Democrats given 2 days to return or pay thousands in penalties
By Ken Herman
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, August 13, 2003

In an unprecedented action in a Texas Senate that has seen everything from filibusters to near-fistfights since it first convened in 1846, Republican senators on Tuesday voted to fine their Democratic colleagues who fled to New Mexico to block action on congressional redistricting.

The Republicans gave the Democrats 48 hours to return. After that deadline, the fines will be $1,000 for the first day, $2,000 for the second, $4,000 for the third and $5,000 for every day after that.

The motion said the fines must be paid "out of each senator's personal funds."

"This has nothing to do about any subject other than we want our colleagues back," said Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the Senate's presiding officer. "We are not going to be held hostage to any 11 members.

"This is not an escalation in any form or shape," Dewhurst added.

That said, the unprecedented action has left some lawmakers worrying that it could change the 31-member Senate for years to come.

At their headquarters hotel in Albuquerque, where they've been since July 28, Democrats vowed they'd never pay a penny in fines. One by one, they stood up at a news conference to express their shock over the vote, which they called illegal and a return to the days of a segregated Texas.

Only two of the Democrats-in-exile are white. All of the Senate Republicans are white.

Several Democrats called the vote a sign of a meltdown by Texas Republicans and blamed U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, who has pushed lawmakers to take up congressional redistricting.

The terms of the fine mean "we will not be allowed to vote unless we pay it from our personal funds," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte of San Antonio, chairwoman of the Senate Democratic Caucus. "They're charging us to vote for our constituents, and that's the reason we left in the first place -- to vote for our constituents."

Sen. Royce West of Dallas said the vote was "unethical, unusual and illegal."

The senators refused to directly answer questions about whether they would go to court or return to Texas once the 30-day special session ends. But asked if the vote would force them home, they responded with a resounding "No."

"We will be exploring all of our options in terms of all individuals responsible for taking these actions. It's a dark day in the history of the great state of Texas," West said.

It was unclear what would happen to senators if they tried to return to the chamber without paying fines they had incurred. Dewhurst said unspecified "privileges" would be revoked.

Initially, he said, such privileges would include the right to vote on the Senate floor.

"Prior to their returning and voting we expect for them to pay their fines," Dewhurst said.

Asked specifically if that means senators could not vote if they had unpaid fines, he said, "That's our intention."

But Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, and one of several GOP senators who stood with Dewhurst at his news conference, intervened and said, "I'm not sure we can deny them the vote, but we haven't made that decision yet."

Dewhurst then said, "We have discussed a number of different sanctions, and those will be agreed upon prior to the time that the penalty will be assessed if they are not here."

Tuesday's action was approved by 17 of the Senate's 19 Republicans. Chris Harris, R-Arlington, was not present, and Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, opposed the action and did not show up for the vote. The approval of the fines came a day after the Texas Supreme Court refused to consider a lawsuit filed by Dewhurst and Gov. Rick Perry seeking an order forcing the return of the Democrats.

Though he voiced no objection when the vote was taken on the Senate floor, Sen. Ken Armbrister of Victoria, the only Democrat who did not go to New Mexico, opposed the fines, according to his staff.

Ratliff, who has sided with Democrats in opposing redistricting, did not comment after he walked out of a closed-door session during which the action was hammered out before the floor vote.

Prior to the private meeting, Ratliff, who skipped the floor vote and headed home, said he would not support fines.

"I'm waiting to see where the authority lies for levying the fines," he said.

The state constitution allows lawmakers to "compel the attendance of absent members in such manner and under such penalties as each house may provide." Dewhurst said that provision allows the remaining senators, even without a quorum, to impose penalties.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, told Dewhurst in a Tuesday letter that senators have no constitutional right to break a quorum and that "remaining senators may impose penalties to compel their attendance."

The redistricting battle hinges on the fact that Democrats, who hold no statewide offices, maintain a 17-15 edge in the state's U.S. House delegation.

