Eye on the Lege: Inside the 87th Texas Legislature – Episode 4: A Stunning Conclusion

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[0:00:21 Speaker 0] visit LBJ dot utexas dot e d u welcome and thanks for joining us for our eye on the ledge, the LBJ schools podcast series on the texas legislature. My name is Sherri Greenberg and I’m a professor of practice at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin. I served in the texas House of Representatives from 1991 to 2001 and I currently serve on the boards of Austin, Smart City Alliance and the Austin form of technology and society. I’m here with Larry Gonzalez of push Blackwell strategies, a veteran public servant and former member of the texas House of Representatives with more than 25 years of experience here in texas. To say that texas is 87th. Legislative session has been a wild ride is an understatement indeed, but let’s start off by setting the scene, texas lawmakers walked into the capital in january for a session unlike any they’d ever known or could have expected the covid 19 pandemic had forced legislative offices to close and staff to work from home, which set things up to be rocky right off the bat with members and staff having worked remotely, they had no time or ability to get to know each other or develop the kind of personal relationships that are fundamental to trust and communication and governing in a legislative body. We know that the texas legislature is a body that functions on trust and on relationships. So I think Larry, it’s fair to say that we started off with a session that was set up for a communications breakdown. Is that a fair description? It’s absolutely fair. And what’s interesting is we knew this was going to happen. Our colleagues across the state, across the country, in other states, they do meet your rap. And so and so I had a lot of colleagues that I’ve met over the years who were functioning during Covid when it was completely shut down. So I thought that texas would have a eight months, nine months opportunity to look at best practices and see what other states did to resolve these communication issues. Right, open government transparency issues for some criticisms. And I told all my clients, look, here’s the deal. When we come in january, we would have learned by now what works and what doesn’t work across the country. The problem is nobody else figured out first. So yeah, so we walked into january, there were no best practices. We couldn’t look around the state and see what everybody else had done. So we were starting from scratch, just like everybody else was an amazing 89 months later and it just set up some really serious, I guess, communication breakdown and how we communicate. Not all offices were closed. It varied, right? There were some are very varied greatly. And even remember the House administration took a poll of incoming members to this legislature and ask them, when will you feel comfortable being back in the building? And it ranged it ranged from let’s go Day one fully operational too. I will be there and my staff will be there when a vaccine is in place. Right? And let’s not forget, with 150 members, you see that kind of variation and difference between the House and the Senate. Right. Larry. Absolutely. I mean, even the House adopted certain rules for the procedures of the floor, and the members had to provide every day in the Senate. You have to have a negative coded wristband to interrupt the gallery. Right? So even in texas between each chamber, the rules were very different. Yeah, I want to focus on that for a moment because I think this set the stage for a situation where you couldn’t form those relationships right between members of the House and between members of the Senate. But it also set the stage for what we saw, which were really a continuing dysfunction. Um, at a level we probably have not seen in recent years between the House and the center. Not to mention, you know, mass, as you said, testing um, politicization among House members, among Senate members between the House and the Senate, just from the beginning regarding how they were going to conduct business during covid 19. And then, of course, we had the physical separations. You don’t have members of the House who have the ability to get together for lunch, and, you know, after hours, you don’t have members of the Senate who can do that. You don’t have members of the House and Senate together their staffs. We know from experience that that’s very important for the staff to be able to form those relationships, right? Larry, Absolutely. And what this is such a such a people business, and it’s such a communication person to person business. That when individuals are siloed in their offices, door’s locked, even the staff, to your point doesn’t get to know each other. The members didn’t have that 1st 60 days of dinners and lunches and being able to learn more about each other personally, their background, their family situation, kind of what their experiences are, what their strengths are, what the concerns are. And so you didn’t have this, you know, kind of cross pollination of conversations in the building. What that means is when you get to the difficult votes and you get to the difficult conversations which will inevitably happen. They were strangers talking to each other. You just didn’t know each other. And that’s such a huge point to make. For the people listening is this is a relationship business. And when you’re sitting across from microphones back mike from each other, and you don’t know each other, it’s a much more different conversation to have. It is, it’s based on relationships