Apr 23rd 2024 – Policy and politics in the Texas Senate’s interim charges

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Second Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party, because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is, these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm.

[00:00:24] At what point Must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m jim henson director of the texas politics project at the university of texas at austin Happy to be joined by josh blank research director for same texas politics project.

[00:00:47] Good late morning, josh. Thank you Good late morning And a nice day it is out there. It’s beautiful. Very nice. It’s, you know, I mean, it’s like, Oh, it’s so lame to talk about the weather, but I feel like when you live here, it’s just [00:01:00] a sweet spot. It’s so nice right now. It’s really, let’s go back. Let’s do this quick.

[00:01:04] Should we wrap it up? All right. That’s the weather. All right. So, uh, you know, today we’re going to look at something we thought about trying to sort of jam in last week. And it turned out that would have been a bad idea since we, you know, went on at some length last week anyway. And, and this, you know, when you start digging at it, so a couple of weeks ago.

[00:01:25] Uh, you know, forgive us for not being just hot off the presses, but we had other fish that were frying here. Um, a couple of weeks ago, uh, Lieutenant Governor Patrick issued interim charges to Senate committees, always a, uh, uh, a big day in capital circles. I mean, I was talking to the production team, like, what are you guys talking about?

[00:01:46] You’ve been talking about some, the big topics in the last couple of weeks. They were going to get a little more niche today. It’s like Christmas. Yeah. A little, but a little more niche in terms of kind of public interest. Yes. But. It’s funny that you say that I was thinking about the fact that, you know, assuming we, we, [00:02:00] we record a full podcast, it’ll be like two weeks ago, we’re talking about, you know, all of first and announcing, then we’re talking for an hour about the contract with Texas.

[00:02:07] And now we’re going to talk about the interim charges. Well, in between there, we did, we did, uh, Oh, we did the election. So that’s right. Okay. That’s true. So that was our, that was our, I think that’s kind of what was our general interest. That was, you know, we did it and we did something kind of, you know, We do something a little more national, you know, I think we’re about 500 in terms of relentlessly niche versus some glimmer of general interest, but that’s where we like to be.

[00:02:31] So it goes. Um, so, you know, the interim charges lay out the work that the Senate committees are charged with during, you know, what’s left of the interim before the 89th legislative session, the legislature seat. And then the session starts, uh, in January of 2025. Now, not coincidentally, I think we’re still awaiting interim charges from the House, uh, which as a body has a lot more to [00:03:00] do during election season than the Senate.

[00:03:02] And I think, you know, there’s probably a subtle or not so subtle, uh, hand added to that, you know, in terms of these, uh, these charges being announced. But, you know, we look at the charges, you know, as a way of thinking about the transition out of the fairly remarkable 88th session. And a way to look for leading indicators into the 89th, but, you know, as you start unpacking these, you also see some kind of gestures towards the moment in various ways.

[00:03:34] So it’s a mixture of all these things. Yeah, and I should say too, I mean, I 100 percent agree with that in most of it. You know, to my mind and from where, where I sit personally is to look at sort of the political tea leaves of it, both now and in the future, it’s also, you know, important to say that the interim, you know, charges do generate a lot of work and sometimes in some areas more than others that really do kick off the session.

[00:03:55] So I don’t want to be dismissive and say it’s all politics, right? Although I want to focus on the politics of it, [00:04:00] but the work produced actually oftentimes is really important. Well, I’m right. And look, look, I mean, to me is, is usually the case with interim charges. You know, there’s a mixture of substantive policy, you know, and, you know, all things being equal, the legislature doing what it’s supposed to do in terms of follow up and oversight of implementation.

[00:04:24] Just because the legislature only meets to make laws 140 days out of every other year doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of like legislative work to be done during the remainder of that time. And, you know, for people that are, you know, following, you know, that are, you know, stakeholders mostly, you know, there’s been a lot of rulemaking, you know.

[00:04:40] rulemaking has been going on. I mean, things continue to churn on, um, although there was some, you know, weirdo, some, some examples of weirdo mixes of rulemaking during the session, but we’ll, we’ll set that aside for now. You know, so the list is going to, is, you know, inevitably going to mix policy and politics, you know, both in its [00:05:00] substance and, you know, in a couple of places in this document, interestingly enough in its language.

[00:05:05] Yeah, just directly. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, there’s actually. You know, for those who think, you know, no, no political language is most appropriate. It’s certainly more than that, but I was actually a little surprised, not surprised. I would find it notable that there’s actually, you know, a little less political language in here than one might expect, given the moment and given the.

[00:05:29] So it’s more about the people involved. Yeah, I agree with that. So, you know, when we look at this, committees are given their usual mandates to check in on implementation of recent legislation, mostly from the current session. Um, and it was a busy session, as we said, so there’s lots of, lots to do. But, you know, we’ll, we’ll look for a few Easter eggs in here.

[00:05:48] So, you know, we’ve, you know, there’s a lot of different ways rather than go through every committee, which is, you know, would take too long and be pretty boring. I don’t think. Um, you know, we put these in buckets, so let’s kind of start with [00:06:00] the big agenda items, which reflect a mixture of continuing high profile commitments at the intersection of politics and policy, perhaps, um, you know, and the things that have, you know, gain public attention and require perhaps a little more of a display of commitment, you know, you know.

[00:06:26] And that doesn’t mean, I mean, you can, I mean, I think, you know, the political leaders can sense that they need to display commitment and it can still be substantive, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not, there’s not a little bit of display behavior attendant to this, right? Yeah, I think that’s right. And so, you know, usual suspects here in terms of big issues, border security, the grid, electric grid.

[00:06:47] And, you know, more arcanely, but directly related electricity market design, uh, property tax relief. I mean, those three, I think are probably the big things in terms of what we [00:07:00] saw. And, you know, let’s start, you know, the border security committee charges and the border security committee in the Senate is chaired by Senator Birdwell, you know, reflect.

[00:07:10] You know, what we would call, to put it mildly, the enforcement based approach that the state has taken in Operation Lone Star and in legislation like SB4, though, interestingly, SB4 doesn’t really show up here, and, you know, perhaps that makes sense given that it’s tied up in federal court after lawsuits by multiple parties, and that’s still kind of pending, you know, countersuits and motions by Texas.

[00:07:34] So there’s no, there’s no, Direct call out that I see. And I think that probably makes sense given the degree of litigation. Given pending litigation, you know, I don’t think the state wants to be super active in this space at the moment, because then that, I mean, we’ve seen this happen before where then the court says, well, wait a minute.

[00:07:48] Is this moot now? I mean, there’s a lot of things that you don’t, you know, don’t act on this sort of stuff, probably not looking to add anything to the record now in part. Right. So, you know, I, you know, what stood [00:08:00] out to you here? Yeah. I mean, at least on, on the effect of, you know, it’s, I mean, It’s funny. I mean, it’s sort of like overall, the thing itself sort of stands out for not standing out.

[00:08:10] Like, of course, there’s going to be a big border security charge. Of course, we’re going to push it. I mean, I guess the question becomes, you know, how specific or general it is. It is it, you know, I think, you know, we saw Abbott during the special sessions taking some very specific swipes. It’s very specific border security, border security issues.