This year's first effort to draw new maps died when 51 Democratic House members fled to Ardmore, Okla., in May.

Despite Democratic promises to do whatever was needed to block the move again, Perry called a special session to reconsider the topic. That first special session ended, and another one began immediately, but the Senate Democrats jetted to New Mexico, breaking the two-thirds quorum needed to conduct business.

Tuesday's action, perhaps the most contentious ever taken by one group of Texas senators against another, could threaten the chamber's long-standing tradition of bipartisan collegiality. The decision was hammered out behind closed doors in a reception room behind the Senate chamber, and at a table that Dewhurst has often cited as the scene of bipartisan negotiations on the trickiest of bills.

Nothing, however, is as tricky -- or as partisan -- as redistricting.

As senators gathered for the private meeting, two leadership sources said there was considerable consternation about imposing fines.

"Nobody wants to see the Senate change," said one source close to the talks, "and there's a fear this could be a permanent change to the Senate."

Heading into the meeting, Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, said the Democrats should get the blame.

"I think they have significantly . . . harmed this body by doing what they've done," she said. "We've got to stop this, and if it takes fines to get them back to take care of our business and go home, that's what we need to do."

Dewhurst said the ongoing battle, now including fines, would damage Senate bipartisanship "not in the slightest."

kherman@statesman.com; 445-1718

This article contains material from wire services.

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August 11, 2003 2:30 PM
TEXAS SUPREME COURT DENIES WRIT OF MANDAMUS
Will not intervene in legislative matter

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Putting the party above the people
EDITORIAL
By the Abilene Report - N Editorial Staff
August 10, 2003

Republican Party leaders’ push for congressional redistricting in Texas — which disrupted the Legislature’s regular session, generated one futile special session, is stalemated in a second special session and threatens to lead to yet a third — is founded on faulty logic.

The false assumption is U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s belief that the makeup of Texas’ congressional delegation needs to be changed to conform to last year’s voting trend for statewide offices.

In November, most of the 29 percent of voting-age Texans who cast a ballot picked Republicans for U.S. senator, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, state comptroller, land commissioner, agriculture commissioner, railroad commissioner, the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Crim-inal Appeals, and the GOP slate swept the field. Yet in that election, the same voters chose 17 Democrats and 15 Repub-licans to represent them in Congress.

This can’t be right, DeLay says, and it must have happened because congressional boundaries were somehow unfairly arranged to let Democratic voters gang up to defeat Republican candidates for Congress. Therefore, DeLay’s reasoning goes, Texas ought to redraw its congressional district boundaries to guarantee more Republicans are sent to Washington.

Never mind that DeLay is not an official with any standing in the government of the state of Texas and that in years past, anybody from Washington who tried to tell Texans how to run our own business would have been tossed out on his ear.

Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick have bowed to DeLay’s pressure and granted congressional redistricting priority over all other issues crucial to Texas, including the Legislature’s main job of deciding how to finance public education. That is being postponed for still another special session, probably next April.

Why is DeLay’s argument faulty? Because Texas already has a map of congressional districts that favors Republicans.

If the map of congressional districts issued in 2001 by the federal courts and used in last year’s election had shown any advantage to Democrats, there’s no way Perry and then-Attorney General John Cornyn would have accepted it without challenge.

In fact, 2002 voting results, which are a matter of public record, show 20 of Texas’ 32 congressional districts voted more than 53 percent Republican in races for state offices.

So why did only 15 Republicans win congressional seats? Because sometimes Texans vote for the person, not the party.

And in five otherwise Republican districts, including Abilene’s 17th District, voters chose Democrats for Congress.

Even comparing victory margins among Republican candidates for state office in 2002 shows different individuals receive different levels of support. Comptroller Carole (then Rylander) Strayhorn led them all, pulling a whopping 64 percent.

Cornyn won the U.S. Senate race with 55 percent of the statewide vote. Dewhurst became lieutenant governor with 51.7 percent.

