Straus Ally Says Speaker Following Democratic Predecessor's Lead with Sunset Partisan Ratio

Key House Republican Suggests that Democrats' Caucus Chief Couldn't Have Role on Tort Reform Issues if Taylor Conflict Theory Applied to Him

May 25, 2010

By Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside Editor

A powerful Republican lawmaker who's one of Speaker Joe Straus' top lieutenants said Tuesday that criticism from Democrats about the GOP's domination on the Sunset Advisory Committee was misguided in light of the political complexion of the panel when the chamber had a Democratic majority.

State Rep. Dan Branch - a Dallas Republican who chairs the House Higher Education Committee - defended Straus' decision to name State Rep. Larry Taylor to the sunset panel as a logical choice that conformed to a pattern of appointments that Democrat Pete Laney had established when he led the lower chamber as speaker during a 10-year stint that ended in 2003.

"It seems to me like Straus' appointment and the partisan split is consistent with the history of these appointments," Branch said.

Branch disputed assertions by State Rep. Jim Dunnam, a Waco Democrat who serves as the House Democratic Caucus leader, that Democrats had always had at least two slots from the lower chamber on the sunset commission until the appointments that Straus has made to the panel since taking over as speaker last year left them with only one seat compared to four for Republicans. Branch - to the contrary - contended that the commission had been "completely dominated by the party" that the speaker represented at times during Laney's tenure as the lower chamber's top leader.

While the Sunset Advisory Commission was divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans during Laney's last two terms in the speaker's office, Democrats held three of the four seats on the panel when it proposed interim recommendations to the Legislature in 1999. All of the commission's four House members were Democrats when it recommended changes in the state government machinery for legislators to consider during the regular sessions in 1997 and 1995.

Republicans - on the other hand - have held four out of five House seats on sunset since the appointments that Laney made expired after the GOP's Tom Craddick won the speaker's election seven years ago when his party seized the majority at the polls in 2002. Dunnam was the only House Democrat on the sunset panel in early 2005 when it proposed changes in the operations of the agencies it had reviewed during the interim leading up to the session that year.

While Dunnam and some fellow Democratic leaders are upset about the partisan ratio on the commission under Straus, they contend that the biggest problem they have with Taylor's appointment is the fact that he's an insurance agent who'll play a key role in decisions involving the Texas Department of Insurance when it's under the sunset microscope between now and the session that gets under way in January. The Democrats argue that Taylor has a conflict of interest after siding consistently with the industry in which he makes a living as a lawmaker who's been a member of the House Insurance Committee since his first term in the Legislature in 2003.

But Branch argued that Taylor has worked at "the intersection where consumers and the industry meet" as an independent agent who hasn't been on the payroll of companies that sell coverage in Texas.

"You can always argue that members have conflicts in a citizen legislature," Branch said. "That's the way the founders designed it to be."

If Taylor was disqualified from having a part in the decision-making process on insurance regulation as a result of his occupation, Branch suggested that trial lawyers such as Dunnam would no longer have a right to have a voice on issues involving tort reform.

While Laney won the speaker's election in 1993 and reclaimed the post in four re-election bids with the support of the Democratic majority and a group of Republican allies, Straus emerged victorious in his first race for the leadership post in early 2009 on the strength of a similar bipartisan coalition that was dominated by Democrats. Democrats - as a result - argue that they deserve stronger representation on the Sunset Advisory Commission in a House where there are currently 73 of them and 77 Republicans.