Bipartisan Texas lawmakers rebuke TX House Speaker

Here’s the buildup: After a 13-hour day of legislating that barely made a dent in the day’s agenda, Rep. Ryan Guillen had a bill relating to the authority of Zapata County to adopt development regulations for certain unincorporated areas. It was on the major state calendar. Typically bills that are local in nature go on the Local and Consent Calendar. As one lawmaker pointed out, the bill was likely to get knocked off the local calendar in the course of some of the House infighting of recent weeks.

So Rep. Senfronia Thompson tries to shoot down Guillen’s bill on a point of order, arguing that it shouldn’t be on the major calendar. Craddick overruled her and said the Calendars Committee had the discretion to set the bill for the major calendar.

Craddick’s critics weren’t happy. Enter Talton, who made the very rare motion to appeal the ruling of the chair (Craddick). He got the needed 10 people to go along with him. So Craddick had to momentarily step aside in presiding over the House, and Speaker Pro Tempore Sylvester Turner took over.

Now members are making arguments for and against sustaining Craddick’s ruling. Both sides are making good arguments and good speeches. One lawmaker said he’s never seen this kind of action before in his 12 terms.

This is clearly shaping up as a late-session vote on whether the members are regretting their decision to re-elect Tom Craddick the speaker.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/legislature/entries/2007/05/07/talton_takes_dead_aim_at_craddicks_ruling.html

t's no secret about Speaker Tom Craddick's steamroller management style in 2003 and 2005. He parlayed the 2001 redistricting into a near super-majority of Republicans willing to take orders.

This session, however, has not been kind to Craddick's management style. A key procedural vote the first week demonstrated 68 members were willing to publicly oppose the speaker - only eight short of an outright takeover.

Since then, the speaker has struggled to regain his equilibrium as the floor has consistently refused to follow his lead. Most importantly, the chairmen who are supposed to be the speaker's core team leaders have increasingly sided with their colleagues on the floor rather than the chair.

In two very dramatic moments last week, it came to a head. A point of order stopped consideration of a border security bill. The speaker asked the House for unprecedented power to simply ignore all future points of order and other procedural constraints in order to get the bill passed. His own hand-picked chairman and bill author called the motion "over the top."

Craddick's proposal never even got a vote.

The very next day, dozens of House Democrats and Republicans took another unprecedented step. They temporarily withdrew their bills from the Local and Consent calendar - where purely local, non-controversial bills are sent that are only important to an individual lawmaker. Because they are non-controversial, bills on Local and Consent almost always pass.

But Craddick's opponents in the speaker's race claimed they were being punished. They said their bills were systematically excluded and had the empirical data to prove it.

Again, it was former Craddick loyalists who led a gentle rebellion from the floor who may well give everyone their shot at the Local and Consent calendar this week.

It's the members on the floor of the House that loan power to a speaker. As they demonstrated this week, when a speaker tries to lead where they don't want to go, the members can and should take that power back.

http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID=183747&SecID=2