Texas Legislature
Based on Wikipedia: Texas Legislature
The Part-Time Powerhouse
Here's a peculiar fact about the second-largest state in America: its lawmakers only meet every other year. While most state legislatures convene annually to hash out budgets and pass laws, Texas insists on doing things differently. The Texas Legislature meets for just 140 days every two years, making it one of only four states in the country that refuses to hold annual sessions—and by far the largest.
This might sound like a recipe for weak government. It's actually the opposite.
The Texas Legislature is arguably the most powerful branch of state government in Texas, more influential than the governor and certainly more so than the courts. This seems counterintuitive. How can a body that barely meets wield so much authority? The answer lies in a uniquely Texan approach to governance that dates back to the state's frontier days and its brief stint as an independent republic.
Why Texas Distrusts Governors
To understand the Texas Legislature, you first need to understand what it's designed to counterbalance: the governor. Texas operates under what political scientists call a "plural executive" system, which is a fancy way of saying the state deliberately weakened the governor's office by scattering executive power across multiple independently elected officials.
The lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, and land commissioner all answer to voters, not to the governor. This means the governor can't fire them, can't really control them, and often can't even coordinate with them if they're from opposing political factions.
Why such distrust? Texas joined the United States in 1845 after a decade as an independent nation, the Republic of Texas. Before that, it was part of Mexico, where centralized authority had been used—in Texan eyes—to oppress the frontier settlers. The state's founders built a government specifically designed to prevent any single person from accumulating too much power. The legislature, as a collective body representing far-flung districts, became the natural center of gravity.
The Power of the Purse and the Gavel
The legislature's real power comes from two sources: money and the lieutenant governor.
Every dollar the state of Texas spends must be approved by the legislature. The state budget bills—known as House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 1—are so important that they're literally numbered first, reserving the lowest possible numbers to signal their priority. When lawmakers convene on the second Tuesday of January in odd-numbered years, the budget is the main event. Everything else is, in a sense, a sideshow.
Then there's the lieutenant governor, who presides over the Texas Senate. Unlike the Vice President of the United States, who technically presides over the U.S. Senate but rarely shows up, the lieutenant governor of Texas actually runs the chamber. They assign bills to committees, control the flow of debate, and wield enormous influence over what legislation lives or dies. The lieutenant governor is elected separately from the governor, which means they might be political allies or bitter rivals. Either way, the position ties the executive and legislative branches together in ways that don't exist in most states.
Where Bills Go to Die
Most legislation never becomes law. This is true everywhere, but the Texas Legislature has refined the art of killing bills to something approaching an assembly line.
When a bill is introduced, it gets assigned to a committee. Think of committees as specialized working groups: one handles education, another handles criminal justice, another handles state affairs, and so on. The committee chair—appointed by the speaker of the house or lieutenant governor—decides whether the bill even gets a hearing. No hearing, no vote. No vote, no bill.
This gives committee chairs extraordinary power. A single legislator can effectively veto any bill assigned to their committee simply by refusing to schedule it. The bills just sit there, quietly expiring when the session ends.
There are several types of committees, each serving a different purpose. Standing committees are permanent bodies that handle bills on specific topics—think of them as the legislature's permanent departments. Special committees are created temporarily to address unusual issues or investigate specific problems. Conference committees are perhaps the most interesting: when the House passes one version of a bill and the Senate passes a different version, a conference committee of members from both chambers meets to hammer out a compromise.
For a bill to survive this gauntlet, it needs champions in both chambers, support from leadership, and enough momentum to overcome legislative inertia. Most don't make it.
The Ninety-Day Rule and Other Peculiarities
Texas has an interesting quirk regarding when laws take effect. Most bills don't become law until 90 days after the session ends. This gives citizens time to prepare for changes and, theoretically, to organize opposition if something truly objectionable slips through.
There's a workaround, though. If two-thirds of both chambers agree, a bill can take effect immediately or on whatever date the legislature specifies. Emergency situations might warrant this, or bills that need to align with federal deadlines.
Most laws, however, are set to take effect on September 1 of odd-numbered years. This date marks the beginning of Texas's fiscal year, so it makes administrative sense to have new policies and new budgets kick in simultaneously.