and on trust. And so, we had barriers from the beginning, not just physical, but these barriers with communications and with not having those relationships and that trust build up. And then, of course, what did we see in february? We saw the storm, right, yuri, we saw what I call storm gate, the power outage. And uh that took an enormous amount of time and resources from the legislative session, not to mention that people um members and their constituents, uh many many of them across the state were without power and heat and water, some of them for a week, some of them without water for even longer. We did have one interesting side note to that situation, which was that we had a fleeting moment of democrats and republicans in the Legislature joining together and rallying around their constituents, um in these hearings that we had in both the House and the Senate regarding the storm. Um and we had I think an atmosphere of cooperation um regarding rallying around the storm, but it was it was fleeting. The diversity of texas has always been its strength. And also the difficulty, right? When you’re when you have such a vast state and the priorities and the issues affecting rule versus suburban versus urban versus south texas, it’s so great that you have you sometimes have a difficulty happening conversation, but with the storm hit the storm put everybody on the same level because everybody got it. Now, I guess you could argue that guy’s not in ercot el paso and kind of east texas. Maybe not, but for the most part, it put every member on the same field, which is we have to fix this. And that was encouraging to see when you had such a bipartisan effort of members all focused on one singular problem that did take a good two or a few weeks breath out of the room. It took all the breath out the room and not saying that it shouldn’t have. But what happens is you then really, really missed those two weeks at the end. Right. Well, right. I think what you’re saying is, look, there was limited oxygen in the room to begin with. Just with Covid and all the barriers we talked about then you had several weeks of the storm. And so there was, there was very little oxygen left for this session. And I think that that did play into what we saw as far as timing. But it also, um, was a situation where you had another very pressing issue to deal with. And in fact, people are still discussing whether or not more legislation is needed around the storm. There was some legislation that passed, um, and went to the governor regarding weatherization and the communications system, but it did not deal with some of the financial issues that people’s constituents are still facing. So we’ll see what happens with that. But you brought up the diversity in texas and it is a very diverse state bye by geography, by culture, race, ethnicity. Um, you know, population in so many ways with the the demographics to and what we have seen is this continuation of, you know, state versus local right? Um we all know that uh state law supersedes local, but this, you know, uh state control versus local control. And we’ve also seen some as we’ve discussed opposition or conflict between the branches of government here in texas. Um, the pandemic and the freeze. Um, you know, turn these tensions, I think, into full blown riffs. When we look at state versus local and when we look at control between the branches of government. So we saw that during Covid 19, the governor had certain powers and abilities regarding rules with covid 19. So did local officials. But I think that we’ve clearly seeing backlash both from what the local officials, their actions that they were able to take. County commissioners, county judges and um, mayors and also the governor’s actions that he took. Then you have on top of that the protests that we saw around uh, George Floyd um last year at this time. And then reactions and policing and uh actions that have been taken in a session. And bills that went to the governor of regarding police budgets, voting and uh, you know, um, some actions that were taken um by the city of Houston and others, you know, the motor voting and others. So there’s there’s been a lot that was either local control versus state control. And then add on top of that. Um, the feeling among some that the governor went too far with Covid and that the legislature should be able to rein in or at least come into session after 30 60 90 days. Um with that, so larry, what are some of your thoughts of what we’ve seen on these state versus local battles and also between the branches of government? It was extremely complicated and it wasn’t necessarily consistent in, in my opinion, from issue to issue. So I have always been a local control guy. I have always been a person who believes that the best decision, uh, he who can fight the fire best is closest to the fire, right? So if my school districts can make a decision, they should make it in my city, my county, the state depending on where it falls. I just think that that the most local level possible to making those decisions and they should be held accountable by that voting jurisdiction, let’s say so. The particular issues this time though were so fundamental in they were so big sherri, right? I mean, right here is huge and because all of a sudden you’re talking about the health and safety of texas. That to me, to me, to me this breaks down into local control versus kind of state control. But, and I’ve always been a control local patrol gallant, I said. But what happens in a local control issue regardless of the issue, is that you wind up with a patchwork of bills and laws. Let’s take texting while