Since 1876, the Texas legislature meets on a session of 140 days every odd-numbered year; 2013 is one of them. On Jan. 8th, the two different legislative chambers of Texas will start the 83rd legislative session.

“They have to go and attack all Texas problems for two years,” said Brian William Smith, a political science professor.

Each session, legislators gather to draw the legal frame of Texas and to support the Texan economy and society through policies. The legislature must first begin with the issue of money distributed to state agencies.

“The one thing the legislature has to do is to write a budget,” Brother Richard Daly said.

Brother Richard Daly attended 16 regular sessions as a lobbyist and is a teacher for St. Edward’s University. The budget is written for the next two years and its evolution is tightly linked to economic growth.

“Many agencies had to cut from their budget,” Smith said.

Given the economic situation at that time, the legislature did numerous important cuts in different budgets; the total cuts were $27 billion. Education was the service the most affected. 

While some legislations passed, others did not.

“Noodling became legal,” Smith said.

“Racial profiling didn’t pass,” Brother Daly said, with the relief that the local law enforcement did not become in charge of stopping any person that would have been suspicious of being an undocumented immigrant; it would have increased racism as it did in Arizona.

“One of the big topics that were on the agenda but didn’t pass was the legalization of gambling,” Smith said.

Gambling legalization was of paramount importance, as the State of Texas is in need of new revenues. But this debate, among others such as the abolition of death penalty, always comes back on the agenda.

The coming session will be original in many ways, despite the fact that the Republican Party still holds the majority in both chambers.

“Now economy is improving; should we keep things at the current levels or improve them,” said Smith. “Last session we had a deficit, and now we have a surplus, and every time we have a surplus, the battle becomes: how to spend the money?”

The budget for 2013-2014 should be around 10 percent larger than the last biennium’s.

The budget for education might be at least restored at its former level, but it might not go further, by expanding it too much, in case of another economic recession.

“The Texas Constitution requires the State to provide equal educational opportunities,” reminded Brother Daly.

This provision might be highly used by Democrats, so as to argue in favor of larger public education funding.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare and passed by President Obama during his first term, propose to the different states to expand Medicaid (health insurance for poor families) to families living with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line. The Texas legislature will have to choose whether or not Medicaid eligibility will be expanded.

Brother Daly again will work with the Texas Coalition against Death Penalty, in order to promote the abolition of the capital punishment.

“It is a lot more expensive to put somebody to death as opposed to the cost of incarceration,” said Daly.

This argument is a good reason to pass the bill even if it is not the main reason for this bill.

Daly will be giving a class in the Spring for Political Science and Environmental Science majors: Legislative Process and Lobbying (Pols 4342). This class, given every two years at the same time as the regular sessions, covers the basic fundamentals of lobbying. It is held as a regular class until February and the students attend class more rarely and instead go to the Capitol to experience the process as closely as possible.

Because of the scarce of the legislative meetings, the time of the session is one the most important political times in Texas. Either many expected bills can pass quickly or the legislative process can be slowed down in order to wait the end of the session.

“It can be a very exciting time, but it can also be a very disappointing time,” Smith said. “It is hard to predict what is going to happen.”