[00:08:26] Immigration issues, generally, like the Colony Ridge development and things like that. And this seems, you know, a lot more generally, I think, You know, what strikes me about this, I guess more so than anything specific is just the fact that, you know, Regardless of how much the state does, I had read recently that, you know, I think the total, you know, commitment so far over the last, like, I don’t know, maybe four or five years has been about 11 right for four and substantial change in the last biennium, six and substantial change in this biennium.

[00:08:58] Right. And so it seems that, you know, and we know, and [00:09:00] we’ve talked about this a million times, you know, that this is the, the primary issue for Republican voters. It’s the most important issue facing Texas for a plurality of orders, a majority of Republicans. Um, and yet, you know, there’s no pushback on the spending that’s just continued to go up, but also, you know, I, I kind of was going into the archives looking at some of this stuff, you know, in December of last year, we wanted to see a On these big issue areas where the, you know, whether the voters were confident, the legislature had made progress in some ways.

[00:09:26] So we asked, you know, how confident are you that the legislature has improved security along the Texas Mexico border and only 26 percent of voters were extremely or very confident 11 percent extremely with 38 percent saying they were not very or not at all confident among Republicans. It was only 32 percent who said they were extremely or very confident 30 percent so they were not very or not at all confident.

[00:09:45] And so this is sort of an area that on the one hand, you know, it feels Insatiable, but also just as sort of a, you know, a political give and take and what the market looks like here, there’s still just more demand for this. So there’s, it’s sort of the least [00:10:00] surprising thing to see on here. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, the legislature has provided a lot of supply.

[00:10:04] They have not quite yet demand demand yet. No. And I mean, the question is kind of, you know, when, if, or when it’s going, you know, they will hit demand on this, but I, you know, right now, this is just an issue that is just. You know, we’re going to keep talking about it’s going to keep going on, you know, sort of the least surprising some ways, you know, to me, and I don’t want to be the kind of the least interesting of all this.

[00:10:25] I mean, I would say, you know, look, I mean, there’s a, the general sense of conduct oversight over state and local agencies, participation in border security, quote unquote, you know, you get a, I thought we got a couple of nods on the direction this is going. So, you know, the, you know, Singled out the impact of transnational criminal activity on commerce, which is an interesting construction.

[00:10:50] It’s not new, but something that’s interesting. And then, yeah, you know, this, you know, looking at the effects on personnel, I think, stuck out to me. Yeah, that definitely does. I should have. I [00:11:00] should have said that. I mean, that’s right. I mean, you know, given the issues Well, given the issues that have been reported with respect to these very long deployments of Texas National Guard members to, in most cases, places very far away from where they live for extended, you know, deployments, it is interesting that the Senate is taking this up, not because it’s not an issue.

[00:11:21] I think it actually is a real issue, but it’s a little bit contrary to the narrative in some ways. You know, I mean, this is not, uh, you know, this is not without cost. Yeah. You know, well, I mean, and, and what, you know, I mean, I think the way that I look at this is that, you know, if you look at the charge and it talks about, you know, having the, having the committee look at the effects on personnel who have served on the border, you know, and then there’s that, you know, the, there’s that sort of preexisting set of stories that were kind of unpleasant for, you know, for the, for the administration for a while about the hardship [00:12:00] of this service for, for the, various state levels members, the National Guard state guard.

[00:12:06] Um, but you know, there was also a sense of looking at this as a, as, as a freestanding issue that affects recruitment and retention, you know, that has a Physical implication. Yeah. Right To it, you know? And then the other thing that I, you know, that, you know, I might think my initial response was a little like yours as I looked at it and I was like, okay, so rounding up the usual suspects here.

[00:12:33] But you know, when this effects on personnel, I mean, look, I think. I don’t want to be too cynical about this. Look, there’s been a lot of coverage about these hardships. There have been issues that have been discussed about recruitment and how, you know, whether it was or was not good for it and generally that it wasn’t.

[00:12:50] But you know, the, the governor has also directed and, and. The legislature funded, you know, construction on this Texas military base camp [00:13:00] right near Eagle Pass, you know, which is expected to house a lot of National Guard troops, um, and you know, is being reported, you know, in some places as costing in the neighborhood of $400 million.

[00:13:14] So this is a way of using the interim charge to flesh out a need. For something that’s coming down the path, and you know, there is a way in which interim charges are, you know, you can put them on, you know, there are multiple dimensions to these, and I’m making this up as I go, but I’m thinking, I’m trying to making things up in my head.

[00:13:34] The degree to which, you know, some of these things are, you know, sort of backfilling and some of them are explore, right. And, you know, what we would think of as research or discovery, more discovery oriented. I sense a little bit of backfilling here. Yeah. Ah. You know, and I could be wrong about that, but that’s just kind of, you know, and, and look, the broader point, you know, in the, in the data that you cited, I think is really the main point of [00:14:00] context here, which is, you know, this continues to be a dominant issue.

[00:14:04] This is something that’s going to continue to get a lot of. And, you know, there is laying some groundwork here for preparing to spend much more money on this and establishing some senses of the costs. And if you think about the contingencies that the legislature will be looking at in January of 2025, you know, there’s a lot of, you know, particular routes, but there’s, you look at one kind of binary probability or set of possibilities right now, Donald Trump’s going to win.

[00:14:38] the presidency and switch back and take over the executive branch and the orientation of the national government towards border security particularly the executive branch is going to shift or joe biden is going to get re elected and we’re going to see four more years of what we’ve seen days before.

[00:14:54] The last four years in terms of Texas’s budgetary approach, the [00:15:00] political use of the issue, et cetera. If it’s sustainable, we’ll see. But I mean, you know, one, one aspect of public opinion is that, you know, unless something changes and depending on what the fiscal situation in the state goes. There’s not a lot of warrant for reducing spending.

[00:15:20] Yeah. You know, it’s funny as you’re sitting here now that I’m sort of thinking about it a little bit more. I mean, you know, we had this question, you know, in the lead up to, to Trump’s first election and whether or not we discussed this a fair amount, you know, whether or not the state’s sort of orientation towards the border would shift with the Republican, the White House with the Republican in the White House with a particularly pronounced view of immigration and security at the border.

[00:15:42] And the truth is most of those financial increases that we’ve talked about. Happened over that time period. It wasn’t as though Trump came in and, you know, we didn’t see, you know, the funding increase, uh, yeah, but, but the biggest, but the biggest, most public and programmatic shifts, I mean, operation loans, not a coincidence that [00:16:00] operation loan star was bundled together.

[00:16:03] More money was pumped into it. And I think most importantly, it was branded in 2021 after the election of Biden. And so what I see here though, that I think is interesting is that in some ways what this. Says to me is that, you know, whereas operation Lone Star at first kind of felt like a, you know, the surge, right?

[00:16:20] I think about like, you know, John McCain surge in Iraq and it’s like, we’re going to surge in there and we’re going to like solve some of these problems with this sort of says, well, no, we’re shifting to a long term game plan on this commitment, right? I mean, you know, we’re building a bay. Yeah. We’re building a 400 million base.