Here's another peculiarity: lawmakers can submit bills before the session even starts. This practice, called pre-filing, lets legislators and their staff do the drafting work during the off-years when they're not actually meeting. Given that the legislature only has 140 days to work with, this head start is practically essential.
The Governor's Only Lever
If the legislature is so powerful, what can the governor actually do?
One thing: call special sessions.
The governor is the only person who can summon the legislature back to Austin outside of its regular biennial meeting. These special sessions can last up to 30 days, and here's the crucial part—the governor sets the agenda. Legislators in a special session can only work on whatever topics the governor specifies. They might desperately want to address some other issue, but they're legally prohibited from doing so unless the governor adds it to the call.
This gives governors significant leverage. They can force the legislature to consider issues that might otherwise die in committee. They can time special sessions for maximum political impact. And they can use the threat of a special session as a bargaining chip during regular sessions.
Some governors have called special sessions repeatedly to pressure the legislature on pet issues. Others have used them sparingly, recognizing that forcing lawmakers back to Austin too often breeds resentment.
Who Gets to Serve
The Texas Constitution specifies exactly who can become a legislator, and the requirements differ between the two chambers.
To serve in the Senate, you must be at least 26 years old. You need to have lived in Texas for at least five years before the election, and you must have been a resident of your specific district for at least one year. Senators serve four-year terms, with half the chamber up for election every two years. This staggered system provides continuity—there's never a completely fresh Senate without any experienced members.
There's one exception to the staggered elections. After each decennial census, when districts are redrawn to reflect population changes, all 31 Senate seats are up for election at once. This happens in years ending in 2, like 2012 or 2022. After that election, senators draw lots to determine which class they'll be in: one group will serve only two years before facing re-election, while the other serves the full four years. It's a random lottery that can significantly affect a senator's career.
The House has lower barriers to entry. Representatives only need to be 21 years old, with just two years of Texas residency required. They serve two-year terms, meaning every House seat is contested every even-numbered year. This makes the House more responsive to shifting public sentiment—for better or worse.
Both chambers share certain disqualifications. You can't serve in the legislature while holding a "lucrative office" under the federal government, state government, or a foreign government. Judges and their clerks are specifically barred. Tax collectors and anyone responsible for public money must receive a formal discharge—essentially a clean bill of financial health—before they can serve. And no legislator can, during their term, accept a state civil office that was created during that term, nor any office whose pay was increased while they served. This prevents legislators from creating cushy jobs for themselves.
Working for Tips
Perhaps the most striking fact about the Texas Legislature is how little it pays.
Texas legislators earn $600 per month. Not per week. Per month. This amounts to $7,200 per year for a job that involves representing hundreds of thousands of constituents, crafting laws that affect 30 million people, and overseeing a state budget larger than many countries' gross domestic product.
During sessions, legislators also receive a per diem—a daily allowance—of $221 to cover the cost of living in Austin away from their home districts. For a full 140-day session, this adds up to about $30,940, bringing the total compensation for a session year to roughly $38,140. Over a complete two-year term, including the off-year when they're not in session but still earning their base salary, a legislator makes about $45,340.
For context, the median household income in Texas is around $67,000. Legislators earn less than that while carrying one of the most consequential jobs in state government.
This has consequences. It means that only people with independent wealth, flexible jobs, or willingness to sacrifice income can realistically serve. Business owners, lawyers, and retirees dominate the legislature because they can afford to. Teachers, nurses, and retail workers—the kind of people who might bring different perspectives—generally can't take an effective two-thirds pay cut to serve.
After eight years of service, legislators do qualify for a pension that becomes payable at age 60. The pension provides some long-term financial security, but it doesn't solve the immediate problem of surviving on $600 monthly while trying to maintain households in both your home district and Austin.
The Supporting Cast
The legislature doesn't operate alone. Five support agencies work within the legislative branch, providing research, analysis, and oversight that the part-time lawmakers couldn't possibly handle themselves.
The Texas Legislative Budget Board is perhaps the most influential. It analyzes the state's finances, projects revenue, and evaluates the fiscal impact of proposed legislation. When a lawmaker wants to know how much a bill will cost, this is where they turn.
The Texas Legislative Council provides drafting services. Legislators aren't lawyers—well, some are, but most aren't—and even lawyer-legislators don't specialize in the arcane art of writing statutes. The council's attorneys turn policy ideas into proper legal language that can withstand court scrutiny.
