May 23rd, 2023 – The pressure mounts in the Texas Legislature

[00:00:00] Intro: 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. At what point? Must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[00:00:35] Jim Henson: 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 again today by Josh Blank, research Director for the Texas Politics Project. Top of the final week of the session.

[00:00:51] Josh Blank: Morning. Oh, I’m so excited. Kids are coming outta school sessions ending.

[00:00:55] Josh Blank: It’s gonna be wild, right? I can’t wait.

[00:00:57] Jim Henson: Uh, you can smell summer. I can smell summer everywhere. And it’s the heat and the, yeah. Garbage. No, um, definitely the heat. Okay. So Sunny dies a week away. Uh, Basically it’s both a grind in the legislature right now, and in some ways just completely nuts. Mm-hmm. So, you know, lots of people walking around going, I can’t wait for this to end.

[00:01:21] Jim Henson: I hate these people. Right. Or on the other hand, you know, having irrational love for people that have helped them. Yeah. You know, that is sometimes surprising. Like, no, you know, that person is surprisingly nice. So what do they do for you? Um, So there’s a lot of that going on. So, you know, I, you know, I, I kind of have in my notes I thought we’d take stock.

[00:01:41] Jim Henson: We’re not really taking stock so much. It’s just, it’s just kind of this check-in at the moment of, you know, we were talking about this yesterday and, and what we might do and you know, there is this sense that. You know, it was smart for us to do the podcast, I think to pat ourselves on the back on uncertainty a few weeks ago.

[00:01:58] Jim Henson: Right. Because that’s basically been the thing, right? Yeah, exactly. Since then, I mean, it’s been now, you know, and, and as I was thinking, and maybe at the end we’ll talk about the things that are a little. Little less uncertain. There’s some things that are meeting expectations, but you know, in terms of where we are in terms of the calendar in the house, anything that’s not passed on.

[00:02:17] Jim Henson: Second reading, uh, Tuesday, which is today as we record, uh, or on third reading on Wednesday, basically dead right. You know, other than the, so we’re seeing a lot of the expected shoving from Democrats, lots of points of order, and I think we’ve talked about this recently in here. I mean, it’s been a very, uh, uh, uh, it’s been a big session for points of order.

[00:02:40] Jim Henson: I mean, look, points of order. Yeah. Right. You know, I mean, you know, you don’t. Think about points of order when this, when the legislature’s not in session. Oh, it’s all I think, and then it happens and everyone’s all, oh, it’s a poo. You know? Yeah. Et cetera, et cetera, on social media. But, you know, there has been a kind of distinct feel to it this time.

[00:02:57] Jim Henson: I think, um, whether that’s empirically verifiable or not, we’ll see when the session’s over. Hopefully, maybe, maybe we’ll

[00:03:03] Josh Blank: take a look. Kind of curious.

[00:03:05] Jim Henson: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we’re seeing the expected delay tactics and, and the groaning and complaining while this is going on, right there is the, you know, we are at the point where, you know, decorum, falters, I love this part and we’ve seen, you know, So both singular and collective examples of that, I just, I

[00:03:23] Josh Blank: just love the shift from, you know, the back mic of, you know, will the gentleman or gentle mate, lady yield for some questions?

[00:03:29] Josh Blank: And of course I yield to Will the Gen No. Yeah, right. Not now. Not way this out. Um, I went with the, with with the dagger

[00:03:37] Jim Henson: stare. Yeah. The occasional elapsing into first names, you know, things like this. Um, yeah. Know, very funny clip from the Senate. We haven’t even talked about this from, I think it was from yesterday of, oh, you know, uh, Sarah Eckhart, Senator Eckhart.

[00:03:52] Jim Henson: Yeah. Sarah Eckhart. You know, first sort of. Asking, you know, about wanting to ask a question of a member using, you know, I think she was asking Senator Creighton a question and said, se Senator Bettencourt and Lieutenant Governor corrected, you mean Senator Creighton said, what did I say? Oh, Senator Beckton.

[00:04:09] Jim Henson: Oh yeah. Well, and she’s, well, I’m still mad at Paul. And then they kind of went, so you know, those moments that. Uh, that humanize our legislators. That’s, that’s great. I think that’s a fair way of putting it. Um, but yeah, and lots of, you know, a lots of, particularly in the house, a lot more exhortation and background noise and Oh yeah.

[00:04:29] Jim Henson: Crowd re you know, crowd response. Right. I think is a good

[00:04:31] Josh Blank: way of putting it. A lot of grumbling from

[00:04:33] Jim Henson: the peanut gallery. Yes. Often like, uh, uh, a laugh track of sorts. Um, Now, so let’s you know, so where are we to some degree? A little spot Check on the proverbial only thing the legislature has to do the budget.

[00:04:47] Jim Henson: That actually seems not too bad, right? There have been, there’s been basic agreement from the two chambers on the overall amount, almost from the beginning. Uh, they are sending signals that they have worked out final agreements on the vast majority of that. That even goes back a week, couple of weeks by now.

[00:05:04] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. Um, there’s just, you know, a couple of big things pending that are gonna have some, you know, they’re gonna have to slot some numbers in, uh, particularly property taxes in and the grid, both of which we’ll talk about. So let’s get to that. So, three big issues still not resolved in the sense that, you know, there’s not consensus between the house and Senate and, and, and varying degrees of disagreement.

[00:05:30] Jim Henson: And that’d be, uh, uh, in property tax relief, power grid reform and education. And the education kind of has two pieces, right? The overall kind of spending piece, uh, and the piece that’s attached to tax reform, but then also school choice and educational savings accounts, or school choice slash educational savings accounts.

[00:05:52] Jim Henson: And those were. Actually combined, yeah. Uh, in the last couple days in a way we’ll talk about. So, you know, let’s talk about this. I think in order of the priority assigned them by Texans in our last

[00:06:04] Josh Blank: poll. Right. So the grid was, as we mo we’ve sort of pointed out multiple times here, was, was at the top of our list when we sort of looked at the priorities of, uh, lieutenant Governor, the governor, the speaker, and even a few of, of the minority parties, you know, key priorities here.

[00:06:19] Josh Blank: And ask people, ask voters how important it was for the legislature to, to, you know, to accomplish each of these areas. The thing that ran to the top was of course, improving reliability of the electric grid and, and I think, you know, you and I have talked about this a lot. We’ve written about a lot, and I think the one thing to point out here is for this podcast audience is just, you know, While it’s sort of been taken kind of as democratic grumblings in the sort of the wake of the, the last election cycle, you know, in terms of concerns about the grid, this idea, if you keep talking about the grid, it’s just political.

[00:06:45] Josh Blank: It doesn’t mean that, it’s like, yeah, yeah. I don’t think that’s really what we’re seeing. Ultimately, that was a very visceral experience, and, and the, and the data is still bearing that out. Voters are still concerned about the reliability of the grid, no doubt. Not that a lot of them retain attention, but when the state came out and said, Hey, by the way, this summer, you know, We might have more need than we have capacity.