If we’re going to use statewide voting averages as a rule of thumb, then the Texas House and Senate need some redistricting, too. The GOP majority in the Senate should probably be more like 17-14 than its present 19-12 bulge. And Democrats ought to have another five seats in the state House of Representatives.

At the end of all this statistical analysis, here’s what’s left: We might not like other folks’ congressmen — DeLay, for example, might have a hard time winning somewhere else — but most of us like our own. And if we don’t, we’re perfectly capable of electing a new one.

DeLay doesn’t want to change the map simply to give Republicans the advantage, which they already possess. Instead, he wants to redesign the playing field for those five Democratic congressmen who keep winning from otherwise Republican-leaning districts and whose vote in the U.S. House he cannot control.

Assigning new districts to those congessmen would hand them a substantial number of new constituents with whom they have no history of established representation, thus making it harder for them to be elected again.

This effort to circumvent the elective process transcends mere partisanship. It is a boldfaced, personal vendetta — not merely against those five congressmen, but more importantly against the people who are being represented in those five Texas districts and who have the audacity to think for themselves and vote independently.

Honorable Texans, both Republicans and Democrats, should be insulted by such shameless greed for power.

Tug-of-war in Austin goes beyond tiresome
While no one in the impasse will come out of it looking good,
Perry must bear the largest share of the blame.

August 10, 2003
Austin American Statesman

Forget about April: In Texas, August is the cruelest month - and this year's edition is made even more prickly and irksome by the continuing melodrama in Austin.

There, Gov. Rick Perry's almost obsessive fixation on ramming a new, GOP-friendly congressional redistricting plan through the Legislature has produced a political theatre of the absurd.

If the end were in sight, we might be able to endure it. However, in an Energizer-bunny scenario, the battle of wills (and egos) keeps going and going and . . .

When Perry called the first special session of the Legislature, after the success of the House Democrats' run-for-the-border flight to Oklahoma in blocking adoption of the redistricting plan during the regular session, he apparently thought the opposition would flinch.

But the first session ended without action on the plan, thanks to GOP Sen. Bill Ratliff's decision to join 11 Democratic senators in preventing the two-thirds majority needed to consent to bring a bill before the chamber.

Nothing daunted, Perry called a second special session on redistricting, with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, vowing he would ditch the two-thirds rule. But the horses were out the barn door: Senate Democrats had fled to New Mexico.

So now it's off to the courthouse we go. From their exile in Albuquerque, the 11 Democratic senators arranged to file suit in Travis County District Court Thursday challenging Perry's authority to call the second special session.

Meanwhile, Perry asked the Texas Supreme Court to order the Democratic senators' return.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, one finds oneself asking - as Casey Stengel so memorably asked of his woefully inept New York Mets - Does anybody here know how to play this game?

Granted, nobody comes away from this thing with clean hands. There has been shameless demagoguing and posturing on both sides.

In the end, though, it's the governor who comes out as the leading, and most egregious, figure in the blame game swirling in Austin.

Perry's insistence on having his (and U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay's) way has taken on the classic proportions of a temper tantrum. And while he does have the power to call a special session, the state's constitution presumes that the governor will use that power prudently and seldom. The governor has flunked that test resoundingly.

FALSE MOVES
Drop redistricting, and mess no one wants goes away
Houston Chronicle
Aug. 8, 2003

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst last week told the Chronicle Editorial Board that U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay does not "jerk his chain," and that the lieutenant governor answers to no one but the voters of Texas. This is but the latest inaccuracy that Dewhurst, Gov. Rick Perry and Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick have used to justify their destructive and unpopular campaign to redraw congressional districts.

The undeniable truth is that many Texans actively oppose redistricting this year. Almost all the testimony at statewide hearings on redistricting was negative. The majority of Texans and their elected representatives are against or indifferent to DeLay's political power play and believe issues such as school finance and property tax reform should take precedence.

