustrated how difficult trade-offs can be. As an example, Sen. Nathan Johnson somewhat surprisingly supported in committee (and on the floor) several electricity bills authored by Chair Kelly Hancock that hurt renewable energy development overall. While these votes against our position didn’t help his score, we get it: in return for some tweaks to make Hancock’s bill “less bad” (and perhaps some favorable consideration of bills that he filed) Sen. Johnson decided to support Hancock’s bill.
Austin delegation stands out.
With seven of the 10 perfect scores being earned by the Austin delegation, it’s hard to dispute how solid their voting bloc is on environmental issues. Perhaps it is years of watching Austin-bashing by the rest of the state, but Austin’s representatives were leaders on environmental protection, local democracy, and worker safety. They led fights on the House floor, introduced good amendments, were quick to break quorum to defend voter rights, and filed dozens of good pro-environmental pieces of legislation (most of which did not get hearings). Indeed, many of these same members helped form the Climate Caucus, led by Rep. Erin Zwiener, whose district is just southwest of Austin.
The influence of utilities on Uri response bills escaped the scorecard.
The legislative response to Uri is one spoonful of careful and deliberative policy making, but a whole lot more spoonfuls of big-business lobbying influence by major utilities and gas supply companies. At the top of the list is the failure of the legislature to require much more robust requirements on gas suppliers to “weather-proof” their gas supply. From the outsized role of Railroad Commission Chair Christi Craddick, to the influencers of major oil and gas associations like the Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association and Texas Oil and Gas Association, industry players continued to push the incorrect narrative that power companies somehow caused the gas supply to shut off, rather than acknowledging the reality that gas suppliers shut off their spigots hours before the power was even lost.
In addition, the electric utilities and gas distribution companies themselves (electric cooperatives and private investor-owned utilities) pushed hard to make sure they could “securitize” their losses from the storm, meaning customers would pay back those debts over time, protecting the utilities and cooperatives from making more drastic changes. Similarly, transmission and distribution companies like Oncor - the largest “wires” company in Texas - worked behind the scenes to squash major pushes that would have increased energy efficiency goals or allowed better access to distributed technologies like solar energy and storage. In other words, major reforms that would have helped customers were prevented from passing due to backdoor lobbying efforts by the Association of Electric Companies of Texas and their main companies.
Photos: Al Braden, Texas Senate, Texas House