Texas Legislature

you know exactly

350 401 in each as an example in each

district but it has to be close enough

to where there's no major differences in

population

uh and this is determined every 10 years

when we do the census

and once that census is done and we

count everybody and we know where they

are then we can if necessary

redraw the districts

to make sure they're approximately equal

in population

duties and roles of the texas

legislature so what do they do

as a house of representatives member or

a texas senate member

consideration of proposed laws and

resolutions so basically make laws

propose laws

debate them

consideration of proposed constitutional

amendments for submission to voters

that's how

the constitution is amended in the state

of texas the legislature proposes them

and submits them to the voters for

ratification

so that's another duty

appropriation for all funds for the

operation of state government

money does not get spent unless the

legislature approves it

okay so the governor can do whatever the

governor wants to in the executive

branch but if he doesn't have the money

allocated

by the legislature then he can't do

anything

all revenue raising bills those we just

talked about appropriation bills that

that are used to raise money

uh taxes basically must originate in the

house representatives this is a similar

rule to uh the u.s congress

so

any bills that will either create a new

tax or raise taxes must start in the

house of representatives

and the house may bring impeachment

charges

um

against statewide officers

once again much like the

u.s congress the house

brings the charges

and decides whether there's enough

evidence to put the

person on trial and then the senate will

hold the trial

so

leadership

as far as the house representatives the

leader is the speaker of the house

currently a republican dan phelan

in the senate the leader is the

lieutenant governor oftentimes we'll

talk about this a little bit later the

lieutenant governor is often times

considered the most powerful

uh

person

in state government even more so than

the governor because

as lieutenant governor he controls the

legislation in the state senate

uh legislative sessions

uh regular sessions are biennial meaning

every other year so every odd number

year is when the legislature officially

meets

and when they do meet they meet for 140

days beginning in january so every other

year for 140 days

so by definition that's a part-time

legislature that's not a full-time

legislature

and i believe that

that's one of the problems that texas

has with their state government

they have a population and an economy

texas has a population in an economy

that's equivalent or larger to the size

of most nations most countries

yet we um

texas only has a part-time legislature

to run it i think that

creates problems

so the regular sessions are biennial

every odd number year and for 140 days

special sessions may be called by the

governor but only for a specific purpose

and with a 30-day cap on the amount of

time that they can be in special session

unless another special session is caused

uh called but that special session has

to be for a specific purpose maybe a

problem that's arisen with funding or a

part of government or some other issue

but the governor can call that and bring

everybody back into session in the

legislature

redistricting

kind of touched on this a while ago

redistricting is the process of

redrawing the boundaries

of the legislative districts both the

house of representatives districts of

which they're 150 and the state senate

districts which there are 31.

