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It's The Public's Business
Dallas Morning News (Thumbs down)
August 17, 2003

It was bad enough that all Republican senators, save Bill Ratliff of Mount Pleasant, and Democratic Sen. Ken Armbrister voted to fine the Democratic senators who are staying in Albuquerque, N.M., to protest redistricting. But the senators closed their meeting in which the fine was levied. No public allowed. No regard for the Open Meetings Act. That was wrong. If it looks like a meeting, acts like a meeting and quacks like a meeting, it is a meeting.

What Goes On Behind Closed Doors
The Lotto Report - Dawn Nettles - Commentary

The last time I recall a public issue going "behind closed doors" was when the Texas Lottery Commission decided they needed to discuss the new G-Tech contract in private. Do you know what they did behind those closed doors? They removed a paragraph from G-Techs contract enabling G-Tech to make political contributions. After the Dallas Morning News reported the deletion of this paragraph, an emergency meeting was called and the paragraph was re-inserted into the contract.

Most of our currently elected officials and the Texas Lottery Commission have absolutely no regard for the laws in this state as has been evidenced by the latest Lotto Texas rule change, as well as previous lottery rule changes, and the current attempts by the Republicans to change a Senate long standing rule from a 2/3 vote to a majority vote to pass a law. Folks - do you think if you got caught speeding they'd change the speed limit just so you could get away with it?

Did Governor Perry himself "graciously" accept a traffic ticket and just move on when he was faced with breaking the law? NO he didn't - but he expects us to.

Our government is no longer - For the People and By the People - it's - For the Politicians and By the Politicians. Come election time, let's VOTE them OUT.

Maybe a judge can break deadlock
By Kelly Hawes
The Facts - Clute, Texas
Published August 19, 2003

One casualty of the bitter dispute in the Texas Legislature might well have been the state’s Open Meetings Law.

And in an odd way, pushing that issue might provide a way out of this deadlock once and for all.

When they met last week to talk about their options, the senators who remain in Austin shut the door to the general public. They turned down a request that a pool reporter be present, and they remained behind closed doors for three and a half hours.

At the end of their deliberations, the senators convened in a public session where they approved sanctions against their missing Democratic colleagues.

A spokesman for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst called it a meeting of the Republican caucus, meaning it didn’t have to be open. But if that’s the case, why was a Democratic senator invited?

Perhaps the senators will argue that the meeting was really an executive session, but in that case, the law requires that senators first convene in an open session before moving behind closed doors.

And they can’t argue that the Open Meetings Act doesn’t apply to the Senate. The Legislature made clear in 1993 that it does.

The Texas Daily Newspaper Association and the Texas Press Association have begun asking questions about whether last week’s meeting violated the Open Meetings Act. It seems likely that it did.

Maybe a lawsuit is in order. A court could set aside the fines and other sanctions imposed last week, and maybe, just maybe, the Legislature could take a step back toward sanity.

Unfortunately, the folks on both sides of this fight have lost all sense of perspective, and there is no end in sight.

The Senate Democrats have said they won’t be back as long as redistricting remains on the agenda, and Gov. Rick Perry has said he’ll keep calling special sessions until he finally gets a new congressional map.

Neither side has shown any sign that it plans to blink.

In the meantime, the state is spending $1.7 million a month on what is clearly a political feud.

What seems increasingly apparent is that this is no longer a fight about redistricting. It’s a battle of wills. There’s pride on the line here, and neither side wants to be seen as backing down.

What the Republicans and Democrats seem to need is a way to end this fight without losing face. Perhaps a judge’s order would do the trick.

Open government advocates ought to press their case. It might be just the splash of cold water these angry cats need.

This editorial was written by Kelly Hawes, managing editor of The Facts.

Editorial: Another shameful act
Waco Tribune Herald
August 18, 2003

With Gov. Rick Perry threatening to call yet another multimillion-dollar special session of the 78 Legislature, most observers would think that Texas Republicans couldn't make the mess they caused any bigger.

Most observers would be wrong.

With 11 state Democratic senators currently camped in New Mexico to avoid getting railroaded by Republicans mad to draw new GOP-heavy congressional districts, remaining senators gathered in secret in the Capitol Building.

In secret, mind you.

The public's business is supposed to be conducted in full public view, particularly in Texas most prominent public building. It's the law.

At 1 p.m. last Wednesday, senators entered a conference room, refused to say what business they were going to discuss and locked the door.

The senators remained locked away until 4:30 p.m. when they immediately entered the Texas Senate chamber and passed a motion to fine all the Democratic senators in New Mexico.

Any excuse that the secret meeting was permissible since it was a Republican caucus meeting is bogus.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and other Republicans used the Republican caucus excuse. That doesn't fly because at least one Democrat attended the meeting.