[00:16:33] We’re going to, you know, has 1800 people here, but I mean, it does raise the issue that, you know, a lot of people don’t sign up for the national guard with the expectation of a long deployment. In a far away place. That’s not really what this is. General in a camp on the border in a camp on the border, right?

[00:16:48] It should be by now, but yeah, but this is the point, though, is like, I think in some ways this shows. I mean, to me, this shows a shift in because what I would I would say is this is it’s hard to imagine, even with Donald Trump being elected [00:17:00] Republicans in Texas, Yeah. You know, let’s just say loosening their hold on this issue.

[00:17:06] Well, I mean, I think, you know, we, I think this came up a little bit recently. I don’t know if it was on the podcast or not, but I mean, I think, you know, the sense is, do you move if Trump, if, you know, one of the things that will happen should Trump get elected is that Texas will start moving. the federal government to help out with the cost, you know, there’ll be a renegotiation of some of this.

[00:17:26] Yeah, I think that’s right. You know, um, but that, that will not happen. That’s not likely to happen, certainly under an Abbott administration should you get another breakout. For the remainder of the Abbott administration should you get a uh, uh, Biden presidency. So All right. So let’s move on because we can talk about border security all that we have before all podcasts So, you know, I I think the other one of the other big things that you’ve got a lot of attention here And it’s gotten, you know Some interesting kind of tea leave reading in the press is, you know, if you look at what the finance committee [00:18:00] is charged on the number one charge to the finance committee at first Cut looks about as direct as you can get.

[00:18:07] I mean, the caption for that is continue cutting property taxes. Now, nobody’s shocked by this. And, you know, on one hand, I think, you know, my initial read of this was that it was kind of a, you know, a, you know, borderline red meat ish approach to it. You know, given the fact that the, the section on property taxes calls on the committee to report, but the, but the language is important on the cost underline of eliminating school M& O taxes, eliminating all school property taxes, you know, and it says, and, but it’s sort of, and, or.

[00:18:45] You know, eliminating all property taxes, period. Right. And so, you know, we’re seeing a lot of agenda construction at work, but as you and I were talking about and, you know, if you, those of you that read Texas coverage closely, you [00:19:00] know, there are a lot of different. different takes on this. I mean, you know, I think the, the initial take, which, you know, we’ve seen, you know, prominently in a column in one of the major dailies was, you know, here it is, the governor’s, you know, laying down a gauntlet.

[00:19:16] He wants to cut all property taxes, and you know what that would mean for revenue in the state. Right. But then there’s the more subtle read that actually goes back and looks at all of the internecine fighting, which was You know, admittedly pretty complex in some ways between the governor, the Speaker of the House, and particular, but particularly the governor and lieutenant governor in the last session under the surface.

[00:19:42] And, you know, there’s probably a more complicated agenda here in which, um, you know, people are jockeying for position and some of it, I think, you know, to my mind has to do with, [00:20:00] Um, but also hold to what your, you know, your previous statements and if talking about the Lieutenant Governor and, and, uh, Brad Johnson in the Texan, you know, was pretty quick to say, Hey, you know, you don’t have to read that much into it.

[00:20:29] Go look at, uh, What the Lieutenant Governor actually said in the midst of the property tax fight, which was that, you know, while, you know, and I’m paraphrasing here, you know, while it’s good, you know, some people like to talk in the abstract about cutting all property taxes. If you do the math, you know, it’s, it’s not doable.

[00:20:47] Right. Or, you know, it would be a pretty drastic move, right. And I mean, and, you know, I couldn’t help but kind of go back in my mind to the governor’s appearance at the Texas Public Policy Foundation when he sort of [00:21:00] floated the idea of removing all MNO taxes and essentially, you know, winding that down to zero and the reaction to that sort of being, you know, I think from the The legislative crowd, as I could tell, it was like, how would you do that?

[00:21:12] You know, and that’s why, again, to your point, you know, the, the, if you look at the, Could you share that spreadsheet with me? Would you mind sharing that spreadsheet? What’s the formula there? Yeah. Well, and that’s why, I mean, I think to your point, you know, when you look at the specific wording of this, it’s not saying, you know, how we’re going to do this, like, what would be the impact of doing this?

[00:21:28] Because there’s going to be, it would be a humongous fiscal impact, but also, I mean, part of this is, this goes back to kind of the politics of the insatiable, right? I mean, you know, Since we’ve been doing this for a while, I mean, I, there’s a result that sticks out to me that’s a little bit older and I’m going to bring up some more contemporary results from the polling data.

[00:21:44] But I remember, I think it was in the 2021 session, I believe, they kind of, they’d gone through, they had done a lot, they had a lot of conservative legislation, but they’d failed to reduce polling. property tax significantly. I remember at the end of the session, we did something where we asked voters to rate the legislature’s handling of a, [00:22:00] because they did something pretty marginal at the very end, right?

[00:22:02] At the very, very end, they snuck something on there. It was one of the last day things that, yeah. And when we were looking at the data, what you could see was, is that across most of the issue areas, you know, and especially among Republicans, there was, you know, High degree of approval, how the legislature had handled, you know, guns and, you know, uh, all these other things I have to go back and look, but at the very bottom of the list was property taxes and it was low and it was, you know, it was most, it was, there was no informed 2023 for sure.

[00:22:27] And that, and then, yeah, 100 percent informed 2023. But then when we look at the end of. 2023, we go to, you know, August polling, we say, you know, based on what you know, over the next few years, you expect the property taxes that Texans pay to decrease, increase, stay the same, or don’t you have an opinion? 38 percent thought that they were going to increase.

[00:22:42] This is despite the fact this is going on while the, you know, the after, I guess, in this case, at that point in time, they had, you know, technically gone through the Special sessions on property taxes had passed something still the plurality thought they would increase Republicans were kind of split. 35 percent thought they increased 39 percent thought that they would decrease [00:23:00] 17 percent thought they’d stay the same.

[00:23:01] Now look fair, right? I mean, ultimately, if you’re a Texas homeowner, you know, you’ve been sort of, you know, watching, you know, you’ve been, you know, Part of the housing market. Yeah, you’ve been conditioned to expect it to go up, right? But then, you know, as at the end of the year in December 2023, you know, how confident are you that the legislature reduced property taxes enough to make a difference to most Texans?

[00:23:21] 29 percent said they were extremely or very confident, 38 percent said they were not confident. And among Republicans, a similar sort of story, 35 percent were confident, 27 percent not very confident. Conservatives, 32 confident, 30 not confident, and I think this is really important here for the political dynamics of the state, only about a quarter of suburban voters were confident in a plurality, 44 percent were not confident that the legislature had actually done anything to, uh, you know, significantly reduce, um, property taxes.

[00:23:48] And so what you kind of say is a ton of political capital. Ton of bloodshed, a lot of sniping to get these sort of tepid results from the voters. Now, look, those things are probably related in some ways, right? [00:24:00] Well, and I think the advocates probably say, well, and you know, let’s go ask people after they see these tax bills, you know, where they’ve gotten both the reduction and there’s been a reduction in appraisals in a lot of places, at least the slowing down.