um

districts included in redistricting as i

just mentioned the us

the texas state house and the texas

state senate but also the united states

house of representatives is included in

the redistricting

of uh and that is done by the state

legislature and once again every 10

years following the completion

of the census

now one of the things that can occur

when redrawing districts is

gerrymandering now gerrymandering is a

term uh that describes the drawing

of legislative district boundaries and

should say in such a way as to establish

an unfair political advantage for a

group be that political party be it give

a certain race or religion or any other

group an advantage

if you draw the district boundaries in

such a way to make it unfair for

some groups and give a benefit or

an advantage to other groups

and these are some charts that look

kind of can show how you can have the

same amount of people

in a district but or in a in a state

with a group of districts

and how by drawing the districts you can

favor one group or another

okay so if you look at the one

um on the left there that doesn't have

any black lines running through it

that's just the basic population so 60

is blue and 40 is yellow that's a basic

population

um

if you would if you look at the bottom

proportionate outcomes meaning outcomes

that are proportionate to the actual

numbers the 60 and 40

the bottom left looks to me at least

like the

normal

how the district should be drawn

but in this you have all the same

population in each district so each

district would have all yellow and you

can call that political parties or you

can call that groups

so uh you would have

proportionate three blue districts and

two yellow districts which is kind of

would be equal to the proportion of

um

40 yellow 60 blue

now

on the right hand at the bottom same

thing but they're redrawing in such a

way that each district has a different

ratio

of uh blue and yellow so you can kind of

mix and match

and um

and but you're still getting the same

result although each district

is going to have a mix of people instead

of

a all of them in the same district

now gerrymandering if you go to the top

it's how you can gerrymander and and

draw districts that

even though

the blue is the

majority population

you can actually draw a district a

district if you look at the upper right

where blue doesn't even have

a majority in

as far as in the house of

representatives

because it's been drawn in such a way

gerrymandered to have three yellow

districts and two blue districts even

though

the yellow is only 40 percent of the

population

or

that

the other way you could go is you could

gerrymander it such a way where yellow

gets absolutely no representation

in congress or in the legislature and

that's the upper left hand

uh

gerrymandering where you have uh each

district has 40 yellow and 60 blue

and that

the yellow

what that the group that's represented

by yellow

does not have any vote

in the legislature

so

uh

the true probably the the most

um

fair one

would be the i think the bottom

um

the bottom right which has a you know

blue has the majority

has more uh seats because they have more

people but each district is mixed so

within those districts the population

yellow has a voice

now qualifications for service in the

state legislature of texas

uh there's probably good test questions

all the following are true about you

know qualifications to serve in this

texas legislature

texas house representatives you must be

a u.s citizen

you must be a two-year resident of texas

12-month resident of the district which

you are running in and at least 21 years

old

the terms are two years with no term

limits so

you're up for re-election every two

years the entire house of

representatives is up for re-election

every two years and you can run as many

times as you wish

state senate

qualifications

u.s citizen

instead of two years you gotta be five

year resident of texas

12 month resident of the district and at

least 26 years old

a four-year term with no term limits

so you're serving four-year terms now

the with that four-year term we still

have elections every two years but they

are staggered about half

of the uh of the 31 state senators are

up for election uh every two years

compensation now this is going to look

strange but six hundred dollars a month

or seventy two hundred dollars per year

seven thousand two hundred per year that

is not enough money

to uh to survive on

so the problem is but you do get when

you're in session for that 140 days

you get 221 dollars a day it's called

per diem per day

but um

that still doesn't make very much uh

bring very much money into a

a normal functioning household

what this does though is it makes it

difficult for just a regular person

to you know run for the state

legislature represent you know do their

civic duty and represent their district

and you know without having some kind of

either be independently wealthy or have

a business that you can leave for 140

days every year

and still still have it function making

you money so that's why you have a lot

of business owners

ranchers

lawyers that can leave their law firms

for a period of time to go to the

legislature and just like

if i wanted to be a state legislator

and run for the house representatives

of texas i wouldn't be able to because i

can't just leave my job for 140 days

every other year

and and i can't quit my job because i

can't survive on 7 200 a year plus the

per diem

so

it kind of creates a limit as to who can

really run for the state legislature

uh current demographic makeup of the

texas legislature uh

gender of 112 males and 38 females

senate 21 males and 10 females

so when you look at gender

it is not representative of the

population basically

it's 50 50 in the general population

there's just as many and i think maybe a

little bit more more females than there

are males in the general population of

texas yet men are overrepresented uh in

the uh

in the legislature

uh as far as age

uh there's nobody under 30

even though 21 and 26 respectively are

the ages that you can run

in the house representative there are

16 members that are

in their 30s none in the senate

43 members in the house

in their 40s one in the senate

44 members of the house that are in

their 50s 15 in the senate

and 29 members of the house

representatives that are in their 60s

and

there's seven in their 60s in the senate

and over 70 and over 17 in the house and

eight in the senate so

it looks to me like just eyeballing it

the house representatives the popul the

age is kind of spread out a little more

uh whereas

in the senate it's heavily 50 and older

this is just a

graphic that shows uh

um

the numbers

as far as

partisanship which political party

the house representatives has 83

republicans and 67 democrats

uh the state senate has 18 republicans

and 13 democrats

so the the republican party uh

has the majority in both the house and

the senate

the racial makeup of the legislature

does not reflect the population

democrats in the 2021

legislature

[Music]