The Texas Open Meetings Act clearly states that the law applies to the Senate and to its committees, unless there are clear constitutional or statutory exceptions. No exceptions are apparent.

The facts are that the senators gathered in secret, discussed public business and then came out and acted on their secret discussions.

That's exactly what the Texas open meetings law was designed to stop.

The Republicans also attempt to justify their secret meeting by saying they did not have a quorum of members present. That's a strange argument when they left the secret meeting, entered the Senate chamber and passed a motion to fine the absent Democrats. The attorney general had issued an opinion that a majority of the senators present for the session could legally vote to fine the absent Democrats.

Either they had a legal majority or they did not. Besides, public officials cannot meet in groups less than a quorum for the purpose of circumventing the law.

Regardless of all the tortured logic and legal gymnastics, the bottom line is that Texas Republicans have already brought national ridicule on themselves and the state for attempting to ram through an unfair and unpopular redistricting plan. Hiding public business from the public is another shameful act of desperation.

Commentary - By Geoff Rips
Special to the San Antonio Express-News
Web Posted : 08/17/2003

You'd think a political party that squeaked into the presidency by disenfranchising African American voters and Jewish pensioners in Florida wouldn't be so determined to throw the American political system completely out of balance. You'd think they wouldn't be so brazen about wanting it all.

But maybe what drives them is the very fact that they won with a minority of those voting for president, who are, of course, a much smaller minority of the eligible voting population, not to mention of the adult population of this nation. Maybe they realize that to hold onto what they've got, they'll have to go to great lengths to jimmy the American political system.

Who wants this redistricting fight and why? Gov. Rick Perry says that Texans want it. Why? Because, he says, we all want to be represented by Republicans even though some of us vote for Democrats.

But a poll released by Montgomery and Associates on July 18, taken during the Legislature's first special session, showed only 30 percent of those polled favored the redistricting effort. And self-declared Republicans made up 47 percent of those polled, compared to 40 percent who said they were Democrats. Only 48 percent of the Republicans polled support it.

There's got to be a better reason. U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, a former backbencher in the Texas Legislature, has declared, "I'm the majority leader and I need more seats." A long article in the July 22 Washington Post documented DeLay's bulldog, take-no-prisoners leadership, complete with a set of committees put together to finance Republican elections for Congress and for the Texas Legislature.

Why does he want more seats? DeLay has been fairly transparent about that all his political life. According to the Post, DeLay fought higher tobacco taxes, while Philip Morris, UST Inc. and R.J. Reynolds were among the top donors to his committees.

Enron hosted the first fund-raiser for DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority. Westar Energy of Kansas gave the PAC $25,000 and said it gave them "a seat at the table" with congressional negotiators. Bacardi gave DeLay's committees $40,000, and DeLay worked to uphold the embargo of Cuban products.

DeLay created Texans for a Republican Majority, which shelled out $1.5 million for 22 Republicans running for the Legislature in 2002. Perry Homes gave $427,000 to DeLay's political committees. Perry Homes was intent on restrictions on lawsuits by consumers.

Texas has always been a business-friendly state, whether that business was farming and ranching, oil, finance, technology or real estate. But the stable, conservative center that used to run Texas politics — serving business interests while gradually recognizing the needs of the poor, or consumers, of those who breathe Texas air or send their kids to public schools — that compact's gone.

We're seeing the marriage of a right-wing Republican agenda with short-term corporate self-interest. And DeLay and the Republican leadership of this state are its poster children.

Political scientist Michael McDonald characterized DeLay's redistricting efforts this way: "Instead of voters selecting representatives, it's representatives selecting voters."

Tejano Democrats president Juan Maldonado was more explicit. Testifying at Texas Senate hearings in McAllen, he said the maps being drawn amount to "the racist resegregation of Texas politics, the complete disenfranchisement of Hispanics who don't live in majority-minority communities." The maps create "a Texas where we have two parties — one white with a little cinnamon brown for seasoning and another party mostly all brown and black. Trying to put the Democratic Party in only the barrios and the ghettoes puts us there politically, too."

Here we get to it. DeLay envisions a world with so few Democratic votes that it will be a deregulated world for business, except when his friends want otherwise, and a world without choices or a safety net for working people and the poor.

The irony is that he and his cronies are using the last vestiges of the Voting Rights Act to dilute minority power — a perversion of all it was intended to do. Some believe DeLay wants to create such a large Republican majority in Congress that the Voting Rights Act will be killed when it comes up for reauthorization in a few years. Then he wouldn't even have to worry about those isolated minority districts.

But a voting rights expert told me that he'd have no motivation to do that. In recent years, the act "has been a sword for the Republicans to kill Southern Democratic representation," he said.

What is clear is that DeLay and friends would like to roll back the clock to the days before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, before the Clean Air Act, even before the Social Security Act. And they see these redistricting battles as the way to do that.