[00:07:03] Josh Blank: You know, it’s not, you know, at least for some voters that is gonna, you know, recharge these ideas about okay, how they’ve got

[00:07:08] Jim Henson: a lot of coverage. But, and it was also, look, that was also, I mean, that wasn’t a random person saying that that was, you know, gubernatorial appointees delivering that message. Um, not to put too sharp a point on not to put a sharp point on it at all.

[00:07:23] Jim Henson: So that was, you know, I mean that statement, and I’m not. Questioning the veracity of it, but it was definitely meant, you know, to, to drop a little bit, you know, as if we needed a, a little more catalyzing, you know, force into the, a little bit more of a catalyst into the, into the legislative chamber at that point when that

[00:07:42] Josh Blank: happened.

[00:07:42] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well that’s, that’s also that, that little statement, again, the point we’re making here is, you know, to the extent that a, an appointee went out and made the statement, there’s no doubt that, that the executive branch was not behind this appointee going out and making the statement, which. To those who would still say, Hey, the grid is not really an issue.

[00:07:57] Josh Blank: Well, I think this kind of flies in the face of that cuz essentially, you know, the governor and his right team are stepping in and saying, Hey, this might be an issue if you don’t do

[00:08:05] Jim Henson: something. And, and, and, you know, to be, you know, specific about it, the, the numbers that were provided for that in terms of the shortfall Yeah.

[00:08:13] Jim Henson: Of available wattage versus, you know, anticipated demand, you know, was ready, you know, was, you know, did not include renewables. Right.

[00:08:23] Josh Blank: Well, they can’t, they can’t be trusted.

[00:08:24] Jim Henson: Right. And so, right. I mean, and that, that’s the point. So I, you know, let’s see. You have to take that, you know, with a grain of salt, but it, but it’s telling, right?

[00:08:32] Jim Henson: It tells us something that we’ve talked about in here in terms of the, you know, one of the subtexts of this. It’s not even a subtext. One of the elements of this discussion of fixing the grid mm-hmm. Has been the push to reset, if you will, the subsidy balance, the, the status accorded the investment in, uh, renewables.

[00:08:54] Jim Henson: That’s a good way to put that. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s, I think that’s right. Um, that’s a very fair way to make, I mean, you know, well look, and for the. People on both sides, they would say, well, there’s a different, but I think it’s a fair, general description of what’s going on

[00:09:06] Josh Blank: here. Yeah. And if I were to go back and make a less fair description, I would say, you know, there’s still some kicking of the renewables going on because that was, you know, ultimately there’s, you know, we’re still in the, I mean, to the extent that this is still an issue on voter’s mind, you can still see the long tail of like, where can we put blame?

[00:09:21] Josh Blank: Right. And that’s still. Out there, right? I mean ultimately that’s still part of the narrative and it’s part of the story. Well,

[00:09:27] Jim Henson: and let’s you know, look, I, you know, the novelist Martin Amos died this week. Uhhuh and my excellent wife we Shaggy dog story that I wanna go into. We had a Texas book Festival dinner a few years ago and we wound up sitting with Martin Amos, which I love.

[00:09:41] Jim Henson: That’s interesting. I didn’t know that. Yeah, cuz I liked the guy, you know, he was a very bad boy and he was a very bad boy. You know, I read some of his bad boys. Staff back. Yeah. And he was a very bad boy that night. He went up and told some very off-colored jokes during the speech that the I, I think that the leadership of the book festival still remembers.

[00:09:58] Jim Henson: I made a social fapa mentioning this not long ago with the person who was the head of the book festival at that time, and she was not amused to her. She was still not amused. Several years later. Point being, you know, one of the things Martin Amos, I, my wife sent me a quote from Mar Martin Amos about avoiding not only cliches, but Oh yeah.

[00:10:17] Jim Henson: Cliched language that is out in circulation. Uh, the war against cliche, I believe. Right. And, um, that was really good. I’ll send it to you and who knows, maybe I’ll even link it. Um, but I think that, You know, as we look at what is going on with renewables, you know, a lot of cliches floating, floating around around this, that, uh, The ch, the chief one that I was thinking of that led to that digression is never let a good crisis go to waste.

[00:10:46] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. And that’s, I think, part of what’s going on with renewables here. Yeah. There are a lot of people that have been bristling about this for a long time in terms of federal subsidies, in terms of climate skepticism. Mm-hmm. A lot of things that are really merged here and while. You know, there are people that are here, as Sherman Hunter pointed out yesterday, which we will get to, uh, that are interested in money.

[00:11:07] Jim Henson: There is also, and this is about money too, but there’s also kind of the ax to grind about renewable energy here and climate change that is really coming to the floor. Although it’s interesting how little people are explicitly talking about. Climate change in this and really more about the economics of it.

[00:11:23] Jim Henson: So, you know, I, I think we don’t necessarily have to go into all the details that’s, that are going on here, but you know, the two chambers are pretty close. Yeah. It seems like given the complexity, given the. Lobby free for all that this has been. Right. And I think we talked about this a few weeks ago. I think I’d gone to, I’d gone to a late night hearing on, on one of the earlier instantiations of this bill.

[00:11:47] Jim Henson: It was probably SB seven, but it may have been the substitute at the time. And, you know, the, the turnout in, you know, all branches of the even energy related lobby was pretty, pretty impressive, you know. Right. Standing room only at a over floor room. I think at a 10, yeah, at a 10:30 PM hearing. Um, But this all did come to a head yesterday.

[00:12:08] Jim Henson: So, uh, yesterday the house passed the eight, the current version of HB seven. Uh, and if you ha, if you weren’t watching state affairs, chairman Todd Hunter, who has been at the front of this in the house, uh, gave a a real barn burner. Uh, of a speech to, to introduce the bill and then def and to defend it. Um, and there was, there’s a lot in that speech.

[00:12:39] Jim Henson: So, you know, you can find that in the archive. It’s in part one of the, the video of the floor, uh, from yesterday, which would be May 22nd. Um, so Sp has a lot of stuff in, and maybe we should give a quick review of what’s in there.

[00:12:53] Josh Blank: Yeah. So SB seven would, would basically, we’re not, you know, and this is real, I mean, like, I’m gonna tell you, this is meant for, if you’re listening to this and you really know what’s going on, you really know what’s going on.

[00:13:03] Josh Blank: I’m not trying to like Right. Educate you. This is for normal. As

[00:13:05] Jim Henson: in last week, uh, you know, this is not, we’re not policy guys per se. This is, this

[00:13:09] Josh Blank: is for the relatively normal among you who are listen. Into this. Right? So essentially they would require renewable generators like wind and solar to supplement their operations with, with backup power, uh, during intermittency phase.