[00:24:12] Yeah, no, I mean, the thing is, I think one of the things that, you know, Republican elected officials are really. You know, it’s a strange way, you know, might benefit from is the reduction in property values that have kind of taking place after the pandemic, because they’re going to get hopefully they’re hoping to get credit for some of that effect that has on property taxes.

[00:24:29] But it is sort of the case that when you kind of see this idea of like, well, what if we eliminate them entirely? It is. Interesting to wonder what the game is here and that, you know, this does feel very familiar to me in terms of the way that Abbott occasionally engages with the legislature, especially on some of these issues where, you know, he can kind of go to a very conservative audience and say, well, you know what I’d like to do?

[00:24:49] I think we should get rid of all property taxes. Well, and this is where, you know, something we talk about here a lot comes into play again. And that is. You know [00:25:00] elite signaling. Yeah, because you’ve got a you know, you’ve still got enough people out there in the ether particularly if you’re a Somewhat to very engaged Republican, you know, you hear a lot of people saying Property taxes are theft.

[00:25:17] You don’t own, you don’t own your property. And people have been doing, saying this for a long time and it’s kind of out there now. And so I think it does lead to the outcome where, you know, somebody had to stand up and say, Hey, look, we got to assess this realistically. And, you know, to his credit, that person did turn out to be the lieutenant governor.

[00:25:38] Yeah. And I think, look, you know, it’s interesting is that. You know, in, in the wake of all of this and knowing that the next session is going to be different, but that this issue is going to stay around. I do think it’s, I mean, in some ways, this set of charges, I don’t want to say it’s the most interesting to me, but it’s very interesting because of the fact that the lieutenant governor mentions both, you know, Um, The homestead exemption and compression, and that was a [00:26:00] big, you know, conflict about compression versus, you know, again, reducing the assessed values and all that stuff on the one hand, he’s want to hear about all of it again.

[00:26:08] Abbott had made sort of put this this got laid this gauntlet down and like, well, what if we just removed all taxes? And again, to your point, Patrick was pretty. Cool to that at the time that they were really arguing this. But again, here is an, it was cool in a, in a kind of hot way. If you go back Yeah.

[00:26:22] Mean, if you remember that press, I mean mean I’m being generous. I’m, I’m, I’m picking on the language, but I’m just, I’m using his a point of departure more than if, right. You go back and you look at the, you know, that was one of the testier kind of Patrick statements, right? That press conferences, you know, in, in.

[00:26:36] Session that was not light on them. Yeah, and so and so here is and well, let’s just let’s explore all the alternatives I mean one thing i’ll just throw this out there because i was thinking about this this morning, you know It’d be really i mean it’s interesting in the sense that this is just a random aside in my mind But I was thinking, you know a quick way to reduce Property taxes dramatically, uh, that would actually be progressive, which would be strange for the state would be to increase the homestead exemption, right?

[00:26:59] It’d be progressive among [00:27:00] homeowners, not all people, but if you were to just increase the homestead exemption to 350, 000, now it’d be a huge transfer of wealth, basically from cities to rural parts of the state, which is already kind of going on and would exacerbate that. And then you’d have massive tax rates on the remaining property values in all the cities.

[00:27:16] But it’s kind of funny to think, huh, yeah. Where is this gonna go? You know, so, so there’s, you know, so the tax thing I thought was, you know, it’s a very rich text in this and those will, as always, be simultaneously very interesting, though, in some ways, you know, mind numbingly technical, right? And some of those hearings.

[00:27:34] So the other the other big issue in this bucket is energy infrastructure, right? And this is it’s it’s You know, another big issue hanging over from one of the highest stakes sectoral fights last session. And then, you know, the language is pretty broad, at least at the top level. And this is kind of the pattern, you know, review and report on the state of the electricity market in Texas and issues impacting the Texas electric [00:28:00] grid and consider rulemaking related to the wholesale market design.

[00:28:04] Now, I’m Not qualified enough to get into the details of all that, but you know, one of the things that we saw was that this was also a, a, a very big, and in some ways a classic legislative fight, um, during the last session and obviously in the session before and the immediate aftermath of, of winter storm URI.

[00:28:25] But you know, the signaling on all of this is going to be very closely read because of You know the war of the gargantuas nature of the lobby fight involved in this right you’ve got You know so many, you know big players involved in this um but at the same time you also have a level of public salience and there’s a you know, there’s an interesting kind of tension between Just how complicated this issue is [00:29:00] The number of players, you know, all of the various power generation sectors, you know, power generation and distribution sectors, which you have to parse out, um, obviously oil and gas, right?

[00:29:14] And then, you know, the, the issue of alternative energy in this and the different energy generators and the, you know, The whole discussion of alternative energy, solar, wind, other kinds of things that are, that are more emerging technology, which gets a lot of get, which gets a shout out in this, which is, you know, emerging technology, that’s not solar or wind.

[00:29:34] Because, you know, look, those, it’s fair to say those aren’t emerging anymore. Not in Texas. Right. So Um, I’d also layer over all that, you know, even though you said public salience is the first of those, I think the three things you mentioned, the other thing is, and you already mentioned this mostly, but the overall complexity of this issue means that, you know, there’s no way that whatever the legislature does.

[00:29:53] Vis a vis these is going to be comprehensible in any way to go there. Yeah. I mean, on one end, [00:30:00] you’ve got the, you know, the intense complexity and all the mobilization amongst stakeholders in the lobby and the internal processes, and then a much less informed, but no less, well, I shouldn’t say no less, but, but still.

[00:30:13] You know, a public that has thoughts about these things based on some, you know, recent experience, it’s a really interesting area in some ways, because it allows those sort of sectoral influences to fight it out in plain sight, right? With no real consequence in the public, because the public doesn’t really understand what’s going on.

[00:30:29] They can only be told. You know, kind of what they’re told, which is, you know, we made it more reliable. Now, just to go back to a familiar theme here, the public is not very confident that what the legislature did last year, uh, really improved the reliability of the electric grid. Only 23 percent were extremely or very confident that what they had done, again, increased this, the reliability of these electric grid, uh, that include 27 percent of Republicans.

[00:30:50] This was not a bunch of Democrats with sour grapes, only 18 percent of suburban voters. And importantly, and I think, you know, only 22 percent of rural voters. So. In general, you know, just think about where [00:31:00] these, you know, where the distribution of these services go and the key sort of electoral coalitions, it’s not as though, you know, despite all the work and effort and everything, you know, people came back or people looked at that and said, Oh, we’re safe.

[00:31:12] Now we’ve we’ve got this handled. Right. And so I don’t suspect that expect that to change very much. But I mean, you said something, I think, before we did. Talk, you know, before we came in here and I, cause it’s hanging with me, but the notion of, you know, this does provide the Senate with the ability to call in a lot of really powerful players right now.

[00:31:29] You guys are not saying not to be, I’m not saying there’s anything untoward going on here, but boy, that’s useful during an election season. Yeah, absolutely. And I, and I think, you know, one of the things I was going to mention that, you know, we’ll move on to the next bucket, but it’s also that, you know, one of the other political advantages The Senate gets out of being able to jump on this while the house is really tied up in the election, is, you know, they’ve already been, you know, there have been about eight hearings scheduled in a lot of them were dropped immediately [00:32:00] after these came out.

