Why Texas Lawmakers Meet Only Every Other Year and Like It That Way

Imagine a state with one of the largest economies in the country and a lawmaking body that meets for about four and a half months and then goes home for a year and eight months. Imagine that its members are paid less than a decent used pickup. And imagine that most of the people it governs think this is a fine arrangement.

You are imagining Texas. The Texas Legislature, with 150 House members and 31 senators, meets in regular session once every two years, for 140 days. That is it. The rest of the time, the Capitol in Austin is the quietest big-state statehouse in America. Visitors from other states hear this and assume somebody forgot to turn the lights on. Texans hear it and say: good. Let me explain why, and let me also give the other side its due, because the people who call the system a mistake have an argument worth hearing.

The schedule, and where it came from

The Texas Constitution of 1876 is the root of it. The delegates who wrote it were reacting to what came before, and what came before was Reconstruction. Under Governor Edmund J. Davis, a Republican who served from 1870 to 1874, Texas had a strong, centralized state government, with a state police force and powers over local offices that many Texans resented. When the Democrats returned to power and wrote a new constitution, they did the opposite of what Davis had done. They weakened the governor, shortened the legislature's time in session, tied the state's hands on debt and taxes, and spread executive power across many separately elected officers.

You may find it ironic that a Republican governor's overreach is one reason for the structure that now serves Republicans so well. Politics has a sense of humour. The result is a constitution that is long, detailed and distrustful of power, and that has been amended hundreds of times because so much is written into it that almost any change requires a vote of the people.

Under that document, the Legislature convenes in regular session on the second Tuesday of January in odd-numbered years. A regular session lasts no more than 140 days. Run the arithmetic: a two-year cycle has 730 days, and 140 divided by 730 is about 0.19. In other words, lawmakers are in regular session for roughly 19 percent of the calendar. The rest of the time they are home in their districts, with their jobs and their neighbours.

Texas is the largest of a very small group of states that meet only every other year. Montana, Nevada and North Dakota are the others. Most states hold annual sessions, and a few of those run most of the year.

The governor holds the key to the extra time

What if something comes up between sessions? The answer is the part of the system most visitors do not know. Only the governor can call the Legislature into a special session. Lawmakers cannot call themselves back. A special session lasts at most 30 days, and, this is the important bit, the governor alone decides what it may consider. The Legislature can talk about anything in a regular session; in a special session it may take up only the subjects the governor has put on the call.

The governor may call as many special sessions as he or she wants. There is no limit written into the constitution. But the clock for each one is 30 days, and the agenda is the governor's.

Why does that matter? It gives the governor an unusual tool. A governor who wants a particular piece of legislation can put it on the call and make the Legislature deal with it. A governor who wants to keep an issue off the table has a simple method: do not put it on the call. In a state where the executive is formally weak, this is a surprisingly sharp instrument.

A real example shows the mechanism. In 2005 the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the state's school finance system, as it then worked, was in effect an unconstitutional statewide property tax. The Legislature had to act, and in 2006 the governor called a special session. It produced a large cut in school property taxes and a replacement revenue source, a business tax known as the margin tax. Whatever you think of the result, notice how the process worked: a court ruling, a governor's call, a 30-day clock, and a deal. No full-time legislature was needed.

The lieutenant governor and the Senate

The next surprise is the lieutenant governor. In most states the lieutenant governor's job is to wait. In Texas, the lieutenant governor is elected statewide, separately from the governor, and presides over the Senate. That gives the officeholder huge influence: the lieutenant governor appoints committee chairs, refers bills to committees, and influences which bills reach the floor. The lieutenant governor also co-chairs the Legislative Budget Board with the Speaker of the House, the body that prepares the first draft of the two-year budget.

Many Texans will tell you that the lieutenant governor is the most powerful office in the state, and some will say it with a straight face. The governor can call sessions and sign or veto bills. The lieutenant governor can decide, in practice, whether a bill gets heard at all. The Speaker of the House, who is chosen by the members, plays a similar role on the other side of the building. The result is a system where three people, the governor, the lieutenant governor and the Speaker, hold most of the cards, and the 181 members spend a short, intense session dealing with them.

The plural executive

Texas does not have one executive; it has several. Voters elect the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the comptroller of public accounts, the land commissioner and the agriculture commissioner, among others, and three railroad commissioners, who despite the name regulate the oil and gas industry. This is called a plural executive, and it is another legacy of 1876. Each official answers to the voters, not to the governor.

Practically, this means that the governor cannot simply fire the comptroller or order the attorney general to drop a case. It also means a state that elects its officials separately can have a governor of one flavour and an attorney general of another. The comptroller has a special job: under a constitutional pay-as-you-go limit, the comptroller must certify that revenue is available before the Legislature can spend it. That is a hard check, and it explains why the Texas budget process revolves around the comptroller's estimate. You cannot vote yourself a bigger check than the comptroller says is there. (Washington, take note.)

