So tomorrow night at midnight is the deadline for the House to approve Senate bills on second reading, which means that as long as the Democrats can keep the chubfest going, SB362 will die. Modulo any attempt to graft it onto some other piece of legislation, and a special session, of course. I took a break from following the ups and downs of this over the weekend – BOR did a great job with that, so catch up there if you need to. What I know at this point is that I don’t expect any kind of deal, despite a fair bit of chatter over the weekend that one was possible, and that Speaker Straus’ weak sauce obstruction charges suggests to me that the Rs are feeling less secure in their position right now than the Ds are. Beyond that, it’s all in how everyone campaigns next year. So let’s get it on, and let’s see where those chips fall.
May 25th, 2009:
The last day of chubbing
So tomorrow night at midnight is the deadline for the House to approve Senate bills on second reading, which means that as long as the Democrats can keep the chubfest going, SB362 will die. Modulo any attempt to graft it onto some other piece of legislation, and a special session, of course. I took a break from following the ups and downs of this over the weekend – BOR did a great job with that, so catch up there if you need to. What I know at this point is that I don’t expect any kind of deal, despite a fair bit of chatter over the weekend that one was possible, and that Speaker Straus’ weak sauce obstruction charges suggests to me that the Rs are feeling less secure in their position right now than the Ds are. Beyond that, it’s all in how everyone campaigns next year. So let’s get it on, and let’s see where those chips fall.
Perry’s salvage job
How can you tell that sine die is approaching? Governor Perry starts getting involved in the legislative process.
Perhaps state lawmakers are fatigued by Gov. Rick Perry’s long tenure or maybe they’re just balking at his leadership, but the Republican-led Legislature this year has turned its back repeatedly on the governor’s decisions and policy positions.
The Senate has rejected a Perry appointee to the parole board as incompetent for the job. His nominee for Board of Education chairman is in grave danger. The House last month stripped Perry’s office of most of its funding in the budget debate, and the money had to be restored in a joint conference committee.
House lawmakers also voted to abolish the Texas Department of Transportation, which is chaired by Perry’s former chief of staff, and replace it with an elected commission. Not to mention the controversial $555 million in federal stimulus money that Perry wants to reject and lawmakers seemed poised to accept.
Publicly, Perry responds by exuding a “what-me-worry?” attitude.
“I don’t ever get concerned about what goes on in the Legislature,” Perry said recently. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years. It ebbs and flows.”
However, this past week, the governor engaged in a major effort to salvage his legislative agenda and public persona.
Perry threatened a special session if his emergency item on windstorm insurance reform does not pass. In state and national publications, he sought to clarify his nationally publicized remarks on Texas secession from the union. And Perry lobbied lawmakers on the House floor for passage of major restrictions on top 10 percent admissions to state universities — a bill that had not been on Perry’s list of priorities previously.
I suppose this is a companion piece to one from a week ago, during which time the McLeroy nomination got re-animated though not necessarily resuscitated. We still don’t know the status of the Texas Enterprise Fund in the budget, and the unemployment insurance bill still hasn’t passed, thanks in part to the ongoing chubfest. A deal has now apparently been reached on the Top Ten law, though whether it really achieves what Perry wanted it to or not I couldn’t say. So as before, tune in tomorrow, or maybe a few days from now, to see how much of a victory Perry gets to declare.
Perry’s staff also had to spend part of the week distancing him from his chief campaign consultant, who told the Dallas newspaper that expanding the GOP philosophical base is like opening a “whorehouse.” Several prominent Republican women denounced the statement in a letter to Perry as “in keeping with how you’ve governed — through division and an appeal to fear.”‘
[…]
“The governor is clearly distracted by an upcoming battle in the Republican primary and is probably is somewhat less focused on the range of issues that he might have been focused on,” [Sen. John] Carona said.
Many believe that Perry, by attacking the federal government and the Obama administration, is trying to shore up hard right support for his expected GOP primary re-election challenge from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.