Could there be a harder tug than this on Dewhurst's leash? Dewhurst says he is a loyal Republican, but party loyalty should not require denying or misrepresenting the truth.

Months ago, at the start of the regular legislative session, Perry, Dewhurst and Craddick all suggested that redistricting would disrupt and perhaps destroy the bipartisan comity necessary to solve Texas' problems. All three indicated there was little enthusiasm among legislators for redistricting this year, and that the issue was likely to be a nonstarter.

None of the three said anything to suggest that redistricting would soon become the Republican leadership's No. 1 priority. Ordered to seek redistricting by DeLay, none of the three had the courage to refuse DeLay and to act on the assurances each had given to Texans.

Calling from the Democratic senators' sanctuary in New Mexico, state Sen. Mario Gallegos reminded Texans that when the Legislature failed to agree on congressional district lines in 2001, Gov. Perry could have called it back into special session. Perry did not think it necessary, nor did the state appeal the lines drawn by a panel of federal judges. Perry's failure to act then betrays his true sentiments about redistricting's lack of urgency -- sentiments Perry is disowning today.

On top of his false portrayal of the merits of redistricting, Perry has dishonestly tried to blame Democrats for the state's inadequate support for health care and other vital social services. The Democrats are not innocent of selfish partisan motives, but at least they are not misrepresenting the facts with every breath.

On the same conference call with Gallegos, Sen. John Whitmire said the senators would return if Dewhurst would restore the Senate's traditional two-thirds rule. The tradition calls for a parliamentary procedure requiring a two-thirds majority of those present before a bill can be brought up for debate and action.

Sen. Rodney Ellis points out that the Senate has never suspended the rule for bills on important matters such as civil rights or criminal jurisprudence, no matter how urgent the need. Ellis and Whitmire note that the Senate's two-thirds rule resulted in a superior insurance reform bill in the regular session.

As if Texas' political mess were not embarrassing and distracting enough, both Republicans and Democrats are pursuing unpromising litigation to further the dispute.

Even if the Democratic senators returned Monday, a disagreement among Republican legislators over how to divvy up rural West Texas could thwart redistricting until the clock runs out before next spring's primaries.

There is only one reasonable, prudent way to end the mess redistricting has inflicted, and that is for Dewhurst to agree to reinstate the two-thirds rule. Redistricting's few proponents will have a fair chance to gain a consensus. Should they fail, the Legislature will be free to move on to more important matters.

EDITORIAL: Perry can end it
The Lufkin Daily News

8/5/03
There is one person who can bring an end to the embarrassing redistricting mess and get the Texas Legislature back to work on the state's more pressing challenges: Gov. Rick Perry.

Of course, Perry has called two special sessions on redistricting, and is likely to call a third and fourth and fifth, and so on, so he holds a good deal of the blame for the long, hot summer in Austin. But it is not too late for the governor to show real leadership and take congressional redistricting -- which twice in the past three months brought the Legislature to a standstill when Democrats fled the state to avoid defeat -- off the state's agenda.

We aren't optimistic Perry will take our advice, or even offer a compromise fair enough to bring 11 Democratic senators home from New Mexico. On redistricting and other issues, Perry has shown himself to be a Republican first, and a governor for all Texans second. His performance has been no better than that of the legislators who left the state to get what they wanted, and with all the numbers on his side in the redistricting debate, he has little incentive to start acting like a leader.

Our Childish Legislature
American City Business Journals Inc

Hide and seek. Kicking someone in the shins for tattling on you. Trying to take that person's favorite toy in retribution. Changing the rules of the game so your team can win.

These are things you'd usually see on the playground. Instead, it's what we've witnessed from this year's Texas Legislature.

Austin usually has some appreciation for the biannual visit of the legislators. It pumps money into hotels, restaurants and bars. And in a politics-hungry town, it feeds the need.

But as we enter special session No. 2, we can't be too proud of this group. And we'd like to see it get down to business and go back home.

