When insiders and political experts really aren't.

One of the funniest, albeit rather new, recurring stories by Texas' Lockstep Political Media is the Texas Tribune's "Inside Intelligence" series.  The premise, in short, is that Ross Ramsey sends out a list of questions to Texas political pros (on both sides of the aisle) who will then regale us with their wit and insight into the Texas political process.  This exercise, along with Paul Burka's annual list of friends/enemies that is the Texas Monthly Best/Worst Of* frequently provides some of the most knee-slapping political humor of any Legislative session.

Occasionally, you have to wonder what the so-called "experts" are thinking when they issue their edicts. You also have to wonder who said it because the blurbs are presented anonymously by the Tribune.  Today's Inside Intelligence has just such a case....

Inside Intelligence: Grading the 83rd Legislature. Ross Ramsey, Texas Tribune

Who were the heroes this session, and who were the goats?

Goats have to include Sen. Davis and Rep. Wu (seriously, we don't need your comments on every bill)

I'm not sure who wrote this but I'm going to guess it was one of the Republican "experts" trying to get a cheap shot in at opposing party legislators.  Left out of this thinking is the reality that both Sen. Davis and Rep. Wu were busy all session positioning themselves for future runs at other offices.

Sen. Davis seemed to have two strategies this session.  One, speak as often as possible on a wide range of issues. Two, get the TLSPM squarely on her side.  On the first, the Senator was very successful.  Not only was she the go-to policy wonk for the TLSPM on a variety of issues, but she doubly succeeded at getting them on her side.  After extensive searching I was unable to find one story by the TLSPM that disagreed with Davis on any single piece of policy.  Rumor is Davis is not going defend her seat and will instead return to local politics for a while (Say, the Mayor of Fort Worth?) to better position herself for an eventual run at a State-wide position.  The leader in the clubhouse is Governor once demographics change and Perry is out of the picture.

Rep. Wu is gunning for the same thing, albeit I think it will even be further down the line for him.  I think he'll serve at least one more session in the Texas House and then make a play for Sen. Whitmire's Senate seat once the latter retires.  After that, if successful, I see him taking aim at Lt. Governor, again when the mystical demographic wave hits and several Democrats are presumed to be washed into state-wide office on it.

Either way it's imprudent to say either of these legislators were goats. They certainly weren't "heroes" of the 83rd as neither of them did much to advance progress in the body politic, but acting in one's political self-interest has a long tradition in Texas on both sides of the aisle.

Another popular choice as a goat was Euless Republican Rep. Jonathan Stickland.  Stickland was a Tea Party Freshman who did his best to upset the apple cart on numerous bills, much to the Twitter enjoyment of Rep. Wu.  While he was unsuccessful in all of his efforts (and on numerous occasions I find myself wondering what he was doing) at least he had the fortitude to stick up for what he believed in the face of defeat.  Compare this to Rep. Wu, whose argument against the bill authorizing some drug testing for welfare recipients was limited to: "It will bring a lawsuit, which we might lose."  Thank goodness Wu wasn't around to cast a vote on civil rights legislation back in the day or Texas might still be segregating schools.

To my mind it still seems way too early to name any Best/Worst or Hero/Goat Legislators because the 83rd Lege is still on-going in special session.  If anything, we are giving out incomplete grades that, at least in Burka's case, were probably preordained before the session started.

Such is the lean of TLSPM today however.  Reporting the news to you filtered, with a healthy dose of personal opinion, often incomplete, and usually truly devoid of actual fact and/or context.

Maybe it's the Texas citizen who needs a shield law from them?




































*Increasingly, Burka's analysis of good/bad/furniture in the Lege seems to be based more around who pays fealty to him and his status than any actual success in legislating.

Pre-83rd Texas Lege Monday: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

On the Monday before the Texas Legislature fires things up for 140 days of hilarity and parties serious legislative work for the people we're always greeted with the spectacle of the State Comptroller providing us with the estimates of just how much taxpayer money the State will have to spend for the next biennium.  Today, Tx Comptroller Susan Combs did it again:

Combs says Texas will have $101.4 Billion for Budget. Aman Batheja, Texas Tribune

First: The good.

Combs predicted that the state will collect $96.2 billion in revenue from taxes, fees and other income during the 2014-15 biennium. The fund already had $8.8 billion left over from the current biennium. Of the new revenue, $3.6 billion will be transferred to the state’s Rainy Day Fund, which Combs predicted will grow to $11.8 billion.

That's an increase, which should help the Lege avoid repeats of the budget mess we saw two years ago.  Not that Texas is turning into a tax and spend blue state and there is every indication that Democrats will (surprise!) not be happy while Republicans are going to want to cut more, but there's enough money that, hopefully, the Lege will not have to leave sitting out there unfunded liabilities as they did in the last session.  Regardless of which side of the political aisle you find yourself on this is a good thing.  It means that the discussions this session should be focused on the margins, and not around more central items.

Second: The bad.

“$108 billion is what it takes to actually undo the last session and get us back to where we used to be,” said Eva DeLuna Castro, senior budget analyst for the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a left-leaning Austin-based think tank.
(...)
“A lot of that gets sucked up right away just paying for the last session,” Castro said.
Talmadge Heflin, a budget expert with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and a former legislator

To their credit, The Trib IS getting better at identifying progressive policy groups like the CPPP than they used to be.  However, there's still a lot of wiggle room between "left-leaning" and progressive, which the CPPP surely is. They have no problem labeling the TPPF "conservative" so I'm at a loss to figure out why correct identification of CPPP is so difficult?  Still, improvement is improvement and bad is certainly better than heinous, which has been their norm.

Last: The Ugly.

Combs said Monday that many economic forecasters did not foresee the size of the recession and that the ensuing volatility has continued to make budget estimates difficult to pin down.
In January 2011, Combs projected $72.2 billion in general revenue would be available for the current 2012-13 biennium.
“We had a whopper of a recession, and my hope is we don’t see a sort of European-style slowdown,” Combs said.
Combs offered a similar defense two years ago, when she acknowledged that her previous revenue estimate for the 2010-11 biennium had been overly optimistic by about $4.3 billion.

I asked this on Twitter and I'll repeat the question here:  Can anyone give me one reason we should trust the numbers provided by Comb's office? If there's a poster child for ineffective state-wide officeholders Combs is exhibit A. While financial projections can be tricky, they're not impossible.  The problem is Comb's doesn't provide much background behind how she came up with the number and I sometimes wonder if they have much behind "well, it just feels right doesn't it?"  The fact is her office has blown the forecast for the last two sessions, and now she's being allowed to punt and blame the mythical "others" when explaining her past failures.

In short, we're starting this legislative session on numbers that appear to be a hunch, which are big departures from currently developing trends and we don't have anything to base this on other than a Comptroller who thought it would be a neat idea to give a few Million dollars to Bernie Eccelstone.  Pardon me if I'm not filled with enthusiasm over this.

Finally, my thanks go out to the Texas Tribune and my apologies to you for the high amount of block-quoting in this post.  While my goal is to try and avoid it, there are times when you just have to copy things over to make a larger point.  I do encourage you to go visit the Tribune site and read Mr. Batheja's full piece.  It is an interesting read.