[00:13:21] Josh Blank: And this is this whole idea, you’re talking a lot of talking about dispatchable power, dispatchable power during, you know, again, times of, you know, peak demand, things like that. Yeah. Uh, it would also establish, uh, this sort of other service product called dispatchable, reliability reserve service. And essentially this is just emergency generation when the grid approaches or reaches capacity.

[00:13:39] Josh Blank: Right. And this is sort of, you know, this is expensive. This is pretty expensive. I think they, they estimate this will be cost about 4 billion per year to be able to provide this service. And then the other sort of big, big piece of this is the, the, the buttresses that, right? Yeah. Is the performance credit mechanism, the pcm, which, you know, if you’ve been paying any attention, this, you’ll hear this being thrown around a lot.

[00:13:56] Josh Blank: The,

[00:13:56] Jim Henson: the two words have been dispatchable in pcm.

[00:13:59] Josh Blank: Right. And this is essentially a, a way to incentivize the power generators to create additional, you know, generation capacity for. Right. So these

[00:14:10] Jim Henson: times demand, so it comes up with, I think, a formula for paying them, you know, if they build this and, and tap into it.

[00:14:16] Jim Henson: And

[00:14:16] Josh Blank: the big, I mean, and a big, big part of, you know, I think the, the, you know, of, of, of Chairman Hunter’s speech was about, you know, how much money are we going to commit to these incentives? Are we going to put a cap on it, essentially? I mean, he clearly is saying, yes, we are going to put a cap on this, but to the extent that, you know, a lot of the, the interests out there are either arguing for a higher cap or no cap.

[00:14:37] Josh Blank: That was like a, a big

[00:14:38] Jim Henson: part of the process. Well, and the, and the back and the politics of that go back pretty far. The original cap in this bill was 500 million. That was, I believe, came out of a consultant report that Ercot. Uh, had that was, that was sort of solicited and was supposed to guide this Yeah.

[00:14:56] Jim Henson: Through Ercot. And there’s been a lot of talk about, you know, whether that. From the beginning where that $500 million right number came from. Whether it was enough, whether a cap was a good idea, there’ve been a lot of, you know, probably some of the people that Chairman Hunter has been complaining about, saying that the cap was too artificial.

[00:15:15] Jim Henson: It was a, it was actually ultimately a disincentive given the level of investment required. Mm-hmm. Et cetera. Now, chairman Hunter not buying any of that, and I think in a lot of ways that 500 million number was something that. You know, was arrived at as kind of a, oh, that’s what you say. Even if you can’t really explain it, that’s fine.

[00:15:35] Jim Henson: That’s where we’re gonna start. And so they’ve moved up and, and, you know, we should move on to a couple more issues, but I, you know, I can’t urge people strongly enough to go look at Chairman Hunter’s layout. And I just wanna

[00:15:48] Josh Blank: say like, it’s, it’s a. It’s a, a good example of where we are in the process that this is an area where we’d say, you know, they’re pretty close.

[00:15:55] Josh Blank: Yeah, right. You know? Right. Because ultimately, I mean, one of the things I think at the outset was, you know, it wasn’t clear what the mechanisms would be, what constellation of mechanisms, what kind of money they were gonna put into it. You know, what kind of new requirements. And so the fact that you’re kind of at this point, you’re saying, well, these are the things that in and of itself is a pretty heavy lift to get here.

[00:16:14] Josh Blank: And now it’s kind of a little bit of, you know, again, various hurt feelings and

[00:16:17] Jim Henson: other pieces. Well, and there are safety valves out there. So for example, I mean the Senate business and Commerce met and they’ve been ground zero for this legislation on the Senate side. This is interesting under uh, uh, chairman Scher and um, What they did was they last night met and, and.

[00:16:38] Jim Henson: Heard several amendments. I had a list and I didn’t bring it with me, but it’s, you know, double figures in a, of amendments that are lettered to meet the house requirement that those amendments beheard. Right. Um, so there, you know, and the preparation there is that those are amendments that are prepared for the sunset Bill.

[00:16:56] Jim Henson: And so on. I believe the puc, and it might be Ercot actually, and we’ll have to go and correct that at some point. I don’t know. We, we, we won’t do an over, but I, I’ll look it up and we’ll put it in the podcast in the post, on the podcast, but that is, you know, sort of a preparation. In case some of this falls apart, some pieces of legislation that people have been trying to pass that haven’t made it in other provisions, they wanna make sure don’t get left out.

[00:17:24] Jim Henson: So, you know, the negotiation is still going on and there’s a lot of pieces on the board, but I think the general sense is, um, you know, look, per our polling, I think there’s a sense that they have to do something on this. Yeah. And that they’re gonna get it done. Um, which brings us to another, to the next item, uh, right.

[00:17:41] Jim Henson: Uh, on our list, which had. A lot to, you know, which, which, which there’s been a lot of talk about and in which they are not quite as close, I don’t think. Um, certainly not process wise and substance wise. I, I don’t think so either. And that’s, that’s property

[00:17:58] Josh Blank: taxes. Yeah. I mean, it’s really remarkable when you go through the list of the, of the, sort of the big issues that are still outstanding.

[00:18:03] Josh Blank: They actually were in, in some respects, but especially at the top here. The biggest issues for voters? Yeah, I mean, when we, you know, we said what do they need to accomplish? You know, number two was, uh, a reduction in, in property taxes. And so that was 41% of taxes. It was extremely important for the legislature to do this.

[00:18:19] Josh Blank: It’s the second highest, 68% of taxes, and more than two thirds said it was either extremely or very important. So this was certainly on voters’ minds going into this. Now, we talked about this a lot. Right. Last week and, and in some detail. Right. Um,

[00:18:30] Jim Henson: and the proposal we talked about last week has now been passed.

[00:18:34] Jim Henson: You know, we recorded on Tuesday or Wednesday last week, on Friday, the house passed the bill that we talked about, which I. You know, sort of does bo you know, munge is both, both proposals in the House and the Senate together, about which there had been very harsh words exchanged right earlier in the session.

[00:18:53] Jim Henson: Um, and then some, and again, we talked about a lot. The bill would raise the homestead exemption to a hundred thousand, which is, you know, uh, uh, 30, 30,000 above what was in the Senate. Uh, uh, raising of the ho, you know, bill to raise. The Homestead exemption also includes the 5% appraisal cap for all real property, not just homesteads, which is the core of the house proposal with some other, you know, elements in terms of school financing.

[00:19:20] Jim Henson: Um, And a, as far as I’m aware, there’s been no formal response from the Senate, but one does get the sense that there are discussions going on. There was kind of a photo op earlier in the week where there a couple of photo ops where there had been a meeting between the big three. Mm-hmm. And then this handshake on the Senate dias between, uh, the speaker and.