We won't criticize the departing-returning-hiding Democrats who keep trying to head off the painful redistricting their party faces for the U.S. House. That's the way politics works. You need quorums to take votes, and both sides often have to compromise to even earn those quorums.

The Democrats' fleeing has kept us from votes. But the Republicans' lack of significant movement has contributed to the border runs. The name-calling by the Republicans has bordered on the playground bully proclaiming "chicken" as if it will goad others into unwise action. Instead, how about a map that everyone can at least consider.

If this game is stalemated, it's because no one plays it well. And if the Republicans change the rules this final session to get it done -- if -- it won't have been played any better.

Meanwhile, on the sidelines has been the embarrassing gamemanship that helps make this round of alleged legislating another schoolyard. The Comptroller has to tell the Legislature it didn't balance its books. In a pointless fit of pique, the lieutenant governor tries to transfer favorite programs of the Comptroller to another agency and denies it's in retribution for the embarrassment of almost holding up the budget.

It was childish and another distraction from business at hand.

Those not familiar with Texas politics might criticize the state for letting its members of the House and Senate meet only every two years. Those critics might say we'd get more done, have more flexibility and avoid this need for repeated special sessions if we'd just let those elected officials sojourn to Austin annually.

But Texans have kept the Legislature from meeting more often than every two years with a philosophy it keeps those elected officials from too much chicanery.

At least we can thank this session for proving Texans wise.

© 2003 American City Business Journals Inc.

Our Opinions: Squandered
Times Records News
Estimated $7 million on redistricting could be spent elsewhere

July 29, 2003

Let's connect a few dots.

n This next fall, Wichita Falls teachers will receive a 3 percent across-the-board pay raise. However, because of rising insurance costs, they will actually see paychecks that are lower than they were this past year.

n The Helen Farabee Center, which serves mentally ill clients in this region, announces 83 people will be laid off. At the same time, rural care programs for those clients and others are eliminated.

n At Midwestern State University, faculty will receive no pay raises come fall.

n The Community Restitution Center here, which gave adjudicated criminals an opportunity to get back into the community through real work and to make money to make restitution to their victims, is closed.

n The Small Business Development Center at MSU, which helps entrepreneurs get started and struggling businesses to survive, loses staffing and financial support.

The list can and will go on and on.

n Wichita County commissioners are probably going to raise taxes here by nearly 8 percent.

These are just the first round of hits that local agencies and governmental operations will be taking and are taking.

Why?

The dots are all connected to the legislative session that ended in June.

That session was dominated by high-sounding talk about "no new taxes" and the stingy-beyond-belief action that resulted from that promise.

Sure, agencies probably had a little fat in them.

But, most did not. Statistics for years have put Texas at the bottom among the states in things such as helping poor people and spending on education.

Instead of trying to deal with school funding, for example, and trying to come up with creative approaches to finding more money without cutting into the bone of state services, however, the Legislature is apparently going to meet in back-to-back special sessions this summer to twiddle away their time trying to fix a problem that ain't broke.

The issue of redistricting so that congressional districts will produce more Republicans in the U.S. House is politics pure and simple and will not solve one single thing that is broke in Texas right now.

The session that ended this week without action on that issue was unnecessary from the get-go. And now Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, has called yet another one to do the same thing again.

This is simply wacky.

Actually, it's far more than that.

At a time when Texans are scrounging to help the poor, the sick and the hurting, millions of dollars are being squandered on special sessions.

Monica Wolfson, a former TRN reporter, wrote from our Austin Bureau in Monday's paper that the cost of redistricting will be at least $1.7 million and could rise as high as $7 million.

Could that money have gone to help keep an MHMR center in Graham open? Of course. Could it have been used to keep the SBDC from cutting back on business incubation resources? Of course.

It's too little to help out Texas' educational system from top to bottom.

And if there were going to be two special sessions that should have been the topic, shouldn't it?

So, for the reasons listed above, we support the Texas senators who Monday apparently walked out on a process that serves none of the above purposes.