[00:32:02] And, you know, particularly when they do these field hearings and particularly, you know, because it’s interim. You know, you have the opportunity to drive a little bit of coverage and to start putting some markers down. And some of that will connect, well, it will be interesting to see how many of these things actually connect with election themes and how many, you know, right now I didn’t see much in the way of field hearings other than, um, the House Select Committee on LNG exports is having a, and that’s the House, is having a field hearing that’s not going to be in Austin.

[00:32:39] You know, what we’ve seen in the past, particularly with immigration and with border security, immigration, border security, um, property tax and property taxes is lots of field hearings that draw a certain degree of attention. Yeah. Local coverage. Yeah, exactly. At a time when Second, yes. But you know, [00:33:00] we’re never going to be, uh, election on Monday.

[00:33:04] So we’ve addressed. Some of the heart breaking and we have discovered some further things. Duh. You know, is alternately the stuff they have to do kind of interesting and stuff that has a big structural impact. And we kind of said, you know, the finance committee, which is, you know, always the most powerful committee, all things being equal, you know, his task, you know, he’s given the broad task of reporting on most of the big spending items that we look at.

[00:33:35] to in the last session. Again, it’s kind of the more substantive things, if less high profile, that the legislature did. So, you know, implementation of property tax relief, you know, implementation of the Texas Energy Fund, the Texas Water Fund, Parks Conservation Fund, the Broadband Infrastructure Fund. So there will be a certain amount of like, okay, where’s all this money going?

[00:33:56] How is this all looking? Not the most high profile [00:34:00] things, but often things do come up in those kinds of hearings that wind up having consequences going into the next session in terms of what’s being implemented as expected, what’s not, where the agency’s acting, where are they not acting? Yeah. And I think in this time, there’s even more import to this in a lot of ways, because a lot of, I mean, the, the, the reason we had so many.

[00:34:23] You know, big investments in infrastructure like energy, water, parks, broadband was because we had a lot of money, right? So the legislature started with, I think, a 32 billion surplus or around there. I don’t remember what the final surplus was. Obviously, the lion’s share of that was set aside for property taxes, but given these large tranches of money injected into these other areas, uh, you know, not without a lot of consternation and negotiating, especially with respect to energy, which we were just talking about.

[00:34:49] You know, there’s sort of two things, which is one, you know, there’s going to want it. There is just a necessary, you know, necessary oversight for a lot of large new programs. But also one of the things that I can’t help but think about is, you know, that was based on a budget [00:35:00] surplus right now. These aren’t necessarily ongoing expenses.

[00:35:01] A lot of these are funds to kick off investments and things like that. Right. But this is not necessarily money that like the legislature has, you know, continuous access to going forward. It almost requires this level of oversight at this point to make sure it’s working because they can’t go back to the well for more.

[00:35:15] This is classic. Interim study stuff, but again, there’s a lot of classic interim study stuff that is, you know, smaller bore. This is, you know, pretty large bore stuff to look at. Right. So, um, you know, so what else, I mean, uh, some things stick out to you on education. Yeah. You know, I mean, the sort of oversight of testing, reading and math readiness is interesting.

[00:35:37] I mean, testing is just this topic that is. You know, it’s evergreen in Texas. It’s funny, you know, I should say this, you know, here I’m sitting here, my son right now is probably sitting in a room reading a book because he finished his star test, kind of waiting for the rest of the day. And I know as a parent, school’s over.

[00:35:53] Like, he’s taking his second star test. I know, like, you know, from now on, I’ll say, hey, you got homework? So like, nope, [00:36:00] it’s like, what’s your teacher? I don’t want to anyway, just leave it at that. Hang anybody out to dry. No, this is just the, this is the, this is what happens. But you know, look, there’s an intersection of a lot of different contexts here that I think are important, right?

[00:36:11] One, Texas has a high need student population and the share of that student population that’s high need is going to be growing, you know, over the next, you know, five or 10 years. That’s sort of demographics. Studies that people know about. There’s all the issues related, you know, that are attended to COVID related learning loss.

[00:36:27] And the fact is that a lot of schools and school districts and students are still playing catch up. And the tests are a big part of how we know that. Um, you know, and I also say just as being around this for like, there’s been a consistent set of issues with regard to Texas’s testing and use of Of it from various stakeholders, like parents, school districts, educators, sometimes legislators, when it comes to the funding of their district.

[00:36:48] I mean, everything that’s going on in Houston right now, you know, ultimately, to the extent that the Houston school district was taken over by the state, it was based on the test results in a particular school, you know, [00:37:00] over the course of a couple of course of three years, I guess, right? I think that’s right.

[00:37:04] Um, and so this is just something that is, is ever present. It’s one of those, and it kind of goes back to, you know, you sort of, you know, you engage with what you measure and these tests are just incredibly controversial for all kinds of reasons. And I should say, there’s also this public opinion context, and we’ve sort of recorded this at various points in time, but there’s just a generally widespread, I think skepticism is a fair word about sort of testing and especially over testing.

[00:37:30] Yeah, among voters that we’ve seen, you know, over time, but I mean, every time that there is going to be, and it’s just sort of my impression, some sort of decision made. You know, like a programmatic decision made, whether it has to do with funding or otherwise, that’s based on the results of the test that Texas has implemented in its public schools, there’s going to be a hold up.

[00:37:49] There’s gonna be a fight. There’s gonna be delay. There’s gonna be some sort of like, you know, consternation about this. And this is just sort of, it seems to me, the continuation. It’s just a constantly. I mean, you know, I, yeah. [00:38:00] I, you know, I wind up running into this, you know, in a very indirect way and that, you know, in the internship course I teach, I have these kids do these research projects as you know, and probably some people listening have been subjected to, but, you know, I’ve always got students that want to do something about public education, impact of X or Y.

[00:38:25] They always want to use the testing data as their dependent variable and all of the thrashing around this makes it. Difficult. To say the least. Yeah, I mean, you know, Because what, you know, you’re dependent, you know, the measure of your dependent variable keeps changing. Yeah, I mean, I, we don’t need to, I mean, we could spend a whole Yeah, right.

[00:38:41] podcast talking about this and we don’t want to do that, but I’ll just say this, you know, ultimately the thing about testing, just as we put on the social science hat for a second, is, you know, you’re measuring what we call latent Concept usually with, you know, a measurement that’s usually kind of imperfect.

[00:38:54] And the other thing about it is that in most cases you want when you think about most situations in which you would test a [00:39:00] large group of people, the idea would be to separate those people out along, you know, various relative distinctions that are meaningful for you. And in education, that’s really complicated because of the idea that ultimately you kind of want everybody to pass.

[00:39:15] You want everybody to reach a certain level of competency and tests aren’t really about that. I mean, there’s sort of this classic thing about like, you know, Oh, our kids reading on grade level and it’s like, well, what does that mean? Right. And if you say like, well, most meaningful tests would would distinguish people.

[00:39:28] But if you distinguish people and say, well, 50 percent of the, you know, of the students in this student population read at the high level and 50 percent read at the low level. You know, what does that mean? Well, it means that you went to the 50 percent mark and you made a cut and you said, okay, everybody’s here is below.