driving right for years county the county city by saying the laws are all over the place and you never knew from one jurisdiction to the other when you were in violation of law and you wouldn’t know, for instance, if you’re traveling to a city never been before. So I do believe looking control, but I also believe that it sets up a patchwork of legislation. I think those two prentice are just solid. However, when you come into something like the health and safety of texas, right? And what is right for all of texas? Does the state have a role in that, you know? Yes. Even though I’m a local control guy, when you’re talking about a pandemic and global pandemic right? Not seen before, does that elevate something to where the state has to get involved? Probably so, probably so, yeah, I think the question is, and this is one that I wanted to focus on Larry, certainly we saw with the mask mandates and differences in opinions from one county or city to the other between the governor, frankly and some of the governor’s constituencies. But what we’re seeing now is not just, I’d say backlash against maybe some of the measures that various um county judges or mayors took, but against the governor himself. So, what we’re seeing now is backlash from a certain, I guess, part of faction of the republicans that are part of the governor’s constituency, a backlash against some of the actions that he took during the covid 19 pandemic. Those bills did not pass. What do you think will happen? Do you think um that and we’ll get back to this in a minute with a special session. But do you think that this was unique, seeing backlash against the governor? I think your point is very important to make. And I want to I want to reemphasize it because when we say state versus local understand that this time, the definition of state really pitted uh like minded groups traditionally against each other. So when I state, when I say state, uh the governor took that role, and by state it meant the governor let the legislature, which is also the state took exception to that, right? And so even the local versus state argument is more difficult this time, because state is defined differently by different people. And clearly there were a lot of people in Legislature who felt that they should have a say in what those executive orders look like, how funds are expended during a pandemic. I mean, the Legislature felt like they were left out. It is the purview of the governor to do what he did by law. So it’s it’s complicated, Yes, because even even this, as we defined the state disagreed, right? So I think what you can say is that this session was unique with the pandemic, with police, with voting rights, with with many of these issues, but particularly with the pandemic, what you had was something that we don’t typically see. And that is that these tensions turned into full bone riffs, not just between perhaps the governor and or the legislature and some county judges and mayors across the state, but a really full bone rift between Governor Abbott and some within his own Republican Party and Governor Abbott with some in the Legislature. And that I think also plays into something else that I wanted to um really point out and turn our attention to. And that is the House versus the Senate and the Senate versus the house in this legislative session. You know, in the course of doing the people’s business, we know that it’s not always smooth that it does, as we’ve said, depend on relationships between members of the House, between member Senate, but also between the Senate and the House and every legislative session. We see a point where the House may say the Senate is not passing and, you know, getting to enough of our bills or the Senate may say the House isn’t taking up enough of our bills. And both sides of the chamber have these accusations. And they say that there are delays in stalling tactics. But I think it’s fair to say that this session saw a new level of discord between the House and the Senate. Did you see that Larry? You know, it felt that was the case very, very late. Right, right. You know, and again, to your point, you you always see that happening, right? There’s always a House versus Senate, you’re holding our bills hostage. You know, the House adjourned for, for a couple of days there, in that the Senate took a lot of offense to, um, if you look at the House calendars, I mean, they they as always, eventually, you know, get that part of the work done. The Senate took great offense to that. I know there was one clip where one of the House chairman, you know, on the Senate floor and, you know, lieutenant governor saw him and said from the podium to the chairman, uh the displacement of the Senate. Right. And that was kind of unprecedented as well. Look, it happens every session a little heightened this time, I think so. I mean, just because again, of the difficulty of that time in session, the difficulty of the relationship and the difficulty of the of the subject matter that was being discussed, it was tough. It was right. It came, yes, it came towards the end and I don’t think that there was any more delaying on one side versus the other, but I think there was greater discord and it did come towards the end. And so that brings us to what were some of the biggest fights about in this legislative session. And um, what we saw is a return to something we didn’t see last session, but the session before and that was some of these hot button social issues, right. Some of the red meat. Um, you know, we had a lot of critical issues to consider this session, whether it was health care or the storm or education, lots of high