[00:19:41] Jim Henson: And the lieutenant Governor though, if you look at that photo, it’s a very capable moment in terms of facial expression. And even if you zoom in on the handshake, you know I read it as like Patrick’s given, given feeling and kind of the, he jumped on the handshake grip and got the better grip first. Now, that could be totally wrong, but if you look very closely at finger placement in that photo, it looks to me like.

[00:20:05] Jim Henson: Patrick did the, oh, I’m jumping in there and grabbing your hand. Um, as we, you know, have these kind of, you know, funny expressions on her face, one of which is kind of a death said grin, et cetera. So, so property taxes still very much out there. Another thing that, you know that, I mean, this is something where I think.

[00:20:24] Jim Henson: If they, if this is the, if this falls apart, yeah. This is something the governor will call them back on immediately. Yeah. Because, you know, because of the runway you need to implement these tax reductions, right? Yeah. So you’ve gotta get, if you’re gonna do this, you gotta get it done. If this breaks down, they’re, they’re coming back and they’re coming back sooner rather than

[00:20:43] Josh Blank: later.

[00:20:43] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, you just figured they’re just gonna continue, you know, they’re just gonna have to continue on this. I mean, the thing. Right. I mean, the thing isn’t, I mean, it’d be interesting to see what happens with that in the sense that, you know, one of the big pieces of the budget that remains outstanding, of course, is how they’re gonna deal with this, the property tax reduction, and then the impact that it has on public education.

[00:21:00] Josh Blank: And so that’s sort of sitting out there in the budget. So that, I mean the, and there’s just a question maybe, you know, but I mean, if this were to fall through, you know, would they just basically pass a budget without it and then come back and deal with it? Or would they just hold the whole budget and say, we’re just gonna have to deal with this whole thing at once?

[00:21:13] Josh Blank: I don’t know. But I mean, the thing

[00:21:15] Jim Henson: about, I think if the expectation is that they were gonna come, I. You know, Hey, don’t know. And that’s probably gonna be pretty conditional, you know? I mean, I

[00:21:23] Josh Blank: think the thing is, this is another one of those things where, you know, we were kind of joking, I mean, joking, observing last week that by the house going and saying, you know, oh, well, you know, you, you want to do a 70,000 home segment?

[00:21:33] Josh Blank: Well, you know, we wanna do a hundred. Yeah. Right. I mean there’s certain, there’s a certain part of that that’s a little bit of like, you know, in the moment that’s a little bit of a middle finger,

[00:21:40] Jim Henson: you know? Yeah. It was definitely a, yeah, I think, I think we called it a jab. I think I called it a

[00:21:43] Josh Blank: jab left.

[00:21:44] Josh Blank: Yeah. Because ultimately when you leave, regardless of what happens, you know, the house is gonna be able to say, and house members are gonna say, Hey look, you know, we passed the biggest property type cut. Right. You know, we just ultimately, we negotiated with the senate. Yeah, we had to lower it. So I mean, they’re already in that position.

[00:21:59] Josh Blank: But the other side of this is to say, okay, you know, you get the short point, whatever, but the other way to look at this say, okay, but you know, the house was not for a, an increase in the homestead exemption until they did this. And what this says is that it’s on the table. Yeah, right. Exactly. And that’s the point.

[00:22:11] Josh Blank: So, so, so even though it feels like there’s still this jabbing going, I mean, they’ve, they’ve. They’ve actually moved significantly closer to each other, simply by the house acknowledging the Senate’s main vehicle here. Right. So they’re gonna get something done. They have to,

[00:22:23] Jim Henson: okay. So if you, if we go back for a moment to our ranking from the PLA pole, right.

[00:22:29] Jim Henson: The next issue I wanna talk about, you know, that is very unresolved as vouchers or savings accounts, educational savings accounts, et cetera. School safety was actually the third topic in between there, or third highest in between there. And that bill is pretty much on the road. I mean, they’re, you know, they’re going to conference, but I don’t think that, You know, I’m not, I’m not getting any signs that they’re not gonna be able to iron out.

[00:22:54] Jim Henson: The differences are not huge. There’s some things that they, you know, that I think different actors want to do in the midst of this. Yeah. And I think this is, you know, this is pretty much gonna be a pass. It’s

[00:23:05] Josh Blank: really, it seems to be down to some, some, you know, Reasonably minor details. You know, I mean, ultimately the ideas are trying to beef up security on school campuses.

[00:23:12] Josh Blank: The question is who, right. Who’s gonna be that security? You know, they wanna put some money into hardening schools and providing, say, the question is how much, right. You know, how, who, who gets it, who

[00:23:21] Jim Henson: doesn’t. And, and inevitably when you’re doing things like this, you know, I mean, you’ve made this point about the expenditures on schools, it’s always expensive.

[00:23:27] Jim Henson: Yeah. But also, you know, the. The web of authority over the implementation of all this stuff is really extensive and that I think there’s still some issues to be worked out

[00:23:38] Josh Blank: there. Well, and that’s the other big piece of this, which is basically requiring that every, uh, school and school district have, you know, so these are these active, you know, active shooter plans in place.

[00:23:47] Josh Blank: Right. Which, you know, I mean, one of the things that I think came out of Uvalde and kind of came out the, the introspection on all that, that I think has not really been. Cons. I don’t know. I think it’s really gotten less attention probably than it should is how few campuses actually have active shooter plants in place right now.

[00:24:01] Josh Blank: On the one hand, I mean, I could go on about this in various ways to think about it. It’s not important, you know, when I think about it in this sense. But ultimately, like these are the three kind of pieces of the stool. They all seem to kind of agree that these are the things that are gonna happen. You know, they’re gonna use sticks, not carrots, to make sure that they get those, uh, active shooter plans in place.

[00:24:19] Josh Blank: But I mean, the thing about this is, you know, I mean, to the extent that there’s any sort of debate going on right now, as far as I can tell, it’s whether or not like mental health is part of this or

[00:24:27] Jim Henson: not. Well, there’s some other things involved too, and

[00:24:30] Josh Blank: they’re definitely, yeah, and it seems like they’re saying mental health is not gonna be part of this piece of it, but, but that’s kind of the whole point here is, is I mean, I mean, to my mind, I think the quote des

[00:24:37] Jim Henson: your this week was, you know, we don’t want schools to be the delivery system for mental health, which I

[00:24:42] Josh Blank: thought was an interesting.

[00:24:44] Josh Blank: Perspective. Yeah. Given that that’s where the kids are all day and it is actually the primary provider of most services to children in the state. So I mean, it’s not a crazy vehicle for that kind of thing, just to throw that out there. Um, but I mean, this is one of those things again, you know, this is a problem that’s so big, it’s so amorphous.