[00:39:42] Everybody’s here is above. But what that means for policy, what that means for funding, you know, whether that means we need to punish those districts or give them more money, that’s where all this interpretation comes in. And then you throw just, then you throw new math into the mix that parents don’t understand and be included.

[00:39:56] And it’s just, it just becomes a very messy space and it [00:40:00] has all, and I think, and you know, I mean, there’s a, we, there’s a strange tension at the heart of this in which You know, the push and pull between a lot of the institutional, a lot of institutional interests, and I don’t mean necessarily the schools, but you know, there’s a lot of interest still in testing out there that, you know, would sort of look at all those issues and kind of say, yeah, but.

[00:40:25] We gotta, you know, to oversimplify Yeah. We gotta have something. Well, and, and, you know, and the thing is, I would say, and that’s right, right? I mean, that, that’s what makes this so difficult. And Yeah. You know, we can’t, you know, it’s, it’s never a settled issue. And to my mind, it then feeds back and makes, you know, the reliability of the whole process kind of.

[00:40:42] Well, and it’s, and it’s one of those, you know, in a gray area to say the best. Yeah. And it’s one of those things where the voters who care the most about this, they care the most about this because they’ve got kids who are being impacted by it. And if you want, you know, to see a voter. Worked up mess with their kids.

[00:40:55] Yeah. So speaking of HHS, you know, had a, a set of items. One of the things [00:41:00] that I think, you know, stuck out to both of us was the emphasis on, on children’s mental health, which is, you know, at the intersection of like, you know, something that has been. You know, is always an issue, but it’s been an issue, you know, really starting, you know, slightly prior to the pandemic.

[00:41:17] And it’s really accelerated since then. And so, you know, there’s a, you know, the committee is directed to, you know, look at children’s mental health, you know, in a couple of different ranges, including technology. Right? And the impact of that, you know, we were talking beforehand, very much in the news of this latest Jonathan Haidt book, The Anxious Generation, which you’re working through.

[00:41:41] Um, and so, you know, that’s kind of out there in terms of the political politics of the house. You know, there’s this other thing that is going on related to this and that. Um, HB 18 passed during the last session called for a, you know, joint committee to study the [00:42:00] effects of media on minors. Um, the house, you know, you know, named their members to that panel today, Senate or yesterday.

[00:42:09] I think, uh, the Senate has not yet done so. Um, and so we’re going to see kind of a, you know, an exploration of this in a couple of different venues. And I, you know, I kind of expect, you know, you look at the tick tock bill, you look at, you know, The ongoing mental health discussion, the public sort of focus, you know, by the time the legislature comes back, the hate book will be yesterday’s thing, but nonetheless, you know, there’s a lot going, there’s a lot going on here, right?

[00:42:40] Yeah, I mean, you know, It’s hard for me not to sort of, sort of, like, I think link this in a colloquial, you already mentioned the TikTok bill, I’m thinking about the, the bill that’s been, uh, slapped down by the courts that would have required putting, um, you know, central, like, ratings on books that go in front of children.

[00:42:58] And there’s sort of an issue, and we talk about this a [00:43:00] lot, just in terms of this sort of, this podcast about, you know, what happens when you bring children into the mix. Yeah. And while this is definitely, I think, a response to a real and serious problem, which is, you know, again, this high rates of anxiety, depression, self harm, hospital visits among, you know, adolescents and youth and just generally younger people, it’s also like you can’t help it.

[00:43:18] I can’t help but notice sort of, I mean, to your point about, you know, this sort of what the House is doing, this shift towards not just like the content, but it’s like, let’s look at these modes of delivery, which the legislature has been starting to paw at trying to see what they can and can’t do. And so, you know, while I do think this is.

[00:43:34] I don’t want to sit here and be Mr. Cynical and say, Well, this is, you know, not really about children’s mental health. It’s about, you know, what these platforms are up to. It’s also like they haven’t had a lot of success going after these platforms so far. And this seems like another avenue towards, yeah, I think that’s a very reasonable read.

[00:43:50] And, you know, You know, and that’s the mood. I mean, you looked at, you know, you know, uh, Speaker Phelan, you know, the leading House member on [00:44:00] this is going to be Jared, it’s going to be Jared Patterson, obviously involved in, you know, the textbook publishing bill that’s been, or, or, you know, the textbooks or the, the book screening bill that was, you know, recently, uh, uh, thrown out by an appeals court.

[00:44:15] Texas hasn’t announced whether they’re going to appeal this any further or not. I kind of suspect they’re not, but we’ll see. So, um, You know, we’re going to run out of time, but, you know, I thought it was also interesting that the local government committee, which is chaired by Senator Paul Bettencourt, was also charged with looking at housing affordability, which, you know, has been a long term issue.

[00:44:38] Discussed issue it often intersects the property tax issue. Although not as the main face of it, right? It’s more of an argument. I think a supplemental argument a secondary argument of convenience for it for that But you know, we’ve seen polling some of which you’ve been involved in that seen kind of growing You know anxiety and [00:45:00] and and public opinion, you know about housing affordability that’s showing up in public opinion polling Yeah, another poll I work on uh, the texas lyceum poll which does a sample of adults in texas every year has shown You know in 2020 44 percent of people said they spent too much of their income on housing in 2022 That went up to 50 percent in 2023 that went up to 55 And I suspect that this year in 2024, it’s, it’s going to go up even more.

[00:45:24] Right. And so, I mean, that’s kind of, you know, stating the obvious in some ways, but I do think, you know, to the extent that this used to be a little bit more localized, you know, in the sense of, you know, play, you know, in the sense of not, this was not the Republican discussion, but this idea is the cities were becoming, you know, more magnets for people and, uh, people are being pushed out of the cities due to affordability issues.

[00:45:43] Will the affordability issues becoming an issue? Just everywhere. Right. And so this is sort of, I think this is a clear nod at the fact, at that fact. Now, how much this is about. You know, again, the standard issue of property taxes and what the legislature can do or, or whatnot, but we’ll see, you know, I mean, the legislature [00:46:00] last time considered some pretty big land use reform, uh, proposed, I think, by Senator Hughes that you could see make a comeback.

[00:46:05] I mean, there’s a very interesting political dynamics going on right now where actually, you know, if you’re someone worried about housing affordability and you’re in one of the major cities and you’re a Democrat, you know, your best bet for big reform might be the Republican legislature. Right. So it’s an interesting area.

[00:46:19] Yeah. So it’s interesting. I mean, I, you know, we’ll come back to this. I mean, I think the way that this, this issue of affordability has evolved over time is interesting because, you know, it’s hard not to feel like it’s a matter of who’s feeling this pressure. Yeah. Right. Within the class, you know, from a kind of within the class structure.

[00:46:36] Yeah. Um, you know, and then a final thing in the kind of, you know, meat and potatoes bucket, but a transitional thing, uh, you know, the higher ed committee chaired by Senator Creighton, you know, we’ll look at the new community college funding finance model, um, which is tied into the linkage between student outcomes and workforce development.

