House limits flow of legislation in first 60 days on session
Ed Sterling

A USTIN - When the Legislature convenes, one

of the governor's

duties, so says the Texas Constitution, is to recommend to lawmakers "such measures as he may deem expedient."

That means the allimportant state budget and the governor's top issues - usually referred to as emergency issues - go to the front of the line.

Other bills can be acted upon quickly too, if a welloiled procedure is followed: the House simply votes to suspend a constitutional rule that reserves the first 60 days of the legislative session for the passage of bills that top the governor's priority list.

However, as January drew to a close, the House departed from its normal behavior when a motion to suspend the rule, which required a supermajority (four-fifths) vote to pass, failed.

Thirty-four of the House's 150 members voted "no" despite cries that doing so would create a logjam of bills late in the session and likely prevent many local bills from ever making it out of committee.

So, for the first time since the 1981 legislative session, House bills won't get past the committee level in the first 60 days of the session.

The vote not to suspend has been interpreted as retaliation against House Speaker Tom Craddick, who doled out committee assignments perceived as punitive by some members who supported Rep. Jim Pitts, RWaxahachie, in his shortlived speaker candidacy.

Despite the vote, there is a movement among Craddick lieutenants and other House members to vote again on rule suspension. Child safety program launched

John Walsh, host of the Fox television program "America's Most Wanted," joined Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in a Capitol news conference to announce Dewhurst's "Texas First!" child safety initiative.

The initiative teams the state and private sector in helping kindergarten through second grade students learn how to be safe around strangers and to educate the children about the dangers of predators online, in schools and in neighborhoods.

The Safe Side Company, co-founded by Walsh, is donating more than 1,000 Stranger Safety Resource Kits to Texas school districts.

Kits include lesson plans and activities for classroom use, and a media library that includes 25 copies of the "Stranger Safety" DVD for take-home use.

Texas is the first state to participate in the program, Dewhurst's office said. Order issued for vaccination

rules

Gov. Rick Perry on Feb. 2 issued an executive order directing the Health and Human Services Commission to adopt rules requiring girls age 11 and 12 to be vaccinated against the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) before they enter sixth grade.

The rules are to include an opt-out provision for parents who don't want their daughters to be vaccinated.

Perry wants the program to be up and running by September 2008. Certain strains of HPV are known to cause cervical cancer. TEA publishing expenditures

Gov. Perry is now publishing his office's expenditures online and on Feb. 1 proposed requiring all state agencies to publish their expenditures online as part of his budget reform package.

The Texas Education Agency went ahead and published its check register online. It can be viewed at http://tea.state.tx.us by clicking on the "About TEA" button. The check register will be updated at least quarterly, the agency said. State lottery may be up for sale

Gov. Perry indicated he is thinking about selling the Texas Lottery to a private firm. Other states are contemplating doing the same in exchange for a chunk of the profits. Perry was to give more details in his Feb. 6 State of the State speech. Opinion page mainstay dies

Widely read and published syndicated columnist and best-selling author Molly Ivins, 62, died Jan. 31 at her home in Austin after an eight-year recurring battle with breast cancer.

Ivins focused strongly on the Texas Legislature in particular and state politics in general for nearly four decades. In recent years she devoted extra attention to the political career of President George W. Bush.

The full report is available online at window.state.tx.us. Ed Sterling is director of member services for the Texas Press Association in Austin.