two asian

18 black 44 hispanic and 16 white

republicans in the 2021 legislature two

asian one black two hispanic and ninety

four white representatives

as far as the entire legislature

uh

four you add those two together four

asian

uh descent 19 black 46 hispanic and 110

white

now the yellow isn't interesting if the

legislature actually accurately

reflected the texas population it would

look like this meaning if it was

proportionate to how many what

percentage of the population

each of these racial groups make up you

would have 9 asians 22 black

representatives 72 hispanic

representatives and 74 white

representatives

so once again the legislature in general

does not reflect

what the population looks like

there's just some map that kind of shows

the districts

the house districts as you can see

they're you know

they're they're color-coded so

the um

to see how many they are every every

inch of territory in texas is covered by

a

house representative district or state

senate district

but some of those you can't really see

it but some of them are really oddly

shaped especially when you get into like

cities like houston who will have

multiple

districts within the city limits of

because the population is so dense that

you will have very strangely shaped

districts

[Music]

now real quick let's talk about the

legislative process

uh

it's i'm not going to go deep deep into

it because it's very convoluted and long

but basically for testing purposes if

you can just kind of

know the order you know which

comes first which comes last and how

many readings and things like that

that'll probably get you through a test

so one adoption of rules at the

beginning of the legislative session so

every legislative session which means

every two years

there's a new set of rules

even though the rules kind of carry out

most of them carry over they can be

altered as far as you know the rules of

debate the rules of adding amendments or

changes in the different

laws that are being debated

so you adopt the rules at the beginning

of the session

then

a bill is introduced

a member of either chamber either the

house representatives or the senate may

introduce a bill

of course we mentioned any revenue

producing bill must start in the house

representatives and then they have the

first reading

okay that means they read it out loud uh

usually it's a summary it's not the

entire bill and then the bill is signed

to a committee

a committee is just a smaller group of

people within

the legislature within the chamber who

deal with specific um

bills that uh maybe uh

are part of an expertise of that

committee

okay so in the small working group uh

the house of representatives uh you have

a public hearing where you have an open

forum where people can well you talk

about it publicly and people can come

from outside either maybe just regular

citizens or lobbyists or anybody can

come and listen in on the hearings or

ask to speak

then you have formal meetings

and you may take official action like

votes

you may have work sessions where no

formal action is taken but you're

sitting there trying to work through the

legislature i mean legislation work

through the law

and the senate is similar you have

public hearings

and official action may be taken at any

meeting so there's no separate kind of

uh informal work sessions in the senate

votes can be taken and decisions can be

made

in any meeting of the committee in the

state senate

next if the committee takes no action

the bill dies

or the committee can recommend it

which means it's placed on the calendar

to be uh discussed

by the entire house representatives or

the senate

the second reading

then a debate by full membership

amendments could be offered with

majority approval

if that is passed then it goes to the

third reading and then amendments can be

added again but it has to be a two-third

majority

and the bill passes with a majority vote

after the third reading so there will be

three readings

minimum for every bill

once that happens in one

chamber so let's say it started out in

the house representatives and they went

through their their three readings the

committee process and they the house

representative passes it then it goes to

the senate for

their process of doing the same thing

and they must be passed in identical

form

now if the other chamber the second

chamber changes it or amends it

either the first chamber agrees to it

and they vote again or it is sent to a

conference committee where the the house

representatives and the senate work out

the differences

once that happens and the same bill is

voted on and approved by both the house

and the senate then it goes to the

governor

the governor's actions could be he has

10 days to sign it into law or to veto

it

or if he does nothing the law it can

become law without his signature

now

if the governor vetoes it if the

governor vetoes it

which means he cancels it the

legislature can override that governor's

veto by a two-thirds vote in both

chambers so it's possible to override a

governor's veto it's rare but it can be

done

and if you just want a little chart to

show the legislative process i put it

here some people are more visual

learners

so if you can um

look through that and that might help

you it's much more detailed too

as far as the process

and then here's a chart showing uh

constitutional amendments of texas and

the process

along with comparing to the u.s process

the u.s process is a much more rigorous

difficult process to get through

and that in turn means there are fewer

amendments there's only 27 total

amendments to the u.s constitution

and that includes the first 10

amendments that happened almost

immediately after the ratification so

since the earliest ratification of the

u.s constitution

with the

bill of rights the first ten amendments

added there's only been 17 amendments in

the history of the united states

whereas texas it's very easy to amend

the constitution

and it also is a requirement because the

constitution of texas is so specific

um which we talked about last unit

that you have to change it a lot and

it's very easy two-thirds vote of the

full membership of both houses and a

simple majority vote by the people

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