The pay

Now the detail that gets the biggest reaction. Texas legislators are paid $7,200 a year, a figure written into the constitution, plus a daily allowance when the Legislature is in session. That is not a typo. Raising it requires a constitutional amendment approved by the voters, and the voters have shown little appetite for it.

The effect is to make the Legislature a citizen body in the old sense. Members are expected to have jobs, businesses and ranches. They are lawyers, ranchers, small-business owners, oilmen, teachers. They go to Austin, do the work, and go home. You can dislike the result, but you cannot say the members are professional politicians living off the public.

The case for meeting every other year

Here is the argument in favour, laid out as a debater would.

1. Less lawmaking, fewer laws. A legislature that meets for 140 days cannot pass everything. Its calendar acts like a filter. Bills that cannot win broad support run out of time. The old saying that no man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session has a Texas cousin: nobody's liberty is in danger while the legislature is at home.
2. Citizen lawmakers. Members with real jobs bring real-world knowledge, and they have to live under the laws they pass.
3. A hard budget cycle. The two-year budget, the comptroller's certification and the short calendar force priorities. There is no room for the endless spending creep of a year-round body.
4. Cheaper. Fewer days, lower pay, smaller staff, less cost to the taxpayer.
5. The sunset process. Texas created the Sunset Advisory Commission in 1977 to review agencies on a schedule, with each one set to expire unless the Legislature renews it. Because the Legislature meets rarely, the review is a concentrated moment of oversight rather than a constant routine.

The case against

And here is the fair version of the other side.

1. Emergencies don't wait. If a disaster strikes in the off year, the Legislature cannot gather itself. Only the governor can convene it, and the governor controls the agenda. That makes the legislative branch dependent on the executive in a crisis.
2. Power flows to those who are in town. When lawmakers are away, the people who are always in Austin, the agencies, the lobbyists and the staff, have more influence. A part-time legislature can end up overseen by a full-time bureaucracy.
3. The end-of-session crush. With 140 days to handle thousands of bills, the last days are a blur. Important ideas get decided in hours, and bills are killed by procedure. Voters may not see what happened until it is over.
4. Pay shuts out some candidates. At $7,200 a year, those who can afford to serve are those with flexible jobs or independent means. A teacher or a young family may have a harder time.
5. Less continuity. A body that meets every other year has less time to learn, to build experience, to follow up on its own laws.

Those are serious points. And here's my answer, short and direct. The first is the most real, and the system responds to it with the governor's special-session power, which has worked well enough in practice. The second is real but is not unique to Texas; every legislature, full-time or part-time, faces an agency that knows more than it does, and the Texas answer is the sunset review. On the third, I'd say a short calendar forces fights into the open as often as it hides them. The fourth is a fair worry, though I'd note that a body of professionals who depend on the job for a living has its own incentive problem. And on the fifth, a legislature does not need to meet more to learn more; it can meet in interim committees, which the Texas Legislature does.

On balance, I would take a part-time legislature with a hard budget over a full-time one with a taste for new programs. But I'd say that a state that keeps the system should keep its eyes open, especially about who sets the agenda.

What this means for your family

If you live in Texas, you have a stake in the details. The big decisions about taxes, schools and property rights happen in one short window every other year, and the people who show up in that window shape the next two years. If you want to be heard, the time to organize is the autumn before the session, when members are home. If you live somewhere else, ask whether your own legislature meets so much that it creates a reason for a law on every subject. You can find the calendar on your state legislature's website.

For comparison with other states' processes, see How a Bill Becomes State Law, From Idea to the Governor's Desk, and What a Governor Can Actually Do and What Only the Legislature Can explains how governors differ across the country. The Texas strong-legislature-weak-governor design makes an instructive contrast with How Colorado Voters Put a Leash on Their Own Legislature, and Why Your State Cannot Print Money the Way Washington Does explains the balanced-budget discipline that Texas builds into its constitution. For the philosophy behind keeping power close to the voters, see Subsidiarity Is the Old Idea Behind Keeping Power as Close to Home as Possible, and for the legal side of state charters, State Constitutions Versus the U.S. Constitution, Side by Side.

The bottom line

• The Texas Legislature meets in regular session for 140 days every other year, a schedule set by the 1876 constitution, and the arithmetic works out to about 19 percent of the calendar.
• Only the governor can call a 30-day special session, and only the governor sets its agenda. The lieutenant governor, who presides over the Senate, is a power center of his own.
• Low pay, a plural executive and a pay-as-you-go budget rule keep the system lean and the members close to home. The costs are a short calendar, a dependence on the governor in an emergency and more influence for those who are always in town.
• On balance, a part-time legislature is a defensible design for a conservative state, as long as the voters pay attention to who sets the agenda.
• Check your own legislature's calendar and your own state's rules, and show up in the months when members are listening.