GOP, not Democrats, has let Texans down
By Bob Ray Sanders
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
7-30-03

If you want to see him do his thing, just pull his string.

Surely that is the lyric that U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay sings when he thinks of his most visible puppet, Gov. Rick Perry.

And based on what happened this week with the call of a second special legislative session to consider congressional redistricting, it is obvious that DeLay isn't simply pulling Perry's strings, he is yanking them.

Frankly, this has become more of a Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen act.

The governor's actions, and the complicity of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, would be laughable if they weren't so desperately pitiful.

If only this were a fairy tale in which we could look forward to getting to that page that said, "The End."

But, no, this is real-life Texas (and Washington) politics, where the principal characters have been blinded by power and ambition and their own selfishness -- so much so that they have disregarded the real needs of Texas citizens and have thrown character, civility, bipartisanship and any sense of fairness and decency out the Capitol window.

And they have no shame.

When Democratic senators fled to New Mexico this week, following the example of their colleagues in the Texas House who went to Oklahoma to break a quorum during the regular session, they did what they had to do.

They did what they constitutionally could do to prevent political embezzlement by those whose zeal for domination has them working to draw lines that would eliminate at least five Democratic U.S. representatives while disrupting communities of interests, violating minority voting rights and emaciating rural voting strength.

The Republican facsimile of leadership in this state is disappointing at best. The people here deserve better and, frankly, were expecting more from those they sent to Austin this year.

Because of their shortcomings and shortsightedness, taxpayers are being bilked while their "leaders" waste time, energy and money on proposed legislation that is both unnecessary and unwise.

Republicans are trying to put the blame on the Democrats who left the state. These are the same Democrats who, with the help of some Republicans, stopped the ramrodding of this proposal in the first special session.

Perry made it clear that he would call special session after special session until he got a redistricting plan, and Dewhurst made it known that if he couldn't get it passed under normal Senate rules, then he would simply change the rules this time around.

Then the lieutenant governor had the nerve to say that he was disappointed in the Democrats for leaving the Senate chamber and the state.

"By leaving," he said, "Senate Democrats are putting their party affiliation over what they were elected to do."

Please!

Who's really putting party above duty?

There is one person in this state who can put an end to this madness. That is the man who has the power to call special sessions and set the agenda for them.

That person is Gov. Rick Perry.

He should take redistricting off the table, or simply order this special session to a close.

The never-ending issue of public school financing is still waiting in the wings. That is where the Legislature's energies should be directed, not on some kind of power grab.

Perry, Dewhurst and Craddick have failed us.

They are messing with Texas, and they of all people ought to realize that Texans don't like to be messed with.

Once again, I urge the governor to cut the strings that bind him to DeLay, and get on with the real business of this state.

Profiles in hypocrisy
Waco Tribune Herald
7-30-03

"Today's developments are disappointing not just to me but to the many Texans who would benefit from the services $800 million would provide. That's why today I am calling another special session." Gov. Rick Perry.

Rick Perry looks good in a suit. But when striking a pose of compassion when his real passion is partisan, Perry is just a well-pressed con man. He makes Democrats living out of a suitcase look smashing.

The italicized words above were used by our governor to bemoan Senate Democrats' flight to New Mexico, which has stopped a second special session. How hypocritical is Perry in light of the partisan meltdown over redistricting? Let us count the ways.

----1. His silence was deafening----

Perry speaks now about $800 million in newly freed-up money that could go to human services if the Democrats would only come back. What was he saying during Special Session No. 1? Nothing.

Along that line it was Republican Comptroller Carole Strayhorn and Capitol Hill Democrats who were doing the urging. It was Perry who was doing the ignoring. Human services are the least of Perry's concerns at this stage. An unprecedented partisan power grab congressional redistricting for the second time in two years is the only thing possessing his mind.

What possesses Perry is taking seats out from under a handful of Democrats in Congress, including Waco's Chet Edwards.