[00:46:57] Um, this was a really big piece of [00:47:00] legislation, you know, we, you know, we’ve talked about it in here before, you know, I sort of talked to some legislators about this at a, at a I think I’m gonna leave it, uh, I think I’m gonna leave it open for questions. Any questions? I’m, I’m just gonna go ahead and try to, I’m gonna press on the deck.

[00:47:17] I’m gonna go ahead and press on the deck, uh, I’m gonna try to raise my hand, I’m

[00:47:25] gonna Higher ed committee also has a very different, another set of charges that gives us a little bit more, you know, transition into ending today’s session by referencing some of the more red meat kind of shots across the bow. You know, things that we’re thinking about in terms of like, You know, more, uh, inflammatory issues.

[00:47:48] So, you know, much of the higher ed committee agendas over things that have been, some of which have been in the news, um, and some of which I think are, are a signal of where we’re going to see the Lieutenant [00:48:00] Governor and, and, and Senator Creighton possibly go next, uh, in this area, which has made a lot of people in the buildings that were sitting in right now, you know, tense, nervous and unhappy, you know, uh, this idea of reviewing and analyzing faculty, Senate’s, uh, faculty Senate’s at a lot of universities, including this one very resistant and, and critical of initiatives favored by broadly speaking, the Republican party, but especially Lieutenant governor and his allies in the Senate.

[00:48:31] Yeah. Um, so we’re going to have a discussion of, you know, what, The role, purpose, and, uh, faculty senates, which, you know, feels like borderline trolling, but, you know, often borderline trolling winds up with legislation. It, well, you know, and, and, you know, the faculty senate is not somebody that, you know, I don’t know that there’s a lot of, you know, you’re going to sort of rally public support for the faculty senate.

[00:48:54] For the concept of the faculty senate. No, I mean, if anything, I mean, the, the bigger, the [00:49:00] more, I think the more likely outcome. Come is that, you know, this conversation begins in the faculty, senates start making statements that hurt their case, right? And that is the trolling side of it, right? Yeah, exactly.

[00:49:10] Draw them into a fight they’re going to lose. Yeah, trolling and provocation and, you know, but which still may, you know, wind up in legislation. Right. Um, you know, also a charge to monitor the ban on, you know, this is where some language, you know, sneaks in. Uh, the ban on, you know, this is quoting discriminatory DEI policies.

[00:49:28] Mm hmm. And, you know, you know, in a lot of settings, DEI became the catch all term, you know, you and I were discussing before, for anything that seems to address issues of race head on in an academic setting. You know, there were some carve outs seemingly in the legislation, but this has obviously been a very hot topic, um, on campuses in Texas, including this one.

[00:49:53] Given that, you know, there were, You know, there are some legislative assurances that were made that, [00:50:00] you know, current employees in the DEI infrastructure and universities would not lose their jobs. Um, that’s clearly not been the case. And, and, you know, some of the, you know, at least the way that some university leaders have, have, Justified it, including here, you know, the recent round of, of firings at UT and some other places, you know, were presented as in response to public pressure from Senator Creighton in particular, you know, and the idea that, you know, there was going to be looking into whether the compliance had been enough.

[00:50:33] So without delving into that too much, you know, not part of my job description, but, you know, this is not going away. Yeah. And you know, we’re going to return to this as part of the oversight. Yeah. I mean, I think the most interesting thing I’ll just pull out of that, you know, and we don’t need to go into the public attitudes on this or anything.

[00:50:51] I mean, they exist. We’ll put them in a blog post later, but I do think, you know, the way that the, the Senator, Senator Cranston proposed this was, you know, we expect you to show us how you’re [00:51:00] complying with this law. Now, what’s interesting is that, you know, there’s a, there’s an asymmetry there, right. Which is, you know, you can’t really prove that you’re not doing something.

[00:51:07] Yeah. And so all of a sudden when he sent that out, you know, and then you see the number of people getting fired at, you know, this campus or that campus, well, that becomes a demonstration effect. How many offices would be closed? How many people who are here are no longer, I mean, if the requirement is that the universities have to demonstrate that they’re compliant with the law, just saying we’re not doing anything we’re not supposed to do, clearly it’s been interpreted, that’s not enough.

[00:51:28] Right. And so that’s kind of where we are at this point. You know, there’s also, you know, over, you know, there’s, uh, a call to, you know, look at the implementation of SB 18s provisions on tenure on faculty tenure, again, something that not surprisingly, you know, a good public opinion issue for Republicans. 66 percent of Republican support of phasing out tenure at Texas is public.

[00:51:51] College universities in April 2023 polling. I mean, there’s a real tension here, though. That’s hard not to acknowledge, which is just the fact that, you know, I mean, in my mind, and you know, you can [00:52:00] sort of say, Oh, I mean, I don’t have tenure. So whatever. But, but, you know, this idea that, like, I would say this is not a big issue for most voters.

[00:52:07] I don’t think most voters are really thinking about tenure policies or faculty, Senate’s. Or anything like that. On the other hand, there are some voters who clearly are and that matters, but I mean, I can’t help but go back to last session and say that at the same time this discussion was going on, they were talking about this huge investment in higher ed, and I think, you know, there is this aspect to this, which is, you know, the universities in some ways can really only hurt themselves because I think, you know, for the most part, most of the statewide leaders do want Texas to have that investment.

[00:52:33] High quality public institutions for the most part, like that’s not really the goal is to kneecap, you know, these big state institutions. I don’t think, you know, I, well, you know, I, I think it’s fair to say that there’s a degree of variance among the state’s leaderships and just how committed they are to seeing the change.

[00:52:52] Right. Particularly the, you know, the research one universities, just call them what they are. You know, the big universities [00:53:00] and, and attention between their vision of where the role that higher ed should play in the ecosystem and in the, in the both, at the intersection of kind of the higher ed ecosystem and the economy.

[00:53:11] Right. Um, and the culture of the state. Yeah. And that will continue. I think that, you know, that tension is all over this. And then as if, you know, there wasn’t enough to put on the agenda of the higher ed committee, there’s also, um, a call to, you know, look at what universities are doing to combat, and this is also Um, and I think it’s a pretty close paraphrase to combat anti Semitism on Texas college campuses.

[00:53:39] And if you’re listening to this and you’re watching the news, an enormous amount of national context to this right now, um, with, you know, college presidents being driven out of their jobs in the Ivy league protests on campus, Columbia is all virtual for the rest of the semester. Yeah. The ongoing effort to parse [00:54:00] out the impact and the politics of the latest, you know, The conflict between Israel and Hamas, U.

[00:54:06] S. role in all that. So, you know, we’re going to see a lot of that in here. And again, this is an issue that definitely has, if you look at public opinion, you know, there are some big partisan differences in this, right? And that, you know, and look, I don’t want to reduce it to this because I think this discussion It involves a lot of things, but I mean, just the difference in the favorability ratings of Israel.

[00:54:30] When we asked about a range of country favorability ratings in our December 23 poll overall, 55 percent had a favorable view of Israel, 20 percent had an unfavorable view, but Democrats and Republicans looked very different. And Democrats split at that point, 36, 30. 36 favorable, 36 unfavorable, but Democrats very, uh, Republicans very lopsided, 75 percent favorable, 7 percent unfavorable.