[00:24:59] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s so big and, and depending on who you ask, what is going to look like a solution on school safety, right? Going to be different. But given that what we know about, you know, again, public opinions towards gun violence and school violence and that, those sorts of issues, we know that Republican voters in particular are going to be looking at, you know, sort of these factors that are kind of far beyond the school walls parenting, right?

[00:25:19] Josh Blank: Things like that, like violence and popular culture. And the things that can be, you know, I think attacked head on are these sorts of things which are basically, can you make the schools safer? Right? Can you put up more walls, more doors? Can you put people there with guns? And you know, again, whether that’s effective or not, or whether they’re spending enough money on that is

[00:25:34] Jim Henson: honestly right.

[00:25:35] Jim Henson: And that is one of the outstanding issues, I think is, you know, Security provisions.

[00:25:40] Josh Blank: Well, this is, yeah. Et cetera. And this is the problem with all these kinds of things. You know what I mean? There’s something about this when, you know, I had a friend once who talked about this in terms of the context of, uh, Benghazi, right?

[00:25:50] Josh Blank: And let’s, let’s go bla blast to the, from the past. But he’s saying, you know, when, when all these issues came up where the su, the security staff in Benghazi said, oh, you know, we need more security here. We need more security here. And that was sort of shown as a smoking gun as to, you know, sort of their, their issue not being taken care of.

[00:26:05] Josh Blank: And my friend who studies foreign policy said, yeah, you know, you should kind of go and ask yourself how many, uh, foreign embassies do you think request additional security? Right? They probably all do. Most of them do in most cases, and certainly most do in any sort of area with any sort of conflict or issue.

[00:26:20] Josh Blank: So to sort of say, well, this one didn’t get it, and that’s the cause of this, it’s like, hmm. And there’s sort of a similar thing here to my mind, you know, in the sense, well look, I mean

[00:26:28] Jim Henson: this does go back to, you know, the broader point that we’ve beat the death here to some degree. But, you know, there, there, you know, given the governing majority in the state mm-hmm.

[00:26:36] Jim Henson: Being, you know, Republican and not going anywhere. Given what we know about Republican public opinion, you know, there’s a real, I think there’s a real sort of impulse to do something and it’s not going to be guns. Right? And this is something that they are, I think, intent on delivering, given the framework.

[00:26:54] Jim Henson: And we shouldn’t leave out the fact that it’s, you know, we’re right here on the year anniversary, uh, of the shooting at Rob Elementary in Uvalde. Media saturation. I mean, there was a doc, I didn’t see it, but there’s a documentary on Sunday night on CNN that revisited the whole thing. And, you know, included I think some new footage and new interviews with parents and, and survivors.

[00:27:17] Jim Henson: Um, front lines doing a documentary next that will air next week, uh, Tuesday, I think in most markets in Texas. So this is also like the alignment of that with the end of the session. You know, I mean, it’s not determinative, but it’s. It’s going to, well, not to be, bring it back into people’s forefront of people’s

[00:27:37] Josh Blank: minds.

[00:27:37] Josh Blank: Yeah. And not to be like, you know, too cynical here. But I mean, the point I wanna make is just, you know, the legislature is not gonna get any credit for the mass shootings that don’t happen. Right. Ultimately they get blame, right. If, if another school shooting happens. But, but the reality is, is like if they can’t avoid it, yeah.

[00:27:56] Josh Blank: If it, well, yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, they’ll, they’ll get bla I mean, I think they’ll, I think they’ll be blame. I mean, honestly, if there’s another school shooting in Texas, regardless, I mean, this is kind of part of the dynamics that we see now. But the point is, is, you know, for every, you know, for every potential school shooter that goes in after this is, you know, Too many locks

[00:28:11] Jim Henson: or whatever where they catch somebody trying to get in and they can’t or something.

[00:28:14] Jim Henson: Well, even that

[00:28:14] Josh Blank: I would say is a little bit different, but I would just say the idea that this becomes a deterrent or something to these sorts of events, ultimately they actually get no political credit for that. I’m not saying that that’s a reason not to go full in on it, but it does lead to this idea of like, yeah, we can invest all the money in this that we want to, and we’re still not actually gonna get credit for that unless there are just no school shootings and nobody can guarantee that.

[00:28:32] Josh Blank: Right? And so I think that in some ways that creates, you know, a natural sort of perverse incentive to not go. Overboard here. Nobody’s saying, Hey, you know what, let’s spend 15 billion of the surplus. Yeah. And make sure these schools are the safest places in the state of Texas. Cuz they could, but that’s not really on the table cuz you don’t really get credit for that.

[00:28:48] Jim Henson: And you can’t cut property taxes

[00:28:50] Josh Blank: and you can’t cut property taxes that way.

[00:28:51] Jim Henson: Or, you know, have a, well, nevermind. Um, okay. So, you know, so then finally, speaking of schools in a very different vein, vouchers, right now, this, this is something that is. You know, it seems very unlikely to pass though they’re making another stab at it, uh, uh, in the last couple of days.

[00:29:06] Jim Henson: And school safety again, uh, I mean, I mean there vouchers, um, you know, not something that scored high on the important scale, but something that has been, you know, very prominent on the priority list of, of Lieutenant Governor. The governor. We’ve talked about this a lot. Um, after the house decided to, you know, kill its water down version after the governor just said it wasn’t good enough and he was gonna veto it, right.

[00:29:31] Jim Henson: Um, the Senate has now tapped a significantly larger voucher program onto Ken King’s. The Ken King authored HB 100, which was the house bill that would increase teacher salaries and do some other things in the school finance. Space, you know, had some, I, I believe, new money involved in that. Now, what the, what the House Education Committee did this week was tacked another voucher bill onto that.

[00:30:00] Jim Henson: Now, this would seem to have dim prospects in the house, but it is the play that we’ve been waiting for. Yeah. What’s the, what’s the question? Right? I mean, we’ve been waiting for this, you know, can, can rural, you know, and it boils down to can you. Buy a few votes from rural Republicans by pressuring them.

[00:30:20] Jim Henson: Into putting just enough money that their local districts say, well, we can live with this.

[00:30:25] Josh Blank: It’s, you know, it’s so remarkable the way the politics of this has shifted to something that’s just become so distributive. Right. Because before the issue was, you know, we see this in the data, you know, it’s not as though, uh, there weren’t, you know, clear concerns among Republican voters about the public education system, but they were more having to do with, you know, basically avenues for parental involvement and curriculum

[00:30:45] concerns.

[00:30:45] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, and, and so, and we should say standalone support for. Yes. School vouchers, even, even among rural people, it was divided, but it was not,

[00:30:52] Josh Blank: you know? Yeah, yeah. That’s right. And but it was, but the relative, uh, weight put towards focus on vouchers versus some of these other issues. Vouchers were pretty far down the list after.

