The Madden Report - February 26, 2007

Dear Friends,

The duties of a State Legislator are always demanding and interesting but the first priority we all have is to our constituents.  It is interesting to see the vast number of subjects and issues that interest my friends and neighbors.  I thought it would be a good thing to discuss what issues we have been hearing about most often in the forms of letters and emails.

So far in this session there have been three issues that have comprised the largest part of our mail.  The first issue is the vaccine the Governor has order for all young ladies to prevent cervical cancer.  There have been letters both in opposition and in support of the Governor with the preponderance asking the Legislature to intervene and stop the order at least for the present.  I joined with over 100 of my colleagues in supporting a bill that would do that.  My concern can be summarized as I do not believe the Governor has the authority to order the vaccinations and that such public policy is the responsibility of the Legislature not the Governor.  Our process can be lengthy and detailed but it does give time for reflection, contemplation, and detailed examination of the issue and in this case I believe that is what is necessary.  There is nothing to make me believe a few months delay in giving a vaccine that probably will not have an immediate effect on cervical cancer rates appears to me to be wise.  We do need to know more about the long term effects of this vaccine and we do need to look at the costs, benefits, risks, and public policy factors including the best methods for implementation.  That would require testimony from most of the interested individuals both who support the vaccine and from those who oppose its implementation at least at this time.

I also joined in a letter asking the Governor to withdraw his order.  But in his defense I will say he believe ardently that his order will save the lives of at least 250 Texas women every year within a few years after taking the vaccine.  And he truly believes it would be effective and without serious side effects.  Many in the medical community appear to agree with him and almost all have seen no serious short term effects which is promising.  If he is right future generations will see him as visionary but if there are unknown long term side effects we will have encouraged serious costs and medical effects on the future generations of Texans.  Only time will tell who is right there.  But we have received many interesting comments from our friends on the subject.

The second area where we have gotten a lot of comments is on the air quality issue.  We have received many letters opposing more coal plants.  I am one of the two legislators that formed our new air quality caucus here at the Capitol.  We have been meeting weekly and have seen a great deal of information on plant location and effects plus have gotten a greater understanding of the power grid, power distribution, and air quality models.  We had a very interesting meeting last week with board members from the PUC and TCEQ and will be meeting with them this coming Thursday in a meeting also including ERCOT, TXU(or whomever their name will be after Monday) and with our demographer Dr David Allen to look at the proposals.  It is very interesting to see that there may be some new company involved that purchases TXU in the next few days and the fact they seem to have different opinions of what to build.

Rep Phil King has proposed legislation that would divide TXU and that was getting some traction in the legislature.  We have enough information to know a few facts.  We will need additional power capabilities in Texas and there is a great reliance on peek energy days on natural gas which does affect significantly the price you pay for power.  We have several ways to meet demands sometime in the future but Coal is the only short term relief.  Location of plants definitely affects the air quality model and if the plants were built in West Texas instead of Central and North East Texas they would have little or no effect on the air quality in the Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Austin, San Antonio and Houston areas. The one thing we have found most of us agree on is that we can do more to promote conservation of power and we also are finding a great deal of bipartisan support for many of our efforts.  

The third issue we have received a lot of letters and emails on is family planning and programs where that funding does or does not go.  This issue will be part of the Appropriations act although like the other two issues some bills have been filed on it.  My thought are that this issue will not gain as much traction as the other two since there are clearly drawn philosophical and moral issues involved in the family planning debates.

We have also been visited by hundreds of groups talking about their issues, their legislative agenda, their concerns, and their needs.  These visits are very important to us to know about the issues that affect a certain industry, profession, or company.  I know you would all be surprised to know most of these visits include statements like "and we would like you to support additional funding for....."  you may fill in the blanks here.  We do know there are wonderful programs out there and many of them do need funding, but I still try very hard to remember I represent the 140,000 people of my district and many of them do not want their taxes raised.

I have also been visited by many school personnel, city and county officials, other elected officials and people representing various districts like community colleges, utilities, parks and wildlife and others.  They have talked about transportation, highways, DART, taxes, appraisal and revenue caps, and other interests of the governing bodies.  Most of them ask us to do nothing to interfere with what they do now.  These are of course fair requests from their perspective and they do know we have our duties to do to make sure we have a sound, growing economy, with economic opportunities and that we are expected to listen to our constituents and try to do what is best for all of them.  Sometimes that puts us in agreement with local officers and sometimes it does put is at odds with them but it is important that we know the opinions of everyone in our community and that certainly includes our local officials.  Which leads me to Collin County and Richardson Days which were held this week.  It was good to see and hear from so many of our friends and neighbors and hear their concerns.  I was honored to participate in the resolutions for all of our groups this week and to meet with all of you.  I was very sorry I missed a couple of events due to hearings at the Capitol but I hope all of you had a great visit to Austin.

