Summary of 4th Citizen Lobbyist Trip to Austin

Summary of 4th Citizen Lobbyist Trip to Austin

The first stop, as always, was Governor Perry’s reception office.  The reception within the Governor’s ceremonial office is always very cool toward their seemingly unwelcome constituents.  Of course, the Governor is never “in” or available to speak with constituents, at least not without being a “someone” with an appointment. We’re used to the attitude and ignore it, knowing it’s our right to be in his office telling him how to do his job.

Next, we dropped off a statement at Governor Perry’s business office.  The staffer in the office recognized our group from previous lobbying trips and was very receptive.  We took the opportunity to reiterate our stand on the SBOE redistricting map and requesting that Perry veto the map.  We also delivered copies of the letter to his Constituency Communications office and to his policy advisor, Molly Rutledge. 

Below is the text of our message to Governor Perry:

REASON FOR OUR VISIT:

As a Tea Party we have sent leadership and members to Austin for the past 4 weeks to lobby against HB600.  We are extremely dissatisfied with the redistricting of the SBOE, as the map eliminates several very key conservative Board members.  The elections of November 2010 sent a clear message of what your constituency expects in return for their support and votes and therefore we oppose HB600.  We request that you VETO HB600.

We represent over 2000 members and last week our Citizen Lobbyists were joined in Austin by the Galveston County TP, the Pearland TP, and the San Antonio TP - representing over 10,000 conservative Texans in all.  Together, we presented a white paper outlining our opposition to HB600 and requesting a veto.  We delivered that statement to your office on Thursday, May 12th, and are following up with this document today on May 17th.

Next stop was Senator Dan Patrick’s office.  We questioned him about P3s (private-public partnerships) especially with regards to foreign entities and funding infrastructure.  He explained that to pay for new roads, there are only three sources of revenue:  1)  hike the gas tax  2)  tax per mile driven 3) toll roads financed by the company building it.   Unfortunately, he explained that there is only one American company that can build toll roads.  This needs to be researched because that sounds unbelievable.  Only one?  Apparently, that dearth of American companies leaves the job to foreign firms who can finance the infrastructure based upon payback from tolls.  We need expert input on this issue.

We then visited Senator Mike Jackson in his office.  We discussed the SBOE map with him and he stated that he spoke with Perry about the public call for Perry to veto the map.  That’s interesting since he voted FOR it in the first place.  It didn’t sound like he advised the Governor one way or the other, but discussed the situation. 

We  spoke with Jackson about the hazards of counting illegal aliens in the voting population and then using those skewed numbers in the redistricting considerations.  He seemed unaware that illegal aliens were counted in redistricting.  One of our members had testified earlier in the redistricting hearings and had confirmed with the demographer that there was no breakdown of Hispanic surnames into those that were legal citizens and those that were not. Senator Jackson appeared a little surprised to hear that his Texan constituency did not appreciate illegal aliens being included as voting public with rights to representation in the redistricting process.  He also confirmed that he would vote for the House redistricting map (HB 150), against our advice, since that was “the way things had always traditionally been done”:  the Senate rubber stamps the House map and vice versa.

Next, we made the rounds of all of the Senate members of the Transportation and Homeland Security Committee in order to lobby for HB12, the anti-sanctuary city bill.  Here is the text of our white paper that we left in each office:

REASON FOR OUR VISIT:

We understand that the Transportation and Homeland Security Committee is holding a public hearing on HB12 on May 18th.  We transported a van of our Tea Party leadership and members to the Capitol today to inform you that our membership (2000+ members and growing) fully supports HB12, which would end “sanctuary cities” in Texas.  It is important that you understand that we Texans support HB12 and want you to send the bill to the Senate floor for a vote and we want you to vote in favor of HB12.  We believe it is necessary for the safety of our communities, the solvency of out towns and cities, and the law and order of our State.

Please support HB12 and end “sanctuary cities” in Texas.  We demand that our laws be enforced and our communities secured.

This letter was delivered to all the following Senate Members:

Tommy Williams (chairman)
Kirk Watson
Wendy Davis
Rodney Ellis
Chris Harris
Juan Hinojosa
Robert Nichols
Florence Shapiro
Jeff Wentworth

Also, copies were delivered to Senators Mike Jackson and Dan Patrick.

