Texas works because state government is limited by design

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Texas works because its government was designed not to. That’s the thesis of a new essay by Jon Cassidy, published in this month’s City Journal. The founders of Texas made the state government relatively powerless - in order to free Texans to live their lives.

“Texas is thriving, in part because of the small-government ideals that its founders put at the heart of the state constitution and the political institutions that it established,” Cassidy writes. “The early Texans fully expected government to fail, so they did everything they could to limit the scope of that failure. Texas government is, in a sense, broken by design - leaving civil society free to flourish.”

It starts with a part-time legislature, which only meets every other year.

“Lawmakers who don’t see themselves as the center of the universe, it seems, are less likely to want to pay for everyone’s health care, fret about fracking, or declare half the state environmentally protected,” Cassidy explains. “Texas’s biennial legislature kills most big, economy-wrecking ideas before they gain momentum.”

And the founders’ model included a chief executive with very limited powers.

“Texas’s governor isn’t the most powerful figure in state politics,” he writes. “That distinction belongs jointly to the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. As presiding officer of the state senate, the lieutenant governor appoints committee chairs and directs legislation and budgeting, just like the speaker of the house. The governor can veto legislation and use the bully pulpit, but that’s about it.”

Even the Legislature is constrained.

“The state constitution forbids the legislature from passing any bills, or even holding floor debates, during the first 60 days of the session, which are reserved for filing bills,” Cassidy writes. “By Day 120, any House bills still stuck in committee are dead. The House then faces a series of deadlines for floor approval of various bills.”

Still, there are drawbacks to the kind of state government the founders designed.

“Serving in the Texas legislature isn’t a realistic job option for most working professionals,” Cassidy writes. “It only pays $600 per month, plus $150 per diem for expenses, but it’s too time-consuming to be a side job. Some CEOs and a few small-business owners - accountants, salesmen, consultants - can adjust their schedules to accommodate service in Austin, but their ranks are thin. According to the National Conference of State Legislators, 26 percent of Texas legislators are lawyers - twice the national average.”

Yet the “broken by design” state government works.

“From 2000 to 2014, Texas created some 2.5 million nonfarm jobs, more than a quarter of the U.S. total for the period,” he writes. “In 2015, amid free-falling oil prices, Texas still managed to finish third among states in job growth, thanks to booming health care, education, professional services, manufacturing, hospitality, warehousing, and light industrial sectors. Construction is doing well, too. Wondrously cheap housing and pro-growth land-use policies draw people and business to the state. None of this diversification was centrally planned.”

Texas works because state government gets out of the way.

http://www.tylerpaper.com/TP-Opinion/252640/texas-works-because-state-government-is-limited-by-design