In 1965, a better Texan, President Lyndon Johnson, talked to the American people about the need for the Voting Rights Act: "This great, rich, restless country can offer opportunity and education and hope to all: black and white, North and South, sharecropper and city dweller, These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease. They are the enemies and not our fellow man, not our neighbor. And these enemies too, poverty, disease and ignorance, we shall overcome. For at the real heart of battle for equality is a deep-seated belief in the democratic process."

We can't forget that.

DeLay: Senators violating Constitution
Says 11 who fled to derail redistricting 'don't understand honor'

By BENNETT ROTH and RACHEL GRAVES
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 17, 2003, 9:00PM

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is pushing congressional redistricting in Texas, said Sunday that Democratic state senators who fled to New Mexico to prevent a redistricting vote are violating the U.S. Constitution.

"We're supposed to, by Constitution, apportion or redistrict every 10 years," DeLay, R-Sugar Land, said on Fox News Sunday. "We in Texas have prided ourselves on honor, duty and responsibility. Unfortunately, the Democrats in the state Legislature don't understand honor because they're violating their oath of office to support the United States Constitution."

"He's full of the Christmas turkey," retorted Sen. Mario Gallegos of Houston, one of 11 senators in Albuquerque. "The Legislature had the opportunity (to redistrict), and Gov. Perry chose not to."

Redistricting usually takes place every 10 years to adjust political district boundaries for population shifts recorded in the U.S. census.

The Legislature did not pass a congressional redistricting bill in its 2001 regular session, at least partly because Democrats still controlled the House and Republicans controlled the Senate. Perry did not call a special session that year to take up the issue.

A federal court drew Texas' existing lines after the Legislature failed to in 2001.

Earlier this year, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled, in response to an inquiry from state House Redistricting Chairman Joe Crabb, R-Atascocita, that the court's redistricting plan can be used until after the next census in 2010.

Abbott said the Legislature can redraw the districts but is not required to.

On Sunday, DeLay criticized the three judges who drew the boundaries. "They did a very poor job, as evidenced by the fact we have a minority of Republicans in our congressional delegation," he said.

The Texas delegation to the U.S. House now comprises 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans. DeLay and other Republicans maintain that is inconsistent with the state's strong GOP voting trend in recent elections.

Democrats respond that five districts with Republican voting histories re-elected Democratic congressmen last year.

Two of the three judges who were responsible for the redistricting plan were Republicans. Their plan generally protected incumbents of both parties. Two new districts Texas gained because of population growth were drawn to favor the GOP, and Republicans were elected to those seats last year.

A redistricting effort failed in the regular legislative session last spring when more than 50 Democratic state representatives fled the Capitol to deny a quorum in the House, which attained a Republican majority in last year's elections.

The Legislature now is in the second 30-day special session Gov. Rick Perry has called this summer to consider the issue.

A redistricting bill died in the state Senate in the first special session because of a rule requiring that two-thirds of the 31 senators agree to bring a measure to the floor for debate. All 12 Democrats and one Republican blocked debate in that session.

Eleven Democrats fled to New Mexico on the eve of the second session, after Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, said the two-thirds rule would not be in effect for the new session -- meaning a simple majority could pass a redistricting bill.

The Democrats planned to meet behind closed doors Sunday evening with Carlos Zaffirini, a lawyer representing the Democrats in a Laredo federal court suit seeking to force Dewhurst to reinstate the two-thirds rule.

Zaffirini came to Albuquerque to visit his wife, Sen. Judith Zaffirini of Laredo, one of the Democrats holed up there, and to discuss the lawsuit with her and the others.

Justice issues stinging rebuke to Tom DeLay
Officials point out the obvious: GOP leader was way out of line.
Corpus Christi Caller Times
August 17, 2003

Who says there's no good news out of Washington? Last week brought word from The New York Times that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, upon whom virtually every high-profile leader of the Texas Republican Party is dancing attendance, has drawn a stinging rebuke from the Justice Department.

That is, by the way, the Justice Department over which President George W. Bush, Republican of Texas, presides.

Unlike Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, the killjoys at Justice are appalled by DeLay's strong-arm effort to force a pro-Republican congressional redistricting plan through the Legislature.

Justice officials made it clear that they were astonished and angered by the efforts of DeLay and his Texas GOP colleagues to enlist the federal Department of Homeland Security to track down fugitive Texas House members who had skedaddled to Oklahoma to stymie the Republicans' plan to force enactment of the plan.

After reviewing the case, Justice issued a report scathingly critical of the Texas Republicans' round-'em-up full-court press. In what may have been the unkindest cut of all, Justice officials characterized DeLay's demands as "wacko."

That's strong language for a federal agency to be using, particularly when applied to a powerful politico - but in this instance, the descriptor was abundantly warranted. Good for the plain-spoken Justice staffers who had the grit to point out the (painfully) obvious.

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