profile issues. But we also saw a return to these high profile and very emotional social issues including abortion, guns, transgender issues. Why did you see that larry? Yes. You know, it’s two things. One it’s where we are as a country in debating of some really uh serious issues, controversial issues if you will as well. But also, you know what, to me, it’s also a direct result of a lot of uh social media, the the idea that there’s so much information out there. Not always accurate. I mean, you know, I think I think accurate information on social media roles at a certain pace. I feel that inaccurate information on social media roles at an exponential pace. It seems so hard to get in front of the things that are not true. It does, it seems so hard to get in front of all the misinformation or disinformation because people can choose their own echo chamber, right? Right. And and in my office we call that chasing ghosts, right? I can I can defend any vote that I made. I can’t defend a vote that doesn’t exist or it’s something that didn’t happen. I mean, how do you how do you prove that right? Yes, I had the same issue. So I think social media really pushes a lot of these buttons harder than they have in the past. But let’s be clear, I mean, just because one group thinks that these social issues aren’t important or aren’t a priority, doesn’t mean another group agrees with them because because there are voters who do think that those issues are priority and should be important. And so I think from leadership perspective, you have to consider the entire state. Again, it’s diversity and develop a calendar and a floor calendar that addresses what they feel the people of texas want. And again, different people they disagree on on on what’s important, but you did see some really, really difficult conversations. Uh, it’s hard to watch sometimes when there’s such good people on both sides who fundamentally disagree. And it’s really, really hard. Sure you’ve been there, I’ve been there, I’ve been there, there are some really tough boat you have to make, well not only tough votes, but emotions run very high. And I do, I do think that we saw not only the misinformation and disinformation from social media, but what we saw is that texas is not immune from what happens in the rest of the country. And I do think that the national uh conversations the frankly discord and dysfunction that we saw nationally. Um we saw bleed over into this legislative session and that we saw now um amidst all the other issues that the state of texas had to deal with these hot button issues coming the forefront this session. And as we’ve mentioned, there was already limited oxygen in the session and we know that these are very emotional issues that takes a lot of time. But I’ll say this sherri look, I I always believe that every elected member there is placed there by their constituency to represent that district. Okay. I was there to represent house district 52. That’s my job. That that’s who sends me there, that’s who I’m accountable to. So my freshman year there was a wonderful, wonderful colleague of mine of the opposite party. She’s a democrat. She was my desk in eight and we would have these long conversations and we agreed on probably not that much do. I think she was a wonderful member of her district. Absolutely. And she would say the same thing about me now, we couldn’t vote for each other’s districts, right? But as long as you’re representing your district, as long as you are standing firm for the beliefs and values and ideals of the people who sent you there. I have zero problem without anybody votes regardless of party if you’re there and you’re voting for your constituency. I get it. There were several times when I would sit at my desk and you’d be listening to this front microphone, back microphone exchange. It certainly wasn’t a conversation that I could agree with. But I understood why they were doing it. I understood who they were standing up for and total respect, total respect for that conversation. I think however, that that mentality is lost. Right, right. I I agree with you that it is a representative body. We were both state representatives. That’s different than the judiciary where judges opine on the law. So you’re you’re voted as a state representative. Now, sometimes you do have the question of how, you know, at what point does leading? Right on a certain issue, take precedence over representing. But that’s a whole nother issue. You are elected as a as a representative. And one thing that I wanted to add, Larry, I remember when I was first elected, um somebody who was very wise and I think this was probably the night before session at some event. Um he said to me, Sherri, look around, you’ll see a whole lot of members, you know, who are very different, and you’ll say, I wonder how this person or that person ended up here, and he said Sherri, if you go look at their districts, what will you see? You will see a whole lot of people just like them. So that brings that brings up that it is a representative body. Um but something that you just said now really resonated with me and it gets back to the times and what we’re saying nationally and the the discord and that is that the type of discourse that that we’re seeing uh now and um that I do think has changed over the years, but I do want to uh note that the final night of the session, or it was the day before the session actually ended. It was the last night, as you will recall for the House to pass a Senate bill um ended with democrats, um walking out and breaking a quorum over the the Senate bill seven, which was the uh we’ll call it the