A wrap on the Texas Legislature

Note: This is adapted from a June 13 op-ed column

State Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, speaking in Navasota June 7, said she was “generally happy” with the 80th regular session of the Texas Legislature.

Well, given the results of a poll on my newspaper's website, many of our readers would appear to disagree, even though applauding Kolkhorst for her stand-up work on blocking further action on the Trans Texas Corridor.

Outside of blocking the Trans Texas Corridor now, this year’s Lege — or, at least, those of the membership who were around two or three sessions ago — has to bear some of the blame for some of the problems that were on this year’s plate. How did problems at the Texas Youth Commission’s juvenile facilities get as bad as they did before anything was done? How did the Texas Transportation Commission get as powerful as it did before being reined in at least a little bit? How did we jump from the original version of the Texas Tomorrow Fund, to diminishing state support for public universities, to deregulated tuition with its attending quashing of reopening the TTF or the possibility of any successor version of it? (The core of the Texas Tomorrow Fund was a prepaid college tuition fund, the Texas Guaranteed Tuition Plan, wsa started about a decade ago, then closed for enrollment in 2003 because of tuition deregulation; the Legislature has discussed a limited reopening of it in the past couple of years but taken no action.)

Those aren’t things that can be totally fobbed off on Gov. Rick Perry, unlike his state homeland security boondoggles.

On the first two items, the state of Texas does have sunset legislation mandating various state commissions come up for legislative review and renewal on a regular basis rather than existing in perpetuity. In addition to the recommendations of the independent Texas Sunset Commission, the Legislative Budget Bureau has enough review powers to do a little bit of rein-pulling on state commissions, too.

And, lo and behold, the Texas Department of Transportation comes up for sunset review in 2009. So, too, does the Texas Youth Commission. For that matter, so does another state agency that needs a good look-see, the Department of Family and Protective Services. On the third issue I mentioned above, the Prepaid Higher Education Tuition Board was up for sunset review this year, which should have been an opportunity for the Lege to address this whole issue of college costs.

But, sunset review is about more than dollars and cents. It’s about organization, management and accountability. With the 2009 commissions mentioned above, let’s hope the 81st Legislature takes a hard look at exactly those three issues.
In fact, given the contentiousness of the two TTCs, both the Texas Transportation Commission and the Trans Texas Corridor, maybe a late-2008 pre-Legislature special session to flex some “sunset muscle” isn’t a totally bad idea.

As for the idea of treating universities more like businesses, it might have its high points, but could be taken too far, too. Will a academic program of study, or major, be deleted not just from one college but across most or all of the University of Texas, Texas A&M or Texas State University systems if it doesn’t perform well enough financially? If so, how tough will the criteria be? What will that do for learning for learning’s sake? Will private businesses be invited to be “sponsors” of college academic programs? What would that do for learning?

No, colleges and universities shouldn’t be financial black holes. But, the university as business institution idea should be approached carefully.