“A lot of decisions, from my vantage point, appear to tempered by what appeals to the far right element in a Republican primary, and that can wreak havoc on the system,” said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston.
Yeah, some of us have been saying that Perry’s agenda for this entire session should be viewed through the 2010 GOP primary prism for awhile now. Say whatever else you want about our Governor, he’s not subtle, and while his motives may be unintelligible, they’re seldom a mystery.
Anti-Metro amendment removed
I’m pleased to report that the anti-Metro amendment that was in SB1263 has been removed. I am told that Rep. Ellen Cohen discussed the matter with Rep. Pickett, who agreed to remove the Houston-specific language. This is great news, not just for the fate of the Universities line, but as Christof notes, for the rest of the system:
Item (1) [of the original amendment] does not actually apply to the University Line, since there was no route set for the University Line before the referendum. But it does apply to the North Line (which was shifted from Irvington to Fulton at the request of neighborhood groups) and the Southeast Line (which was shifted from Scott to MLK, again at neighborhood request.)
Item (2) applies to every single one of the lines. METRO’s ballot named lines and described end points; it did not call out every street a line would run on. It was not required to, and METRO had not yet done studies on all of the lines.
So this legislation would [have stopped] all property acquisition on all 5 new lines immediately.
Fortunately, that is no longer the case, and for that I thank Rep. Cohen for taking the lead and to Rep. Pickett for listening to reason. (The text of SB1263 has not been updated on the Texas Legislature Online site, but I have been assured that the offending will be removed.) What this shows to me – again! – is that there’s never been a difference between the anti-rail-on-Richmond forces and the opposition to the 2003 referendum. The only constituency that could credibly claim to be anti-Richmond-but-pro-Westpark, and only interested in that, were the people in Afton Oaks, and they got what they wanted. Everyone else involved in this has been dedicated to doing whatever it takes to stop rail in Houston. The will of the people doesn’t matter to them. Clearly, we can’t rest easy till everything has been built.
Anyway. Even without Rep. Pickett’s change of stance, it’s possible this bill won’t make it onto the calendar before tomorrow’s deadline for the House to approve Senate bills, so one way or another this crisis will be averted. I’d still like to know who it was that got to Rep. Pickett and filled him full of lies, but I suppose we never will learn their identities. I do plan to hold this incident up as a shining example of the anti-Metro forces’ hypocrisy the next time I see someone complain about the agency acting in a secretive manner. I’m sure it won’t be long before that happens.
“Near normal” hurricane season
Better than a highly active season, I guess.
With the Atlantic hurricane season drawing near, the last of a growing number of storm prognosticators, Uncle Sam, chimed in Thursday with its predictions.
Federal forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there probably would be nine to 14 named storms this year, with four to seven becoming hurricanes.
“A near-normal season is most likely,” said Gerry Bell, NOAA’s lead seasonal forecaster.
Among the burgeoning community of hurricane season forecasters — from veterans such as William Gray and Phil Klotzbach at Colorado State University to new players like North Carolina State — there’s a general consensus that this year will bring less tropical weather than last year’s 16 named storms.They cite various reasons, such as an expectation of more moderate sea surface temperatures in tropical areas of the Atlantic Ocean as well as the possible development of an El Nino in the Pacific, which could dampen storm formation.
“During many El Nino years, we have had significantly fewer named storms than normal,” said Chris Hebert, the lead hurricane forecaster with Houston-based ImpactWeather, a private forecasting service.
Over the last several decades an average of about 10 named storms have formed each year, but that number has risen significantly since 1995. Most forecasters attribute the rise to an upswing in a long-term, natural cycle of Atlantic temperatures called the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation.
Since 1995, 12 of the 14 Atlantic hurricane seasons have seen above-normal tropical activity.
So don’t rest easy just yet. Preseason predictions are not that accurate anyway. And as we all know, it only takes one well-aimed hurricane to make the season a bad one.