voting bill. Um This was quite a dramatic night. It was preceded by the Senate voting out what came out of a conference committee as you know, when a bill has two different versions, the House votes out of bill and the Senate votes out of bill, and they’re not the same, you can’t have two versions of the same bill is lost. So the speaker of the House points five members of his accusing to a conference committee and lieutenant governor points five members of his choosing to a conference committee. And those members um go into a back room, That’s the way it works. And typically they can only make changes in the bill where one version is different from the other. However, in this situation, they added language to the bill that was not in either version. And at about, I think it came out of conference committee at about six a.m. In the morning. The Senate had a vote. It came over to the House and was before the House on that next to last day of the session. And then the House had a vote on a resolution to allow the bill to come to the floor, even though things have been added in conference committee that were neither version um that that really set the stage, wouldn’t you say for this very dramatic night? This has always been a source of conversation on the house floor. Which which again, you explained it correctly. The conference get together as a conference committee assigned to uh address the differences right now. Normally under rules, the only thing conference table are items that exist in either version of the bill. But but the rules do allow for the inclusion and discussion of things not previously contemplated. What that is. It’s called outside the bounds. You’re going outside the bounds. Resolution, correct, correct. The resolution that you talk about is a resolution for outside the bounds allowing the conferees to discuss these things that had not been discussed before. The resolution is supposed to lay out all the changes of of of new items, right? Of new items that are included in the conference committee report that we’re not in either version of the bill. And there were many was there was there were there were quite a few. To me. To me, the question is then, how much time does the body each body have to review the resolution of the outside the bounce normally, this happens every single session and you know this as part of the budget as part of the budget, right? It’s always a part of the budget so that this is not something that is unfamiliar to the members, but at this late date with time running out with a number of changes that were made. That was the difficulty for a bunch of members. Was not having the ability to read the resolution the outside the bounds resolution in time before they were voting. So that’s right. It came I think it came over out of the Senate like 6 30 in the morning. There were hundreds and hundreds of pages that were I think 67 new over 22 23 changes uh without time uh to review it. And yes, that very much as you noted, um was a sticking point for a lot of the members. But now, but to be clear, Sherri so on social media again, you see all kinds of things and people say all kinds of things. There was so much accusation that that’s what they had done was illegal or unprecedented. There were all these terms being being thrown around. I was like, look, I mean, I can point to the rules and I can show you that yes, that these are the rules, but when social media takes over and starts the accusations of a lack of activity and there should be rules to govern this. Well, there are well, and this is this is an important point because the speaker of the House followed the rules. Okay. The rules allowed for a vote on this resolution to go outside the bounds. The rules also allowed for what the democrats did to leave the floor, take their keys, break the quorum. And the speaker of the House stood by. The Democratic members made a statement saying that they the rules allow for them to walk out and break the core, um so that the Speaker of the House and both of those stood by the rules, there were a lot of changes and this would be a whole another discussion. But um you know, there were a lot of specifics in this bill that people um very much um debated. One was, you know, voters with disabilities being required to prove that can’t make it to the polls. County election officials not being able to keep polling places open late. Um There were discussions about poll watchers not allowing drive through voting, um doing, you know, changes with local voting. Um election officials, um distribution of polling places was argued, but a couple that came in late were the what we call the souls to the polls. And that was a change on the sunday before the election day in early voting, stating that the polls would not open until one p.m. So that was one change that we saw at the end that was hotly debated. And another was uh when a new provision allowing judges to overturn an election with a claim of fraud. So I think that that those were two that were very hotly debated and uh that also played into the uh breaking the quorum because those were ones that were added. But I think it is it is very important to note um that the speaker of the House um allowed the rules to work. Whether it was the vote on that resolution to go outside the bounds or whether it was the members of the Democratic members of the House uh walking out and breaking the Corum, which put an end to the recession because by midnight uh those bills had to come out of the Senate bills out of the House. So that brings up another very interesting wrinkle this time Larry, which is special session. You know, texas