We then went and observed in the Senate gallery as they debated proposed amendments for SB31, the Senate redistricting map.  The only topic under consideration was the race and ethnicity of the majority-minority districts in Tarrant County (via Sen. Wendy Davis, D).

After lunch, we visited Harris County area Representative Wayne Smith.  We have not yet visited his office during this session, and since one of his constituents was with us today, we thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce him to the Clear Lake Tea Party.  He was in the House Chambers, but we did visit with his friendly staff and sign his guest book.

We then spent quite a good bit of time visiting with the chief of staff for Rep. Leo Berman, specifically about the MOVE Act, which proposes to move Texas’ primary date.  We believe we have some good connections that may offer some alternatives for ensuring military ballots are mailed and collected in a timely manner, as it is imperative that we not push back our primary date any further than it already is (in March).  To the contrary, we really need to move Texas’ primary up to Super Tuesday (early February) in order for our large delegation to be counted in the nomination process. 

Note:  earlier in the day, we had already heard from Senator Jackson that the Republican National Committee (RNC) had threatened the Republican Party of Texas with sanctioning if they dared to try and move Texas’ primary to an earlier date.  The national Party apparently threatened to withhold campaign funds from the State, but considering that Texas donated over 5 times the funds to the National Party that they received back in campaign funding, their threat to withhold that paltry sum is ridiculous.  Note the heavy-handed threats from the national Party though.

Rep Leo Berman’s office is extremely welcoming to conservatives and we were treated with a great deal of friendliness and respect.  It visiting countless legislative offices, it is quickly obvious that you can deduce the personality of a representative from the behavior of his staff, and Leo Bernam can be proud of his staff.

We next popped in on Rep. James White, the Tea Party freshman from East Texas.  We wanted to meet him and encourage him to NOT sign a pledge card for Straus, and to reiterate our opposition to Straus and remind him that the Tea Parties across Texas were aligned to oppose Straus again in in the next session.   We then thought it would be a good idea to impress that point upon all of the Reps we visited to dissuade them from signing a pledge card to Straus.  That pledge card was the inside secret that caused so many of them to precipitously pledge their support to Straus at the end of the last session, and prior to the November elections.  We are well aware that Straus promises Reps re-election funds and support in exchange for their pledge.

That led us to visit Larry Taylor’s office to encourage him to NOT sign a pledge card for Straus.  We had been extremely disappointed in Larry Taylor’s support for Joe Straus, believing that it disadvantaged crucial legislation that was important to us. Therefore, it was only fair to stress our continued opposition to Straus, and to request that Taylor NOT sign a pledge to support Sraus for Speaker in 2013.  We had quite a lengthy visit with one of Taylor’s legislative aides, Carrie, who defended Taylor’s record on the biggest votes, citing them in lieu of the other legislation that had gotten killed in Committees or Calendars. 

Carrie also informed us that Texas Association of Business (TAB) had successfully lobbied the Republicans to kill the E-Verify bill (which the Tea Party was for).  She advised us to turn our attentions to the lobbyists, but we told her that our Representives work for us, and that is who would get our attention.

We then went to Senator Duell’s office to drop off our statement on the SBOE map, and requested that he advise the Governor to veto the map.

We spent some time in the House gallery to observe the debate on SB 1811, which would allow the State to collect the small business franchise tax 9 months early in order to pay down the shortfall  between the Senate and House budgets concerning  education spending.  We stand in direct opposition to SB 1811, and so we emailed Larry Taylor from the gallery, to ensure that he knew of our position on the matter and to solicit his vote in opposition.  The vote should happen tomorrow on May 18th.

The Senate had recessed earlier in the day around 1pm and the House adjourned at 5pm until 10am tomorrow.   Before we left Austin, we stopped for dinner and saw many Republican representative members of the Texas Conservative Caucus (TCC) meet at the restaurant with some lobbyists.  It was interesting to note who was there and who was not.

Along the way, we lobbied in favor of the Health Care Compact with any of the relevant legislators we spoke to.  Also, we discovered the that anti-“sharia law” legislation (HB 911) had been amended to a weaker House bill (274) which was getting some resistance in the Senate and therefore looked like it was going to die.  This is unfortunate, because HB 911 was a strong bill and likely to pass on its own merits, without being dragged down by HB 274.  We found this out towards the end of the day and tried to get more information, but just ran out of time.  This topic will be worth following up on.

The next Citizen Lobbyist trip to Austin is scheduled for Wednesday, 25 May.