If Perry really wanted to direct $800 million to social services, all he had to do was put it on the agenda. Instead, legislation he supported would have routed the extra money into an "emergency fund" under the control of the governor and the Legislative Budget Board.

Just how many Texans would benefit from that, Mr. Governor?

----2. He dropped ball in 2001----

Perry is the very last person on the planet to be saying, "It is lawmakers' responsibility, not the courts', to redraw congressional lines." That responsibility sat snugly in his lap in 2001. He brushed it off like lint.

In 2001 Perry said redistricting would be too divisive and costly (maybe requiring a special session.) Now he's ordered his second special session after the courts did what he and Texas lawmakers chose not to do: redistrict.

Everything that has ensued in the 78th Legislature over redistricting all the division, all the extra costs, all the long-term damage to the institution of bipartisan government can be laid at Rick Perry's feet.

----3. He would dispense with rules----

Whenever Perry uses the words "fair" or "fairness," he isn't thinking that way when it comes to the legislative process and redistricting.

The House Democrats walked out in May when Republicans tried to ram home a redistricting bill in the 11th hour without state hearings. Afterward, Perry played the diplomat. He said that unlike in the regular session, the voices of Texans would be heard.

Well, lawmakers had state hearings. But at least in the House, Republicans skirted Waco entirely and didn't even wait for transcripts from the hearings before voting on a bill.

Monday, Senate Democrats blocked a quorum when it became apparent that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was going to change Senate rules and Perry was going to push immediately for a Senate majority to pass a redistricting bill without discussion.

The Senate Democrats may not have their clothes pressed today, but they look a lot more presentable than the governor.

Redistricting: 10 reasons this special session
is a bad idea
Dallas Morning News
07/29/2003

Here are the top 10 reasons why Gov. Rick Perry shouldn't have called another special legislative session on redistricting.

1) Texas has more pressing problems.
How to pay for public schools. How to combat the state's dropout rate. How to keep its budgets balanced. That's just for starters. All this mud wrestling over redistricting is more about raw power than solving problems.

2) It makes a mess of Texas (to slightly distort a popular campaign slogan).
Legislators had a spectacularly bitter regular session, followed by a bitter special session. This session will just worsen the wound.

3) $1.7 million is $1.7 million.
Texas is in a budget hole. Spending $1.7 million for another go-round makes no sense.

4) Keep Washington in Washington.
Tom DeLay may love Congress' partisan brawls. But the governor shouldn't have let the GOP congressional heavyweight, who is pushing Austin for new lines, inflict them on Texas. Arrest the man if he gets near the Capitol.

5) The first session didn't produce a map, so why will this one?
Sure, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst will waive the rule requiring a two-thirds vote to bring the redistricting measure to the floor, which would push the issue one step closer to passage. But Senate Democrats already have bolted the premises, like their House colleagues did this spring. Why should Texans expect this session to be any more successful than the last?

6) The Wentworth map makes the most sense.
GOP Sen. Jeff Wentworth has the best map. Republicans would get 19 seats. But the House hates it, and rule changes will make it hard to pass in this session.

7) Two wrongs don't make a right.
Mr. Dewhurst says he's just following the redistricting tradition practiced a decade ago by Democrat Bob Bullock in suspending the two-thirds rule. Why was the suspension right then, or now?

8) Texans like their legislatures part-time.
So far there's been a regular session, a special session on redistricting, a second special session on redistricting, and the possibility of a school finance session this fall. At this rate, lawmakers would wind up working nearly January to December. So much for a Legislature that's supposed to meet every other year for five months.

9) None of the proposed maps increases competitiveness.
The proposed maps are more about creating safe seats for the major parties than enhanced competition between them. This is bad news, and ignores the increasing number of independent voters.

10) Watch what you wish for.
A GOP-heavy map could spark Democratic legislatures in Oklahoma, New Mexico and elsewhere to revisit their congressional lines. They would build up Democrats at Republicans' expense. The retaliation may never end. That's the worst thought of all.

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