is somewhat unique. We’re not alone but somewhat unique in that what we call the regular session of the texas legislatures by any every other year. It’s set out in the constitution, It runs from roughly the middle of january till you know, may 31st or june 1st and that is the regular session. However, the governor and only the governor can set a special session can call a special session a special session last 30 days. The governor can call more than one that can be back to back. That certainly happened when I was serving in the Legislature. Another unique feature is not only is the governor, the only one who can determine in state that we’re going to have a special session, but unlike the regular session, the governor determines what the members of the House and Senate can take up during that special session, which is the opposite of the regular session. The regular session, it is solely the members of the Legislature who filed bills and then of course, the speaker and lieutenant governor and calendar’s committee or the rules of the Senate determined what comes to the floor. But in the special session, the governor determines what can be taken up. So we know that there’s going to be a special session in the fall, probably in october um, for redistricting. Because every 10 years after the census, uh, everyone across the country, all the legislative bodies, you know, county commissioners, anybody where people are elected by a geographical area by a district have to reapportion one person, one vote have roughly the same number of people in the district. And they do that by redrawing the boundaries by redistricting. That could not happen during this regular session because we didn’t have the census numbers. We’re getting those in a few months. So we know that there will be a special session in the fall, probably october for redistricting. But a new battle I would say has emerged actually between members, the three Republican leaders in texas, the governor, the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the House regarding having other items added to that special session or perhaps having other special sessions before then to address some of these other issues that didn’t pass. And some of them are those hot button issues, voting bail, reform, transgender issues, not allowing local governments to lobby the legislature. Do you think we will see a special session regarding these? I think there’s so much to unpack what you just said that. That’s interesting is that I have always been and the rules give me the rules and I’ll play by the rules to be changed. Well then we can change the rules right? They do it every session, right? They certainly rules and rules. So certainly. But I always say that learning the rules gives you an extra edge. And look, I use points of order and that’s part of the rules. That’s part of the rules. That’s that’s how that body operates in his. That’s right. In this particular case, we don’t have a during the regular session. We don’t have a strong governor type of type of system. No, our constitution, in fact, is a week governor. That’s exactly right comma until special session. Because then he is the most powerful, right? Because he alone decides when and what’s going to be discussed. Again, to the point of you represent your constituencies. The other elected members have their opinions and express their opinions and what their priorities are for special session. And you can float them up to the governor as ideas, but it is his decision and his decision only on when and what those are the rules. Right? So, I mean, we’re going to see posturing by a lot of other members who who just want to make sure that their constituents here them on what they think their priorities are. But in this case it’s up to governor habit to decide what needs to be heard. Remember? I guess half of the 17th session, I guess 2017 session, there were 20 items added to one called special session for 30 days. I’ve also seen it as have you? I’ve also seen it where it’s, you know, I think under Governor perry early on maybe uh maybe 13, there was a special session on transportation. There was a special session on this issue. I mean, it was it was clearly you have 30 days members to figure out this one issue what Abbott did was, hey, here’s up to 30 days. Here are 20 issues. This was last, this was last summer that you’re speaking of. Yes, I think I think I was still a member during that. So it may have been that’s why I said the 20th the summer of 27 because I’m still a member for that one. Right? Because after last session, I want to point out that we did see a 22 years ago after that session, we did see that summer special session with many items on it. So what you’re talking about Larry, correct. And in 20 and also in 2013, governor perry called us back three times right on transportation issues and, you know, the body needs to each chamber needs to determine how they’re going to handle those issues. What’s interesting to me about a special session is, and this is why I’m okay with redistricting not happening in a regular session. Because as you know, during redistricting, this is a I mean, this is a intra party person versus person, my lines versus your life. I mean everybody knows each other. My my first session of the Legislature um was a doozy to use a technical term. We had redistricting and the state was under court orders for, you know, prisons and uh for education and for so many other things. And and it was unique in that it was the only time I know of that the Legislature did not pass during the regular session, the one bill that must pass and what is that? The budget, It