As an update on some of the issues I have been working on I would be remiss not to say this has been a very productive week.  The Appropriations Committee in the House took the recommendations in a plan now being called the Madden Whitmire Plan for the Texas Department of Corrections and placed many of those recommendations in the Appropriations bill in place of the recommendation for building hardened prison beds.  We are working hard to provide more treatment and treatment facilities for low risk offenders to help break addictions and mental health problems that have at least in part increased their activities in crime.  The recommendations we and the Sunset Commission made are now moving forward in the major recommendations of the Appropriations bill and I want to commend Reps  Van Arsdale, Allen, England, Riddle, and especially my Corrections Committee CBO Jim McReynolds and Chairman Sylvester Turner for their work and support.  They and their staff members have done great work.

We held a hearing last week on our Virtual School bill where there were many supportive witnesses.  I do want to thank the education groups all of whom testified on the bill and showed their willingness to work with us on the legislation.  We will hold the first of several meeting with them working on the bill this coming week but I am encouraged by their positive steps.  The Virtual Education particularly as provided by some of our forward thinking districts on the subject like Plano is an important future look at equity in education. We do have a lot of details to work out but I am optimistic.

We also last week heard the first of our bills that came out of hearings with public education and the juvenile justice committees during the interim. This bill would keep school districts from making violations of their codes of conduct into class C misdemeanors which would give criminal records to kids that otherwise do not violate the laws of Texas.  Hopefully this bill moves to the floor in the next few weeks.

We introduced our new Probation bill this week and will be having hearings this week on two other bills that are very important to our efforts to make Texas an even better place and do smart things on Criminal Justice.  Those two bills are the Nurse Family Partnership Bill (HB424 and SB 156) which will be heard both in the Senate and the House this week and the Drug Court bill (HB530) which my committee will hear Monday.

We also have been told I will be carrying the Sunset Bill for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice which is a very important part of the actions Senator Whitmire and I are working on to remold Texas Department of Criminal Justice.  I would be remiss not to mention the Texas Youth Commission.  There were stories in the Dallas Morning News and elsewhere about allegations of sexual abuse in one or more of the West Texas facilities that surfaced in the last two Weeks.  The Executive Director announced his retirement Friday.  While it is clear that the Department staff were certainly not involved and do not tolerate such behavior it was clear to us months ago there were problems at the agency and we had filed bills to strengthen the law enforcement actions of the agency.  We will push those bills as well as encouraging other actions at the agency to insure good working conditions, safety for the youth and the staff, and improved management at the agency.

Hopefully we will be writing another report next week as time demands allow.

Thank you for all your interest and suggestions.

Jerry

 

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The Madden Report - January 16, 2007

High Noon as the 80th Texas Legislature Convened Tuesday, January 9th

The 80th Texas Legislature convened Tuesday, January 9th at noon.  For some members it was definitely High Noon. 

The session started with the same amount of fireworks as the movie of the same name, although unlike the movie it is harder to identify the guys in white and the guys in black. 

The days leading up to the opening ceremonies had been filled with tension, intrigue, mystery, maneuvering, tactics, and grand strategy.  This is the first session in many years where there was a contested race for Speaker of the House and where the results were not certain until the actual debate had begun. 

The background is easy to paint. 

There have been many conflicts in the House in the last several years.  They did not start, as some would like to believe, with the advent of a Republican majority in 2003, but had started years before when there was a growing Republican minority.  There was clearly conflict then between rival philosophies then as there is now.

This rivalry took on new tones with the advent of the Republican majority and the election of our first Republican Speaker, Tom Craddick, in 2003.  Since that time there have been conflicts over the agenda of our Republican Majority, and the style of the leadership.

These differences have lead a group of Democrats to oppose Speaker Craddick primarily on policy differences, which would be there with any Republican speaker.  They have also complained about the style of the leadership and that difference along with some policy disagreements have also affected some Republicans. 

After the last election cycle where some Republicans lost primary races to other Republicans -- particularly over school issues and in the general election where the Democrats gained 5 seats -- there were members who felt a need for change in the Speaker's office.  These members combined with the Democrats in the group identified above joined forces to challenge for the Speakership.

A Speaker's race is actually a pretty simplified high stakes election.

What then played out would remind me of one of the poker tournaments now popular on television.  High stakes, filled first with the cards one has available, added to by trying to figure out what your opponent is doing, filled with drama, bluffs, intentional misstatements, the dealing of more cards, and the courage to take high risks. 

It also had some inside Austin liberal press involvement, a lot of other players who would be affected by the outcome, and some time to think and sweat it out. 