[00:31:01] Jim Henson: Yeah. Yeah. And that I, we had an item last time, this, you know, which of the following do you think will. Well, there’s two help improve public education, right? There

[00:31:07] Josh Blank: was that one. But in February, what we actually asked when we were kind of looking at these different sort of broad issues out there about teacher pay and retention, about, you know, curriculum, uh, right, curriculum issues, uh, about, uh, parental rights, broadly construed vouchers, treatment, transgender children, et cetera.

[00:31:23] Josh Blank: Uh, you know, it was curriculum concerns and basically parental basically. Involvement, parental rights that were at the top for Republicans, and then vouchers were pretty far down and the issue has been all along well, if we, this is, you know, these two issues, again, parental rights especially are Right, are big among Republicans and we see that on the data.

[00:31:39] Josh Blank: So let’s just That’s true. And the idea was that, well these are so, so big, we’re gonna pull vouchers across with them because it’s all parentals, right? I mean, even, you know, Senator Creighton said as much, basically, you know, when I talked to constituents, this is a, A bundle, which I gotta say, I do not buy for one second.

[00:31:54] Josh Blank: I’m just gonna throw that out there. Just as someone who studies mass opinion, you’re skeptical. Well, somebody who studies opinion, it’s like, oh, has he talked to a lot of voters who like, you know, have this really strong cluster around anyway, whatever. Yeah, whatever. But now, you know, having failed at doing that, I.

[00:32:08] Josh Blank: It’s just, I mean, this is just such old school education. Like what if we just attach it to a bunch of money? Yeah.

[00:32:13] Jim Henson: Well, we talked about this, we talked about this a little bit last week in terms of the evolution of, you know, the initial argument that, you know, parental rice is now super, you know, has provided a vehicle for this and, and the degree to which that has worked or

[00:32:26] Josh Blank: not.

[00:32:26] Josh Blank: We’ve been skeptical from the beginning. Yeah. But then again, I think what’s funny is at this point in the process, like, okay, fine. Right? But like, do you wanna give your teachers raises? But

[00:32:34] I

[00:32:34] Jim Henson: would also say this, right? I mean, you know, and I, I’ve been discussing this, you know, I don’t wanna unpack this right now cause I think it’s, I don’t, I’m not sure how much I completely believe this other than when somebody says, well is there any hope?

[00:32:47] Jim Henson: Take that as a on, on guns, right? And that is when we step back, what do we know? We know that big things take a long time. Uhhuh, they take multiple sessions, you know. This voucher. I’m sorry. This e ESA bill has gotten pretty far. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, there’s gonna be some sense of having progressed here.

[00:33:07] Jim Henson: You know, my guess it’s, it’s, it’s gotten talking to people at the capital and in the community. I think it’s gotten baked into. People’s general expectations that they’re not gonna make it this session. Mm-hmm. The governor will call a special session at a later date, probably in the fall to revisit vouchers.

[00:33:25] Jim Henson: So the question now is, with this tacked onto the Ken King bill, how much, assuming that this move in the Senate does not work? Yeah. Does it kill the entire Ken King Bill? I think at this point it might. I mean, it would almost have to, I think, given where we are, but I don’t know, there’s, you know, I’m not a legislative, you know, strategist per se.

[00:33:50] Jim Henson: Um, or will they have to punt the whole, that whole ball of wax into the fall in order to preserve their maximal kind of bargaining

[00:33:58] Josh Blank: position? Yeah, I mean, it’s been really interesting in the sense that like, The extent to which people talk about this space with, with, with a fair amount of certainty has sort of struck me throughout the session.

[00:34:08] Josh Blank: And even the people who are talking about it kind of shift around on, I mean, before the session started, you know, people were kind of repeated repeating, you know, the, the conventional wisdom about, well, you know, vouchers are, are gonna be dead in the house, right? And like, yes, that’s technically been true, but it’s been a lot closer than I think, you know, people thought in the past and is sitting here from the outside watching it.

[00:34:28] Josh Blank: You know, I mean, ultimately what, what the, the proponents of vouchers and, and the le the legislative and, you know, state leaders who’ve been, have been pushing the voucher, you know, uh, issue forward the governor, lieutenant governor especially, but also their allies has been to, you know, in a lot of ways, try to change the calculation for some of these rural members where they see, you know, holding out against one of these things as more costly Yeah.

[00:34:49] Josh Blank: Than holding the line. And they’ve obviously, you know, look, they haven’t gone in across the visual line, but they’ve clearly been successful because they’ve changed the numbers. Pretty solidly on a lot of this stuff. Yeah. And so, you know, to all the, you know, I mean, again, I think, you know, if you’re kind of looking around right now, people saying, well, you know, vouchers are definitely dead and Yeah.

[00:35:04] Josh Blank: Like, you know, are they dead right now? Dead. Completely odd possession

[00:35:08] Jim Henson: on life, you know, odds are to, to violate Martin Amos’s thing on life support. Yeah. Odd odds

[00:35:13] Josh Blank: are against, sorry, Martin, we’re against, odds are against it. Like they’re against, I mean, almost. Anything. But I wouldn’t go out there with a huge amount of certainty and say, oh yeah, this is definitely dead.

[00:35:24] Josh Blank: Like, cuz look, you know, attach it to a, you know, a big pay increase for teachers. No, that’s the point I

[00:35:29] Jim Henson: was making earlier. That was the point I was making earlier. Right? Yeah.

[00:35:31] Josh Blank: And even further though, I mean, you know, put it in a special session where there’s no other issue competing with it for space.

[00:35:36] Josh Blank: Yeah. That’s a different dynamic, you know, and so I, you know, I’m, I’m still. I don’t, I don’t think, you know, again, vouchers still have much on life support, but again, this whole notion of like, well, the house has already said no, multiple. It’s like, yeah, I mean, kinda,

[00:35:49] Jim Henson: yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, people that don’t, I mean, look, I had a couple rural members sort of lay this dynamic out for me, you know, like in February or March, like, yeah, votes seem pretty solid now, but.

[00:36:03] Jim Henson: They have ways of putting pressure on us that, you know, clearly some members knew would w you

[00:36:07] Josh Blank: know, might work. Yeah. And they might backfire too. And that’s the other piece of this. So we have to wait and say so, and

[00:36:12] Jim Henson: you know, I mean, I think if you think about the tone of, of Chairman Hunter’s speech yesterday and you know, the general, again not, certainly not unprecedented, but the kind of dynamic between the Senate and the House that’s been really pronounced this time.

[00:36:27] Jim Henson: There’s kind of an intangible in the house that’s kind of like, yeah, you know, Man, hell

[00:36:32] Josh Blank: with you guys. Well, I was, I saying, I was saying you before we went on, it’s really remarkable how at this point in the session that kind of like, you know, especially because of the dynamics, you know, of the last number of sessions really since the, you know, tech Kirkpatrick has taken over.