[00:54:59] This is [00:55:00] roiling national politics. It’s, it’s roiling campus politics. It’s entering into, it’s been sort of in a lot of ways. subsumed into the arguments about, you know, the politics of, well, the politics of campus, the politics of university, politics of free speech, biases on university campuses, one way or the other, you know, what free speech should look like and how, you know, and ultimately it does circle back to the DEI discussion.

[00:55:29] And so this is all. of a piece in a lot of ways. And that’s going to be very front and center, I think, in this. So you know, this was our kind of diversion into more partisan red meat. Um, you know, a couple of examples and then I want to wrap this up, but you know, Natural Resources Economic Development Committee, uh, also chaired by Senator Birdwell, you know, has a charge in which the title is Overcoming Federal Incompetence.

[00:55:56] Here we go. Right. a placeholder caption for considering, [00:56:00] you know, the impact to the Texas economy from federal interference represented by quote unquote restricting LNG imports, supply chain limitations, a net zero carbon agenda, and other air emission provisions. Right. You know, um, You know, the transportation committee chaired by Senator Nichols, um, has a charge simply titled the future of our, of our economy within which the committee is directed to quote unquote, evaluate president Biden’s plan to transition to all electric vehicles and the impact on Texans and the state economy.

[00:56:39] And while that name checks president Biden, that’s still actually a little more restrained. Um, you know, but it does kind of dovetail with the anti ESG sediments that are Out there and there is some more checkup on, uh, um, on ESG in there. ESG also does not, you know, pull very well among [00:57:00] Republicans, but a lot, but a lot.

[00:57:01] But a lot of people still don’t have an attitude about this. Yeah. This is one of those things where you say, you know, this is a sentiment that’s either brewing or is being brewed. Among the Republican electorate at this point, it’s kind of hard to tell who’s leading who here, but it’s not something that you would expect.

[00:57:14] I mean, it’s sort of a new front and sort of the, the environmental discussion and how that plays out in policy, it seems to me. Right. And so then we also have, you know, not surprisingly the state affairs committee, uh, chaired by Senator Hughes, you know, by definition is a landing place for, you know, a lot of hot issues.

[00:57:34] They are charged to look at election security with a lot of familiar language in there. I think we don’t necessarily have to go over. So we’re running out of time. Um, you know, one of which though was, you know, attention to subdivisions in public school districts using government resources for election for illegal electioneering is the language in the call, which is a nod to the recent AG lawsuits against the Denton ISD, a [00:58:00] couple of Denton ISD principals who urged employees.

[00:58:03] you know, not for me to say, but probably a little in a somewhat ill advised manner to vote against pro voucher candidates in the primaries. Um, you know, and so, you know, we see this. You want that in an email boss? Yeah, right. Exactly. So, you know, at the broadest level, how do we wind this up? You know, I, I think it’s, You know, this is still a pretty useful document and provides evidence for where Lieutenant Governor Patrick wants to inject his influence.

[00:58:31] Yeah. You know, there’s still interested in the grid as a policy matter. And again, whether you, you know, you know, appreciate Lieutenant Governor Patrick or not, he got pretty deep into the policy space on that. In the aftermath, the Burean had some pretty clear ideas, some of which people liked, some of which not.

[00:58:50] Um, he’s clearly wants to continue to push on higher ed. Yep. And wants to remain, you know, but again, with the kind of complications we talked about earlier in the property tax [00:59:00] conversation. Yeah, you know, I mean, that’s almost a little on ungenerous, you know, I think he wants to, I think he wants to continue to be seen as a leader in that conversation.

[00:59:09] Right. I mean, and if anything, all the, the, the, you know, the chaos in the house and anything really provides an opportunity because there’s less. Yeah, I mean, I think he wants to leave, you know, he’s got a member who to whom this is very important, you know, gonna be working on this, you know, would test the land, you know, probably test the boundaries and already has in some ways of, you know, The carrot and stick approach that the Lieutenant Governor takes with the senators in his, in his caucus and, you know, their willingness, you know, some of the boundaries and of their willingness to be guided and, you know, on a pet issue like this.

[00:59:48] I mean, there has been. You know, I mean, I don’t want to overplay this, but the Louisiana governor and Senator Betancourt have not always been exactly on the same page on this. Yeah. I mean, it strikes [01:00:00] me as sort of like a joke. He’ll say, you know, do something, you know, like when you work, you should do something that you love so much.

[01:00:04] You do it for free. I imagine Senator Betancourt would work on these issues for free. Yeah. I think that’s, I think that’s a, that’s a fair thing to say. And, and, and it’s not a, obviously not a criticism. No, it’s just a fact. You know, and, and, you know, I think to, just to make an institutional point that, you know, You know, it’s consistent with the brand, I guess, or the nature of the podcast, you know, this all kind of shows Lieutenant Governor at work on efforts to shape the agenda during a period in the political cycle where Lieutenant Governors, not just this one, but Lieutenant Governors generally tend to be less in the public spotlight, especially when they’re not up for reelection, right?

[01:00:40] Legislature is not in session. He’s not on the ballot. And, you know, this is a, you know, the, you know, This shows, you know, a certain, you know, recognition of where the Lieutenant Governor can, can have some influence and he’s leaned into it. But also, you know, what this, why this is so, I mean, you know, in some ways what’s so interesting to me, this is also a continuation of what we’ve been talking about, [01:01:00] honestly, for the last, like, whatever, 18 months, which is, you know, this is, About agenda, right?

[01:01:05] I mean, ultimately what we’re seeing is, is the first stab at the lieutenant governor’s agenda going into the next session. We’ll see what the governor’s is. We’ll see what the house, what emerges from that whole thing. But the lieutenant governor, you know, in some ways is, you know, again, it’s a quiet period for him in some ways.

[01:01:21] It’s it’s a good opportunity, right? Because this is a chance he gets to sort of put his agenda out there without a lot of competition, you know, and I think the other thing, you know, I mean, I would finish by pointing to the absences and this relates to the agenda management. Yes. And this doesn’t mean these things are not going to be on the agenda.

[01:01:38] But this isn’t this. The interim charges are not a vehicle at this point for school choice or, you know, directing public funds to private K through 12. And what I saw, not a, not a whisper about that. I don’t think there was any certainly direct reference to that. Um, and no mention of [01:02:00] abortion. Yeah.

[01:02:01] Women’s health. Yeah, I noticed those are the two sort of obvious. Absences, you know, and I think we’ll leave it to a future podcast to speculate on the nature of those absences at this point, I think. So with that, Josh, thanks for a robust conversation, covered a lot of territory. As always, thanks to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts here at the University of Texas at Austin.

[01:02:26] Uh, we’ll have a post on this at our website, texaspolitics. utexas. edu, and whether you find this post or you want to go and, you know, look up some of the public opinion data, there is a, uh, related to these issues or that some of which you may be a stakeholder in. Uh, we have a polling search tool where you can go and search by policy subject or just by keyword.

[01:02:47] Um, And In the polling section of the website. I would urge you to use that if you’re interested or think we didn’t cover something You were curious about so as always thanks for listening and we’ll be back with [01:03:00] another second reading podcast soon The second reading podcast is a production of the texas politics project at the university of texas at austin