GOVT chapter 5

the complex process of institutional change and adaptation in the ogranization and operations of the legislature

institutionalization

The Texas legislature falls somewhere between those legislatures that can be classified as highly professional and those that can be classified as amateurish or citizen–lawmaker bodies. The institutionalization process has produced a more professional legislature in Texas, although it remains a ____-____ institution.

part-time

The Texas legislature, whose members are elected from districts throughout Texas, is the chief policymaking branch of state __________. Its basic role is similar to that of the U.S. Congress at the _______ level.

government

federal

The Texas legislature performs a variety of functions, but its primary task is to decide how conflicts between competing groups and interests are to be resolved through the _________ process.

lawmaking

The legislature establishes programs providing a variety of public services and sets priorities through the _________ process. It sets the budgets for the governor, the bureaucracy, and the _____ courts. It decides whether state taxes should be increased or reduced and, if so, by how much and how the tax burden should be ___________. Its actions affect local tax rates as well.

budgetary

state

distributed

It is ultimately the legislature’s responsibility to make sure agencies are doing what they are charged with by law, and this review, or “oversight,” process is achieved through legislative budget hearings, other committee investigations, and program ______.

audits

The legislature is a representative body whose members are chosen in ____ elections. This process provides __________ to legislative actions and decisions.

free

legitimacy

a lawmaking body, such as the Texas legislature, that includes two chambers

bicameral legislature

Governor Edmund J. Davis and the Radical Reconstructionists to centralize power and authority in Texas after the Civil War, the rural delegates who dominated the Constitutional Convention in 1875 were distrustful, even fearful, of the excesses and abuses of big government. They created a part-time, _________ __________ that included a 31-member Senate and a 150-member House of Representatives.

bicameral legislature

to limit lawmakers power, the Texas constitutional framers limited the _______ ___________ _______ to a maximum of 140 days every two (odd-numbered) years, only during this time can the legislature meet

regular legislative session

a legislative session called by the governor at any time other than the regular legislative session. Limited to 30 days and can consider only subjects submitted by the governor.

special sessions

As of 2020, Texas was one of only four states whose legislatures didn’t meet every year. The others were Montana, Nevada, and North Dakota.⁴²¹ Annual sessions in Texas would require an _________ to the state constitution.

amendment

Article __ of the Texas Constitution establishes the structure, membership, and selection of the Texas legislature. Representatives serve two-year terms; senators are elected to four-year, staggered terms. That means _______ senators are up for election in one election cycle, and the other fifteen senators run for election two years later in the next election cycle.

3

sixteen

They believe ______ pay would broaden the potential pool from which legislators are drawn—and make the legislature more representative of the public—by encouraging more salaried working people to run for legislative office. A wider pool of candidates also could broaden the perspectives from which policy issues are viewed and addressed.

higher

Unlike the U.S. Congress, where seating is arranged by party affiliation, seats are assigned to state legislators by _________.

seniority

In recent years, ________ and ___ have been the dominant occupations of legislators.

business and law

Compared to other states, turnover in the Texas legislature is generally ___ during most election cycles.

low

Texas legislature and most other U.S. legislatures allocate seats ______________ on the basis of single-member districts, and the candidate with the most general election votes in each district wins, a process often referred to as “winner take all.”

geographically

The Texas Constitution requires the legislature to redraw state representative and senatorial districts every __ years, “at its first session after the publication of each United States decennial census,” to reflect changing population ______

10

patterns

process of redrawing legislative and other political district boundaries to reflect changing population patterns. Districts for the Texas House, the State Senate, State Baord of Education and US Congress are redrawn every 10 years by the legislature.

redistricting

The redistricting process can be extremely technical and legalistic, but it is at the heart of our ____________ system of government.

representative

In 1962, the federal courts finally ordered equality in ____________. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Baker v. Carr, applied the principle of equality to congressional ____________. Then, in Reynolds v. Sims, the court held that state legislative districts had to be apportioned on the “one person, one vote” principle.

redistricting

redistricting

the drawing of political district lines in such a way that they favor a particular political party or racial group

gerrymandering

A federal court ruled in 1972 that ___________ districts in Dallas and Bexar counties were unconstitutional because they diluted the voting strength of Black voters in Dallas and Hispanic voters in Bexar. Coincidentally, they also diluted the voting strength of Republicans in both counties.

multimember

According to the 2010 U.S. census, Texas’s population had grown during the previous decade from 21 million people to approximately 25 million, and most of the growth occurred among Hispanics. As a result, Texas was awarded ____ additional congressional seats to give the state a total of 36, and Hispanic leaders believed most of the new districts should be drawn to give Hispanics the opportunity to elect the new congressional members.

four

The high Court ruled that the formulas used to determine which states are subject to the law’s strict preclearance requirements were unconstitutional because they were based on old data. That decision will continue to make it more difficult for people of color to prove discrimination in redistricting cases, unless Congress amends the Voting Rights Act to correct the problem.

shelby county vs. holder

The basic leadership structure of the Texas legislature has remained unchanged since the current state constitution was adopted in 1876. The House leader, the speaker, is selected by members of the _____, and the Senate’s presiding officer, the lieutenant governor, is elected by Texas ______.

House

voters