[00:36:44] Josh Blank: But this, this notion of like, Mobilizing this house, muscularity, this kind of, you know, chest stumping. Yeah. You know, it’s, well, you know, all the damn lobbyists up there, you know, they don’t run this place and you know what else, they didn’t come talk to us. Right. Like, it’s like Okay. Which, which

[00:36:59] Jim Henson: was, yeah.

[00:37:00] Jim Henson: And, and, and you’re, you’re referencing some other elements of the chairman’s speech yesterday that had a, had a funny. Populist kind of swagger to it for somebody who, you know, has been presiding over, you know, the most, as we’ve said earlier, one of the most heavily corporate lobby, you know, spasms, eruptions of corporate lobbying that we’ve seen in a long time.

[00:37:27] Jim Henson: Um, but nonetheless, I think, you know, There is a sense that that card remains to be played. Um, but what that ultimately is gonna look like, I think is gonna be very interesting and it’ll be interesting for us to pull on some of the, under the undercurrents of that. We had all kinds of other things we could talk about.

[00:37:45] Jim Henson: I think, you know, there’s a lot of things still floating out there. Some are more resolved than others. I’m just gonna hit a couple things very quickly on, you know, state preemption of, of cities, the mothership of preempt, you know, the mothership bill or whatever they’re calling it, A preemption, a death star.

[00:38:01] Jim Henson: The Death Star. Um, yes, it’s much darker. That’s, you know, where it destroys the, it’s the mothership from the perspective of well, right. State government, you know, builders of state government power as the death star for cities and localities. HB 2127. That is, you know, the. The big preemption bill, you know, that’s on its way to the governor’s desk.

[00:38:21] Jim Henson: There are several others still floating out there that are a little bit more old school and that they’re more specifically targeted in, including the bill that’s aimed at kind of undoing Project Connect in Austin, uh, on the trio of higher ed issues that are out there that originated in the Senate, uh, tenure in d ei.

[00:38:41] Jim Henson: Are floating around, having been diluted in the house. Um, but both have been passed and sent back to the Senate. A question about whether, you know, the Lieutenant Governor, I mean, the Senate are going to accept those, and that’s SB 17 and SB 18. Um, you know, the, the tenure bill was significantly watered down, though a lot of, uh, of.

[00:39:03] Jim Henson: The higher ed community still sees danger in the kind of oversight, the increased oversight of tenured faculty that are in there. Um, the house version in on d e I created some carve outs. I kind of suspect that there, that’s gonna be okay in the Senate, but we’ll see. Um, and, and they killed the, you know, what had been billed as the anti c r by the Lieutenant Governors, the anti C R T bill that made everybody at the university, you know Right.

[00:39:34] Jim Henson: Pinky swear not to brainwash people and persecute conservatives. Right. That guy that’s, that’s dad. Um, So those are still kind of out there. Uh, the band on gender affirming care is headed to the governor’s desk. Uh, the drag show prohibitions have been watered down, et cetera, but that’s still kind of in play.

[00:39:55] Jim Henson: Um, that’s just a few things we should, um, you know, I think in terms of what it all means, I think we’re, you know, we’re gonna, I’m gonna punt that for a week. I mean, I, I really do think. Uh, as dramatic as it always seems at the session and all these things we’ve talked about, you know, I, if you had said to us in January, look about the third week of May mm-hmm.

[00:40:21] Jim Henson: You’re gonna be looking at the odds being against vouchers. Yep. There’s still being a bunch of sort of talk and there being hurt feelings and a lot of, you know, big player elbow sh you know, crossing, but in the end on, on the grid. But in the end, Looking like it’s been a pretty good session for oil and gas.

[00:40:44] Jim Henson: Yeah. We would not have been surprised by that prediction. Mm-hmm. Right.

[00:40:49] Josh Blank: Um, I’ll throw and roll the enshrinement of border security

[00:40:51] Jim Henson: funding. Yeah. You know, I mean, we, you know, we haven’t talked about border security funding, but Yeah. There’s, there’s, there’s controversial at all. Not much controversy other than, you know, trying to extend the envelope in a, in a couple of directions.

[00:41:03] Jim Henson: Right. And that they’re doing a bunch on, on school safety. They’re not quite there. Yeah. Property tax reform, everybody wants it. You know, that’s probably the thing that I think is maybe

[00:41:17] Jim Henson: a little more there. There may be a little further from disagreement right now than I might have thought, yeah. Back in January. But the path of that disagreement being aggravated by differences between the House and the Senate, Not shocking.

[00:41:32] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well, you know, and the other thing about that one in particular is, you know, there’s something about the, the rhetoric around property tax reduction I think almost makes it more difficult in the sense that, you know, whenever we talk about almost anything else, like we talk about, like, you know, for example, right.

[00:41:43] Josh Blank: You know, it’s just a, a quick, you know, cuz it’s related. You know, people have said, well, you know, why don’t you give teachers this level of raise or that level of raise? And, and a lot of times the sort of knee-jerk response for those who don’t wanna do that is like, Hey look, we can’t commit to an ongoing expense like that.

[00:41:57] Josh Blank: Yeah. And nobody talks about property taxes as if they’re not in production, as if it’s not an ongoing expense. Right. But, but ultimately it kind of is. I mean, again, the mechanisms will matter in that, in, in some very key ways. Right. But it is an ongoing expense and I think that’s one of the things that kind of sits out there with stuff like this.

[00:42:13] Josh Blank: I mean, there is a, there is a hamstring that legislatures are doing to the legislature does to itself in future sessions if there is an economic downturn. Well,

[00:42:20] Jim Henson: unless I think this is probably a good time to remember to harken back to one of those. Moments when, you know, a legislator inadvertently sort of says the truth.

[00:42:31] Jim Henson: And you know, in this case it’s Senator Bettencourt. Yeah. Who’ve, you know. Yep. Couple of you know, six, eight weeks ago, I think somebody asked about the recurring costs and he just said, look, you know, people want this now. Yeah, that’s probably right. It’s gonna create a crisis, but you know, people want this right now, and so we’re gonna get in.

[00:42:47] Jim Henson: We’ll just have to, you know, that crisis is later. We promised it. You know, that’s not paraphrase, so don’t, you know, I’m not, I don’t want to get slapped with a. You know, slap suiters,

[00:42:57] Josh Blank: you know, not to go, you know, when you said sort of, you know, what does all mean? We’re gonna have to wait a little bit. But it is interesting, you know, kind of when you lay it all out like that and kind of thinking about going into this session, there was this sort of, you know, if you’d wanna, you know, when we’re just sort of really kind of, even, even a little further back from the session, just think, you know, what kind of session is this gonna be?

[00:43:12] Josh Blank: You know, a lot of people would sort of talk about, on the one hand, the 2018 session and on the other, on the 2019 session. Right. On the other hand, you know, the, the 2021 session. 2019 session really focusing on, you know, we say bread and butter infrastructure. Yeah. In, in the wake of a close 2018 election, 2021, you know, going into redistricting, feeling pretty good about themselves, really, you know, very, very conservative session.