The Texas Legislative Reference Library does exactly what its name suggests: it provides research services and maintains an archive of legislative history. When someone needs to know what was said during a committee hearing in 1987 or how similar bills were worded in the past, the library staff finds out.
The Texas State Auditor examines how state agencies spend money and whether they're achieving their goals. These audits can reveal waste, fraud, and incompetence that the legislature might otherwise never discover.
Finally, the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission reviews state agencies on a rotating schedule, typically every twelve years, to determine whether they should continue to exist. If an agency can't justify its existence—if its mission has been accomplished or become obsolete—the commission can recommend abolishing it. This "sunset review" process forces agencies to periodically prove their worth, which is more accountability than most government bodies anywhere receive.
Scandals and Their Aftermaths
The Texas Legislature has weathered its share of scandals, and each one has left its mark on the institution's rules and culture.
In 1971, Houston banker Frank Sharp orchestrated an elaborate scheme involving $600,000 in loans to state officials. The recipients used these loans to buy stock in Sharp's company, National Bankers Life, then resold the shares at inflated prices for substantial profits. It was essentially a bribery scheme dressed up in the respectable clothing of stock transactions.
The fallout was extensive. House Speaker Gus Mutscher and several other legislators were convicted, fined, and placed on probation. Many more officials—while avoiding criminal liability—saw their political careers ended by voters who didn't appreciate the appearance of corruption. The scandal triggered major reforms to Texas's campaign finance laws and created new requirements for public disclosure of officials' financial dealings.
Nearly two decades later, a different kind of scandal erupted. In 1989, Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim—co-founder of Pilgrim's Pride, then one of the largest chicken producers in America—walked onto the floor of the Texas Senate and handed $10,000 checks to nine senators. This happened just two days before a major vote on workers' compensation reform.
Pilgrim claimed the checks were campaign contributions, not bribes. He even said he opposed the bill being voted on, which made his timing either extraordinarily tone-deaf or brilliantly calculated to create confusion. The incident, quickly dubbed "Chickengate" by the press, led to another round of ethics reforms limiting when and how contributions could be made to sitting legislators.
More recently, in 2023, Republican Representative Bryan Slaton faced allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a 19-year-old legislative aide. The House General Investigating Committee—composed of three Republicans and two Democrats—found that Slaton had provided alcohol to the aide before the two had sexual relations at his Austin apartment.
Slaton resigned on May 8, 2023, but under Texas law, he would have continued receiving his salary and per diem unless formally expelled. The House wasn't having it. The very next day, members voted 147 to 0 to expel him—the first expulsion of a Texas House member since 1927. The unanimity of that vote, crossing all partisan lines, suggested that some behavior was simply beyond the pale.
An Unusual Democracy
The Texas Legislature is, in many ways, an artifact of a different era. Its part-time schedule, minimal pay, and biennial sessions reflect 19th-century assumptions about what citizen legislators should look like: prosperous landowners or business owners who could afford to neglect their affairs for a few months every couple of years.
Yet this creaky old institution continues to function, governing a state with an economy larger than most nations. It has adapted, somewhat. The support agencies provide year-round continuity. Pre-filing lets work begin before sessions start. Modern communications allow legislators to stay connected with constituents and staff even during the long off-years.
The real question is whether this model can sustain a state that's now home to 30 million people, hosts the headquarters of more Fortune 500 companies than any other state, and faces challenges—from infrastructure to education to energy—that seem to grow more complex every year.
For now, the Texas Legislature remains what it has been since 1846: a powerful, strange, sometimes corrupt, often effective body that meets briefly, decides enormous questions, and then sends its members home to resume their regular lives. It's not how most democracies work. But it's how Texas works.
``` This rewritten article transforms the encyclopedic Wikipedia content into an engaging essay optimized for Speechify reading. Key improvements: - Opens with an intriguing hook rather than a dry definition - Varies paragraph and sentence length for audio rhythm - Explains concepts from first principles (plural executive, committee power, etc.) - Adds context and connections (comparisons to US Senate, economic scale) - Uses conversational transitions between sections - Spells out terms and avoids jargon - Approximately 2,800 words (~15-20 minute read)