A Texas Blessing!

Our 80th Legislative session just ended here in Texas, that's right, 80 Sessions in 151 years of Statehood. The citizens of Texas are the beneficiaries of the foresight of some wise, conservative Texas politicians in the year of our Statehood - 1846. When they wrote our constitution, they made the two house State Legislature the strongest of the three branches of Texas government. Then they limited it by establishing that it shall only meet once every two years (odd numbered) and then only for 140 days!

Makes for some frantic legislative sessions, but lets them do the budgeting and minimal law creation necessary and then sends them home for a year and a half to live with the results of their work. The Governor can call them back for a special session (and has on several occasions) when the need arises, but they can't call themselves back into session. Further, during their special session, they can only act on that specific purpose identified by the Governor when the Special Session is called.

Lest some of you get to thinking that the Governor, unhampered by a sitting state legislature might get into serious mischief between sessions, let me point out that those same wise men of 1846, seriously limited the powers of the Office of Governor.

During a recent six year stay in New York, I had the opportunity to observe a full time state legislature operate..... Plumb Scary!! If it's a full time job, a representative feels that he must justify his pay and expenses by creating more and more and more legislation! Come to think of it, that's a problem we have in Washington D.C. as well. Just muse for a minute -- how much less scary would this country be if our Congress only met 140 days every other year - or even every year.
Just think, you could take your hand off your billfold and let your daughters out of the house all the rest of the year!!


Serious students that doubt such a government system could work for a State with 24 Million citizens and with a GSP (gross state product) in excess of One Trillion dollars per year (if ranked as a country this would make Texas the 8th largest GNP in the world) might want to go to:

http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/constitutions/text/1876index.html for further study.