Our Texas Legislature only meets every two years for a total of 140 days. We cannot even consider that a "part-time" legislature. I would label it as a "lazy-time" legislature simply because the majority of the work that needs to be done does not happen until the last 30 days of that session. Texas is too big of a state, with too many issues for us to have a legislature that works not even half a year.
In these short sessions, there are hundreds of proposed amendments. Not only do the Legislators have to go through every single one, but the Governor has to take time out of his busy schedule and sign a handful of these proposals into law. This simple process does not always happen in the time frame given. With the failure of this process, our Governor will call "special sessions" extending the legislature session for 30 more days. This process may be repeated a couple times because our Legislators continually procrastinate. When the session is coming to an end, our legislators finally realize, "Hey, maybe we need to do some work," and with this, they'll try to pass 500 proposals at once. This causes confusion, disorder and the mistake of bills being passed that aren't always in the best interest of the people.
We ought to change this and produce a full-time legislature so the work that needs to get done, can actually get done without the issue of being rushed. When special sessions are called by our Governor to finish unfinished business, legislators end up working the whole year anyway. The simple solution to cut down on the chaos is to make our government actually do their jobs, YEAR ROUND! Oh, and maybe get some Democrats in those offices!
These people were elected for a reason, and these short sessions are short changing the Texas population. We need to break past the "traditional" sense and make the necessary changes for the improvement of our government. As well as Texas as a whole.
No comments:
Post a Comment