[00:43:33] Josh Blank: And I think the question going into is gonna be more like A or, or B, what are we gonna see in a lot of ways. You know, this is kind of, I, I almost wanna say it’s a little bit more like A than B actually to my mind, which I’d say more of. In infrastructure focus, but also like it’s a pretty good mix of the two, right?

[00:43:46] Josh Blank: Right. It’s not really either one or the other. You know, we’re still talking about big, big issues. We’re talking about the grid, we’re talking about water supply, right? We’re talking about property taxes. We’re talking about school safety. And if you wanna, you know, look, we’re talking about the border and these are all kind of broadly speaking, infrastructure of the state.

[00:44:04] Josh Blank: You know, in terms of childcare safety. You know, it’s a territorial sovereignty. Some people would put it, uh, you know, and again, these sort of basic functioning. And then of course, we’re still gonna have, we’re still gonna ban gender affirming care for minors. We’re gonna see some things around the edges where we always do right.

[00:44:19] Josh Blank: But it’s

[00:44:19] Jim Henson: not the anti d ei

[00:44:20] stuff,

[00:44:21] Josh Blank: the, you know, but those aren’t necessarily, I mean, you know, not to be dismissive, and I’m really not trying to be here, but those aren’t gonna be the headline policies that come out of this. Legislature, if they do manage to move forward on the things, and again, from from the leaders, right, that they wanna talk about.

[00:44:34] Josh Blank: The thing they’re gonna talk about is, you know, historic investment in Boris, security, historic investment of property tax reduction. We

[00:44:40] Jim Henson: did something about school safety and we secured the grid

[00:44:43] Josh Blank: historic investment in the grid. Yeah. And you know,

[00:44:46] Jim Henson: that’s what, you know, and that’s, there’s other stuff still to do.

[00:44:48] Jim Henson: I mean, and I think that’s why, you know, if the property tax thing falls apart, they gotta come back and do that right away. They got, um, you know, I think, you know, and we’ll save this for the post. I mean, I think what’s interesting, and I, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. The, although, you know, we’ve talked about it before, but what’s a little bit almost cuts across.

[00:45:08] Jim Henson: It’s not quite, or it’s not orthogonal. That’s for you, Ross Ramsey. Um, but. You know, it’s not exactly linear with, you know, paralleled all these things is, you know, the, the, the kind of, uh, the thing that stitches all of that together is this shift towards. You know, a stronger state government vis-a-vis both vis-a-vis local government and in the longer term the continuation of a stronger executive branch.

[00:45:37] Jim Henson: Yeah. Vis-a-vis the legislative branch and even the judicial branch that that’d be, we’re gonna come back to that. That’s the connective tissue to me, that kind of. Something that both of those sessions actually have in common. Mm-hmm. And you know, in that sense, the, this Death star bill or whatever, the preemption issue this time is a little bit of a binding agent for all of this.

[00:45:56] Jim Henson: If you look at how in some of these other areas, the fallback, even in terms of school safety, the fallback is, look, we want you guys to do these things. How are we gonna enforce it? Well, there’s a state agency to do it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. You guys all need to do this stuff and the state agency is gonna be the person overseeing that.

[00:46:15] Jim Henson: And I think, you know, when you step back and look at the longer trajectory, you know, that is going to be, I think I, I, you know, the more I think about it, we’ll see what happens in the final, in the, this next couple days. To me, that’s gonna, that may be the watershed. Takeaway from this session that transcends and binds all these other issues and, you know, I’m not gonna cram everything into that bucket.

[00:46:40] Jim Henson: Yeah. But I, I do think that’s gonna ultimately be the takeaway

[00:46:43] Josh Blank: on that. It’s really interesting to hear you say that. I think, you know, I’ll just add one thing, is what I’m thinking is, it’s really interesting to think that, you know, the legislature, the idea that the legislature is, is consolidating power at the state level in a really, I think you could say unprecedented way, probably with the preemption bill.

[00:47:00] Josh Blank: And they’re doing it in the wake of, you know, the tenures of two Texas governors who really have tried to, uh, to consolidate power in the executive branch. Mm-hmm. And now, you know, it’s, again, you’re seeing the legislative branch both, you know, push back in both directions a little bit, push back a little bit against the governor, you know, a little bit.

[00:47:19] Josh Blank: And they’ll see if they do that with the emergency power stuff. And then also back at, at the, at the cities in particular, right. Where again, you know, political competitiveness and especially in Harris County. Is leading to sort of just more democratic control of these areas. And so there’s this sort of pushback and say, you know what?

[00:47:34] Josh Blank: The state is really, you know, and the state here, meaning the legislature is really gonna, you know, exert itself.

[00:47:38] Jim Henson: And, and I’ll give the governor this on, you know, I mean this is a almost stop footnote to that, but we’ll give the governor this, I mean, He has seated ground on the emergency stuff in a lot of ways and actually asked, you know, has sort of set up the legislature to do that.

[00:47:53] Jim Henson: Now some people like Birdwell may be going a little bit further than he’d like, but nonetheless, you know, I think they saw that coming. Yeah. And saw the politics of that around covid, less so on the border. But you know, I think they can, you know, they’ve already got that authority on the border. It’s the emergency stuff around Covid that’s been such a, such a, You know, a magnet for all that kind of ill will.

[00:48:17] Jim Henson: And it sort of drove his primary challenges in a lot of ways. And, you know, those, those, you know, the people that ran against him tried to throw the border in on that, but it didn’t really work. But the Covid thing was still around there and they’ve moved on that and they’ve been frankly helped by national politics and the general sense that people don’t want to talk about Covid anymore.

[00:48:35] Jim Henson: So with that, Thanks for being here, Josh. Thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Um, you know, we’re probably gonna try to add a couple of goodies. I don’t wanna promise cause I’m not sure I can get it done, but, you know, check our blog site if you’re listening to this podcast through Spotify or, or, or Apple Podcast or Stitcher or another pla.

[00:48:56] Jim Henson: Form, check our website out at Texas Politics dot u Texas cdu. Go to the blog section. We’re gonna try to, we usually try to add a couple of things that we’ve talked about here, whether it’s graphics. I got a couple ideas for this one, so check that out. Um, thanks for listening. We’ll be back, I suspect, maybe a day late next week.

[00:49:14] Jim Henson: We’ll probably wait for si die to set in and maybe record a little bit later next week. Let things settle. See where we are. Let us recover. See what happens. See what does, yeah. You know, well see what happens. See what doesn’t see what the governor does. Right. You know, I mean, you know, as we’ve said here, something else could happen.

[00:49:30] Jim Henson: So thank you all for listening. We’ll be back sometime next week. The point being with another second reading podcast.

[00:49:41] Outro: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.