did not happen. And we were called back into special session during the summer immediately to pass the budget, the one bill that has to pass. And then we had back to back special sessions over other issues including school finance. Then we were called back into a special session. Um something I remember quite well because I was expecting my uh a child any moment. We were called back into special session repeatedly to deal with a school finance and other issues. So it is not unique to have special sessions. It’s not unique to even have them back to back or to have um multiple issues on a special session. But I think the point you get back to here is no matter what the speaker might think or feel, or the lieutenant governor might think or feel it is the governor and only the governor who can set the special session and determine what the members can can take up during that special session. And that’s totally the opposite from the regular session. Well, and I like I’m okay with the district in being in a special session because as you know, that is such a difficult process for all 150 members. That what happens is, and of course I did this in 2013. I mean 2011 what happens is other legislation winds up getting held hostage. It winds up getting used as bait. It winds up getting, you know, used as leverage. So if I had this super super. And if this happened to me, super super import legislation that you want done, but somebody wants these three precincts out of your district, right. And so you start seeing this little leverage game being played. So at least if redistricting is in a special session in and of itself, the focus is on those lines and what that body will will will will ultimately look like absolutely larry. And I like that. It’s that it’s that it’s uninterrupted by other bates switching being held hostage pieces of legislation. And you bring up an interesting point which I saw too. And not only does redistricting take up so much time and create animosity, but it doesn’t just create animosities between people of different parties, between democrats and republicans. It creates animosities between people in a delegation. Whether it’s Harris County, Travis County because they’re they’re fighting over the lines within their own delegation, who wants which properties and who wants to uh look people, people have turf and they’re trying to protect it as incumbents. That’s just a fact. It also brings, it brings back a memory to me to between delegations when when we were doing redistricting in Travis County, when I was in the legislature, all the members of Travis County got together and we said, we’re going to agree amongst ourselves. We don’t want to have, you know, dysfunction within our delegation. We don’t want to have a fight on the floor of the House. Let’s just, you know, let’s just agree among ourselves. And so we did. And we said, we in Travis County have agreed. You know, we had to, everybody had to give up some things that we agreed. And so that was in the bill, the redistricting bill that came to the floor of the House when it came to the floor of the House, though there was a change uh, that had been made and not. And and there was an amendment, not not by by us, but by somebody um from another, you know, who lived elsewhere. And the change was actually to my district. And um, it actually would have made my district a little, I guess, better or easier for me because I originally had a, you know, a swing district of 50 50 and it had to change during redistricting because it was vastly overpopulated. But this amendment would have made my district probably clearly better for me and somebody else’s district in my delegation worse for them. And so I think people thought that I would support them on this America. And in fact I did not, I opposed it because I said this is exactly what we in Travis County wanted to avoid, Right? We agreed on our districts. And even though yes, this would make my district better for B I’m going to oppose this amendment and we did defeat it. Remember in 20 and 2011, if I’m remembering this correctly, we’re on the House, this is special session and we’re going to redistricting. And and there was some disagreement in the Harris kind of delegation. And essentially the speaker says, okay, Harris County, you’re going to go to this conference room, you’re not going to walk out until you’ve all agreed on the map. Right? So the rest of us went to the lounge and we watch the playoffs for hours. Right? And this was this was Harris County. Right? Yeah. And we’re just, we’re in the lounge watching basketball waiting for Harris County to come out with. So this is not a unique situation with Harris County Larry because the same thing happened when I was in the Legislature and Harris County came uh, to the floor. There was not agreement and it was all done on the floor of the House. Well, something’s apparently Larry don’t change, but this was certainly, um, quite a unique, uh, session of the texas Legislature. We knew it would be with Covid and for some other reasons, but there were things that we couldn’t predict also. And uh, it’s clear that we’re going to have at least one special session. We’ll see if we have more, as we’ve noted that is a, a power that rests solely with our governor. And um, for now we’re in a wait and see on the special sessions or session larry. Thank you so much for joining me today and thanks to everyone who tuned in for this conversation and for the other episodes in our texas legislature series. Please visit LBJ dot utexas dot e d u to find all of our eye on the ledge content. 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