The Neverending Conservative Hypocrisy
HoustonChronicle.com - Paying twice: Voters still have to hire lobbyists
Even a broken clock is right twice a day ... this is among the better Chron editorials run in recent memory:
This year's regular session of the Legislature began Tuesday. The city of Houston will spend $520,000 on two lobbyists and 11 subcontractors for the 140-day session. On the city's agenda is the preservation of its ability to use cameras to discourage the running of red lights, and a requirement that clubs serving alcohol close at 2 a.m.Small cities can't afford their own lobbyists but pay dues to the Texas Municipal League, which fields a team. This year officials of heavily Republican suburban communities say they are afraid the Republicans who control state government in Austin will sock them with more unfunded mandates and erode local control, hence the need for lobby protection. This costly phenomenon is curious, as unfunded mandates and centralized power are precisely what most conservatives oppose. The Republican leadership that controls every facet of state government should oppose them axiomatically.
And yet the Dan Patrick crowd is shocked - SHOCKED, I TELL YOU! - that rising property taxes are a national phenomenon. Guess all those unfunded mandates on local government really caught 'em by surprise.
And yet the editorial itself is about the insanity of local government entities hiring lobbyists with as succinct a point as I think demonstrates the insanity of it all ...
A contributing factor is that lobbyists raise campaign cash for the politicians. The more money the lobbyists make, the more they can afford to contribute, along with their clients, to the power brokers. Cities, counties and private interests therefore must pay a sort of toll to the lobbyists to arrange access to the people's representatives.In 1999, a Harris County agency had to make an emergency $50,000 payment in the last week of the session to Mark Toomey, a crony of then-Lt. Gov. Rick Perry. Toomey, who was already being paid to lobby for the city of Houston and the county, was paid extra to make sure a harmful bill did not reach the floor.
Why didn't local officials go directly to Perry with their concern?
Savvy insiders say that is not the way it's done. Legislation, they say, rises and falls in the Legislature based upon who pays key lobbyists $50,000 and who doesn't. The public interest is rarely a decisive factor.
Another entry for "The Party of Reform," perhaps?
Comments
The editorial would be better if it mentioned what the unfunded mandates were, but the only issues it mentioned were local control over the red light thing and a curiously worded sentence about requiring clubs to close at 2am (I'm not sure whether they state is saying they can't and they want to or whether they are trying to make the state pass such a requirement).
As far as the more general view of local control goes, I'm inclined to agree that Republicans have been inconsistent on the issue, though John Whitmire's proposal to ban Safeclear isn't the paragon of local control, either.
As for the unfunded mandates, since such things are usually strings attached to money that the state gives districts (or fed give states), isn't that a great argument to limit the amount of money that the state government takes in so that it loses the carrot-and-stick that it has to make the more local governments do what it wants? After all, if the federal government weren't funding local schools to the tune of a couple grand per student per year, NCLB wouldn't really be an issue, would it?
Posted by: R. Alex | January 16, 2005 01:10 AM