While it came down to who had the best hand, was willing to make and counter bluffs, and knowing when to lay the cards down, it was also filled with people on both sides who respected the playing skills of the participants, were friends with them all, and who wanted to work with all sides in the race. 

In the end it came down to the skills of the 3 candidates, their ability to overcome obstacles, and the true loyalty of members.

For me the decision was hard in one way and easy in the other. 

Brian McCall has been a close friend and Collin County colleague for a long time.  I respect and admire him greatly.  Jim Pitts has been a good member and a hard worker. 

But all of the same characteristics of leadership they have are also shown by Speaker Craddick and after the last regular session of the 79th Legislature I had given my pledge to support Tom Craddick.  There were no other people in the race, no Nov 2006 elections that had transpired, and no opponent -- but I did not give my pledge to Speaker Tom Craddick.

I gave it to him openly and freely, and to me it was my honor at stake if I did not keep my word. 

I think you all know I do everything possible to keep my word to you and to everyone in this political arena.  Despite the political or other consequences, I did keep my word in the race and I am proud of that.

I felt Rep. McCall had a great deal of momentum right after he announced, but Rep. Craddick worked hard in the days between Christmas and New Years to turn that momentum. 

There were very nervous members on both sides of the races.  The momentum for Brian seemed to slow somewhere the time around New Years, when the Committee Chairmen letter of support for Rep. Craddick was issued. 

The dynamics changed again when Rep. Pitts entered the race. 

It also changed when Rep. McCall through his support to Rep. Pitts, but I did sense a mood among many of the legislators that said Rep. Pitts cannot get a lot more votes than Rep. McCall would have gotten.  Also my contacts with members led me to believe that the list put out by Rep. Craddick was in fact a good list of supporters, and that while some members may have been willing to switch to Rep. Pitts, most of the Craddick votes were pretty solid. 

I felt all along in the last 2 weeks that Rep. Craddick had the votes to win.

There was a now well publicized meeting in Austin Sunday evening the 7th, and it was very clear at that time that Speaker Craddick had the votes to win.  While there may have been some last minute maneuvers, none of them came to pass and on the House floor I sensed a mood of we know who is going to win this battle and that almost all members were totally committed by then to their choice. 

The issue we knew would be the critical vote would be on the acceptance of the rules on the voting for speaker.  The issue was on whether the Speaker vote should be open or closed from public scrutiny. 

I truly believe as a legislator we represent you and that you should know how I vote.  If it also tells someone else how I voted so be it. 

When that vote came out 80 votes (not to cast a secret ballot) with only 68 supporting it, we all recognized for certain that Tom Craddick would be reelected. 

The only real regret I had on that day was that a day of celebration and parties for the newly elected members with their families, their friends and supporters were held in most cases without the newly elected members being able to enjoy them.  I hope their friends and supporters had a great day in the Capitol and am sorry I did not get to see most of their supporters and family members.

As you may know, we have spent many days and hours the last 18 months working on Corrections Committee items dealing with prison building, programs to divert people from prison, alternative education problems, and others which I truly feel will change Texas for the better in the coming years. 

My concern about the Speakers race was that they were interfering with the efforts we have been making to express our vision and possibly making it a lot more difficult to get the right things done in these areas for Texas. 

These efforts are now back on track and moving forward.  They include our work on prison building, efforts to provide alternatives to incarceration, revised probation funding formulas, drug courts, alternative education programs, virtual schools, added protections for our judges, and many more.

I will try to give my readers an overview of those things we are doing in the Corrections area with legislation and oversight in the next report I do next week. 

But the highlights of the vision are based on 4 programs I have seen & believe will make huge difference for our Texas future.  They include:

1.)  The Nurse Family Partnership which I am carrying in the House and which Senator Florence Shapiro has in the Senate.  This program provides for nurses to visit low income first time mothers from pregnancy until the child is 2, and has some of the most unbelievable results in changing the future for many young mothers and their children. 

2.)  Programs in school to change behavior and take young people who have disciplinary problems in the classroom through a counseling program in the Public Schools (similar to a program now on going in the Austin area school districts.)

3.)  A treatment protocol called Prometa, which appears to have outstanding results in breaking a persons desire for meth, cocaine, and alcohol.  We are currently running a pilot and the legislative action would be to start and fund a larger pilot.  If we can break a persons desire for meth, cocaine, or alcohol just think about what that could do to change society.  And

4.)  Expand an existing program in Texas Prisons called the Prison Entrepreneur Program(PEP) which teaches select inmates how to do business plans, resumes, presentations and is given by and supported by many fortune 500 companies here in Texas. 

I can tell you I am working hard this session to get a lot of important things done.  I am very optimistic this will be a great session of your Legislature.