BROWNSVILLE — It was the worst legislative session one state representative had ever seen.
In the 33 years he has been in office, Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, has never seen Texas politics nearly cross the threshold into Washington, D.C., style politics.
“The lack of respect for different point of views and the inability to compromise, to coordinate, was profound. We were getting very close to becoming like Washington D.C., and, frankly, that is a hell of a thing to say,” Oliveira said.
Approximately 46 percent of bills he filed passed, when the House average was 13 percent.
“Bills were dying like flies,” said Tony Gray, Oliveira’s legislative director.
This was especially apparent during what legislators referred to as the “Mother’s Day Massacre.” More than 100 bills in the local and consent calendars were killed by the Freedom Caucus. These are non-controversial bills that address an issue relating to a legislator’s area, specifically.
“It was bitter. It was disappointing. It was acrimonious. But we still got things done,” Oliveira said. “It could’ve been so much worse.”
The Good
Thanks to SB 2118, certain public junior colleges will be able to offer bachelor’s degrees. Oliveira thinks Texas Southmost College can be one of those institutions.
The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board may authorize baccalaureate degree programs at public junior colleges that offer a degree program in the field of applied science, applied technology or nursing and have demonstrated a workforce need, according to the bill.
CSHB 4021 would allow Texas ports to improve their port depth and infrastructure in order to capitalize on future opportunities. It does this by giving the ports financing options and by creating a ship channel improvement revolving fund.
This gives ports like those in Brownsville or Beaumont a fighting chance to compete for business. Bigger ports, like the Port of Houston, do not have the same funding issues that the smaller ones have, Oliveira said.
HB 4029 will permit South Padre Island to use hotel occupancy tax revenue for ecological tourism events and maintenance of coastal sports facilities owned by the city.
The Department of Public Safety received $800 million.
Child Protective Services received a $508 million allocation in the state budget, which will lead to 1,400 new case workers and increased salaries. CPS also was the subject of four major reforms. HB 4 will allocate support to relatives of the child for taking care of them. HB 5 will make the Department of Family and Protective Services a stand-alone agency.
HB 7 restructures how the courts work with CPS. SB 11 creates a “community-based care” model and allows for the state to contract nonprofits for case management.
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley lost less funding than what was initially proposed. The medical school was spared an 11.9 percent cut, and instead only lost four percent of its funding. The university as a whole will receive $313.1 million this year, down from $326.3 million in 2015.
The Bad
Texas suffered cuts in a lot of major areas, including education.
Public schools lost $1.6 billion this session when HB 21 failed to pass. The legislation would have increased per-student funding for nearly every public and charter school in Texas and provided additional funding for students with dyslexia. The bill’s author, State Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, said it would have lowered payments that wealthier school districts make to the state to subsidize the poorer schools.
Medicaid suffered a $1 billion cut, which in turn leads to a $1.4 billion loss in federal funding for the program.
Acute therapy services only recovered 25 percent of funds that initially were cut. Civic Legal Services lost $5.8 million.
There were no teacher pay raises and no state employee pay raises. There were no significant changes to address rising health care expenditures shouldered by retired teachers, and more than $11 billion was left sitting in the Rainy Day Fund, Gray said.
The Ugly
Oliveira’s Austin office was the headquarters for a number of lawyers from the League of United Latin American Citizens, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Despite their efforts and testimony from hundreds of people in the House and the Senate, SB 4, the “sanctuary cities” bill, was signed into law in May.
“(The Republican Party’s) whole thing was that this would make Texas safer. That’s not going to happen,” Oliveira said.
Oliveira said the law will separate families. About 834,000 children in Texas have at least one parent who is undocumented.
He also predicted that people will be afraid to get checked in health clinics for diseases such as Zika, AIDS, tuberculosis or measles. He said the law will damage the relationship local police departments have with immigrant communities.
“There is going to be a lack of cooperation from murders to assaults to rape. These agencies spent years building relationships with the immigrant community, and now we’ll get little or no cooperation,” Oliveira said. “They’ll say they didn’t see anything.”
The new law was a “solution for a non-existent problem.” The commander of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement testified he had 100 percent cooperation with all Texas counties and law enforcement agencies, Oliveira said.
“Try to tell me how even a good cop or deputy will understand the complexities of immigration law,” Oliveira said. “There are 165 types of visas. It’s not just a simple ‘Show me your green card.’”
The law also will stretch police department resources even thinner than they already are, he said.
“What will this take from them? Twenty-five percent of their time? Twenty percent?” Oliveira said. “We need them out solving thefts, robberies, local crime. It’s an unfunded mandate.”
Oliveira’s hope is that the courts will address the law and strike it down like they have done in the past with voter ID laws. Until then, all people can do is wait, Oliveira said.
Oliveira said he would never imagine that in the year 2017, the Texas Legislature would be contemplating what he considers to be racist legislation.
“We need to go back to basic government. It can be lean, it can be conservative, but it shouldn’t be thoughtless, cruel or stupid. If we turn to Washington D.C.-type politics, we will paralyze Texas,” Oliveira said.
