Two good lists to peruse while you wait for the Texas Monthly “Best and Worst” lists.
It was a good session for Equality Texas with a record 31 endorsed bills in our Legislative Agenda, including multiple pieces of legislation that were filed for the first time ever, bills that advanced out of committee for the first time, and two bills that have been sent to the Governor for signature.
Equally important as the filing and passage of endorsed legislation was the successful defeat of five bills/amendments that we opposed and worked to kill, including an amendment that would have defunded gender & sexuality centers, legislation targeting school districts that offer competitive insurance benefits, and an amendment allowing student organizations to ignore campus nondiscrimination policies.
Next week, we’ll be sending you a recap of the 83rd Session with more information on each of the endorsed bills that were advanced and the bad bills that were killed.
Today, we’d like to share with you our Legislative Report Card for the 83rd Session, including the best of the best and the worst of the worst.
Ratings of lawmakers are tricky. It is difficult, if not impossible, to include all the little things that happen behind the scenes, the influence of members on each other, or the true motivations or beliefs of individual representatives.
Still, it’s important to acknowledge the public actions of the people elected to represent us. In compiling this report card we considered public votes, authorship of pro- and anti-LGBT legislation, filing of resolutions acknowledging the LGBT community, and committee votes on issues affecting the LGBT community. Behind the scenes work and advocacy was not included.
So, how did your State Representative do in our ratings?
Here are our Best Members of the Texas House on LGBT issues.
Here are our Worst Members of the Texas House on LGBT issues.
Here is the Full Report Card for members of the Texas House.
There is certainly room for debate, particularly when something as complicated as this is reduced to a letter grade. We’d love to hear your opinion of the report card. How’d your representative do? Did we score them too harshly? Too favorably? Share this list with your friends and let’s have a conversation about how the people elected to represent us did over the last five months.
The Best and Worst lists have some amusing comments on them, so be sure to click over and read them. Here’s a description of how the scores and grades were calculated:
All votes are recorded as being either “For” the best interests of the LGBT community or “Against” the best interest of the LGBT community. In cases where a member recorded that their intended vote was different than the vote in the journal the members intention was used for scoring. Record floor votes for LGBT specific issues were given 20 points for “For” votes, votes on issues that disproportunately affect the LGBT community, but were not LGBT specific were given 10 points for “For” votes. A perfect voting record recieves 90 base points and a score of “A.” Bonus points were given for authorship of legislation, including amendments: for LGBT specific legislation: 6 points for primary author, 5 points for joint author and 4 points for co-author; for LGBT related legislation: 4 points for primary author, 3 points for joint author and 2 points for co-author. Authorship at any level of a congradulatory or memorial resolution that recognized the existance of the LGBT community recieved 1 bonus point. Equality Texas endorsed amendments to the budget that were withdrawn before being considered recieved 4 points. Authors of anti-LGBT legislation, including amendments, were given negative points as follows: -10 for primary author, -8 for joint author, -6 for co-author. Members who had the opportunity to vote on Equality Texas endorsed legislation in committee were awarded points; for votes on LGBT specific bills: 5 for “For” votes and -5 for “Against” votes; for LGBT related bills: 3 for “For” votes and -3 for “Against” votes. Members who scored in the “F” range, but who had at least one “for” vote on LGBT specific legislation were elevated to a D- rating. For some members, insufficent data was available to give a letter grade, those members were not graded.
See the accompanying spreadsheet for the full list of bills, amendments, resolutions, and votes. The high grade among Republicans was a C, achieved by three members: Reps. Sarah Davis, John Otto, and Diane Patrick. Three Rs received Ds, six got a D minus, and the rest of them failed. On the Dem side, there were three Bs, five Cs, two Ds, and the rest were A or A plus. I should note that on the six big votes, which amounted to 90 total points, a non-vote counted the same as an Against vote, which is to say both scored zero points. One non-vote was therefore enough to knock you down to a C, though you could make up points via authorship, committee votes, and what have you as noted above. While it is certainly important to show up, I might have rejigged the scoring to make an Against vote cost points, so as to distinguish between the two. It’s a minor quibble, and probably easier said than done, but that was the one thing that I didn’t quite like about this. Anyway, it’s a valuable resource, and it’s great to see the overwhelming majority of Dems on the right side of things here. It’s not that long ago that that would not have been the case.
Thanks for picking this up! So you know, after each record vote used in the scoring any member absent or voting Present Not Voting on the vote was contacted, informed it would be used in the scoring, and encouraged to enter a note in the record with their position. That’s why the “none” votes did not count for points. As a courtesy, offices whose votes were out of line with their voting histories were also contacted as asked if their voting machines “malfunctioned” and encouraged to enter a note in the record. If you look at the House journal on these 6 votes you’ll notice an unusually high incidence of notes indicating the members intention.
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