Grits for Breakfast 6/10/2019
Having mentioned a handful of #cjreform victories from the 86th Texas Legislature - most notably, by far, abolition of the Driver Responsibility surcharge - we must also acknowledge that the session overall was a major disappointment for anyone interested in reforming the justice system.
Heading into the session, there was cause for optimism. In the Texas House, Speaker Joe Straus for a decade had refused to let #cjreform legislation receive floor votes, while Speaker Dennis Bonnen was much more willing to let members vote on significant reforms. The Governor had endorsed both bail reform and reduced marijuana penalties. And both party platforms had endorsed important reform proposals that entered the session with bipartisan support.
Once the session began, however, it became clear the Senate in particular was all but a lost cause. Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire spent more time shooting down reform legislation than promoting it. (We must accept that raise-the-age and police transparency legislation, for example, will never receive hearings, much less pass, as long as he chairs that committee.)
Reformers have lost all our senate champions over the last few cycles - nobody has stepped up to replace Rodney Ellis or Konni Burton's work on these issues - and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick remains hostile even to minimalist reforms, like reducing pot penalties.
Indeed, since Patrick took over the role of Senate President in 2015, Texas has seen scarce little reform legislation compared to, say, 2007-2013, when an array of decarceration and innocence reforms established Texas as a national #cjreform leader.
These days, the Lone Star State can no longer claim that mantle. Not only has California decarcerated more significantly than Texas (with the help of federal litigation, to be sure), but since 2014, Oklahoma, Utah, Alaska, Connecticut and Colorado have all reduced user-level drug possession to a misdemeanor. Texas has never even seen such legislation get out of committee, and this session nobody even tried. Past efforts had evinced tepid support in the House, and the bill clearly could never even be debated in the Texas Senate under the current leadership.
Grits can think of only five significant #cjreform bills passed in Texas since Dan Patrick became Lt. Governor: 1) increasing property-theft thresholds (which happened in 2015 via amendment, not a bill), 2) eliminating the "key man" system for grand-jury selection (we were the last state to do it), 3) the 2017 Sandra Bland Act (which had the most popular provision that would have saved her life stripped from the bill), 4) debtors-prison reform legislation in 2017 that made it easier for judges to waive fines (though still, 10x as many are jailed as have them waived), and 5) this year's abolition of the Driver Responsibility surcharge, an effort 12 years in the making.
While these were not insignificant bills, they're definitely overshadowed by accomplishments in other states.
Beyond that, the capitol grounds are littered with the corpses of modest, bipartisan #cjreform legislation, much of which would have relieved pressure on cities and counties at a time when the Legislature also restricted their revenue. Here are some of the decarceration measures the Legislature failed to pass:
More:
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2019/06/86th-texas-lege-killing-field-for.html
