The 82nd session of the Texas Legislature promises to be an eventful one for African-Americans. Upcoming battles over the budget and redistricting are expected to dominate the headlines. Black lawmakers are fully aware that the widespread alarm over the state’s fiscal position—a $25 billion deficit—will bear mightily on any new programs they wish to create.
“The biggest issue is going to be the budget,” said Sen. Royce West, “to make certain that we’re not playing defense but offense, to make certain there are no onerous cuts that will severely impact the constituents in the district.”
Still, that hasn’t stopped Sen. West from pledging to spur the legislature to action on issues such as homeowners’ association abuses, expunging the records of the wrongfully convicted and curbing abuses in the payday lending industry.
For communities of color, West’s Senate Bill 143 in particular will be worth watching as it wends its way through the Legislature. The bill aims to reduce the proliferation of payday loan companies in economically vulnerable neighborhoods. The bill will also ensure that interest rates charged by payday lenders are in line with state lending practices.
Civil rights organizations have long bemoaned the practices of the payday industry, with some critics even likening its practices to modern-day loan sharking. According to West, the number of payday lenders operating in the state has nearly tripled since 2006, from 1,270 to almost 3,600 ‒ a telling indicator of the country’s economic troubles. West says that SB 143 will allow people to get credit in a pinch without being sucked into an endless cycle of debt.
While the industry’s defenders counter that it simply makes credit available to people who would otherwise be unable to obtain it, there have been frequent complaints of crushing debt burdens and high annual interest rates—as high as 500 percent in some cases. While West and other critics acknowledge the need to make credit available to working people, they charge that the industry as a whole often functions as an exploitative wealth sinkhole in neighborhoods that already have trouble building real wealth.
“Payday lending is going to be a top issue,” said West. “It’s something that people in the district, needless to say, are very concerned about and I’m going to deal with it.”
State Representative Yvonne Davis held a town hall meeting last September to discuss legislation which provides protection for consumers including discussions of utility rates, predatory lending, foreclosures, insurance rates and unscrupulous home contractors.
Legislators held several town hall meetings during the second half of 2010 as part of their gearing up for the new session. Constituents were presented with the opportunity to give input and feedback on various matters and issues. The Dallas Examiner held its own series of “Monday Night Politics” forums, the most recent of which took place on Dec. 13 and featured Sen. West and state reps Eric Johnson, Barbara Mallory Caraway, Helen Giddings and Yvonne Davis.
Consumer protection stands out as a key issue for Rep. Davis. During the 81st Legislative Session, she sponsored several bills aimed at increasing the ability of consumers to obtain more favorable rates and services for telecommunication and utility services. Davis has indicated her intention to reintroduce the legislation during the 82nd session.
Davis is not the only representative concerned with improving services for utility customers. Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) has introduced House Bill 519, which provides for the creation of a Low-income Electric Customers Program Fund. The legislation would lead to the adoption of rules requiring transmission and distribution utilities to establish a low-income electric customers fund under the oversight of the Public Utility Commission of Texas. The fund would be established as a trust fund outside of the state treasury.
For Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston), championing the cause of the wrongfully convicted has emerged as a central legislative priority. In that spirit he welcomed home Cornelius Dupree, who was recently declared innocent of a rape and robbery that DNA testing proved he didn't commit. Dupree served 30 years of a 75-year sentence before he was released on parole in July. Dupree spent more time in prison than any other Texas exoneree, surpassing James Woodard, who spent 27 years in prison before finally being cleared in 2008. Dupree met with Sen. Ellis at the latter’s own district office on Jan. 7, 2011. The two men were joined by Rep. Turner.
Sen. Ellis is sponsoring SB 121, designed to improve police identification procedures to prevent wrongful convictions. If passed, it would require all law enforcement agencies in Texas to adopt written eyewitness identification procedures based on the most up-to-date science, with the goal of reducing misidentifications and improving the reliability of eyewitness testimony. The new procedures will include instructions to witnesses; procedures for assigning lineup and photo array administrators to prevent opportunities to influence the witness; and documentation and preservation of witness statements and identification procedures.
Of the 254 DNA exonerations cited by the Innocence Project, more than 40 have occurred in Texas, more than any other state. In most cases exonerees were able to provide evidence of their wrongful conviction before it was too late, but some were sent to their deaths despite continuing doubts about their guilt. Dupree is the 44th DNA exoneration in Texas, and like 86 percent of Texas' wrongful convictions, his was based on mistaken eyewitness identification.
"There are simple and cost effective reforms to eyewitness ID procedures, that if implemented, could significantly reduce the number of innocent men and women being sent to prison and increase public safety by putting safeguards in place to ensure that the correct perpetrator is prosecuted," said Senator Ellis in a press release.
Sen. Ellis has introduced eyewitness identification reform legislation since 2005 without success. His efforts received a boost last year, when the Tim Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions, comprised of major criminal justice stakeholders in the state, endorsed the reforms contained in Ellis' 2009 eyewitness identification reform legislation. That same legislation has been reintroduced for the 2011 session as SB 121, part of Sen. Ellis' "Innocence Protection Package."
Although Ellis supports the death penalty (he oversaw three executions while acting as Governor in 2000 when then-Governor Bush was on the presidential campaign trail), he has often insisted that he only supports capital punishment provided that there are safeguards against executing innocent persons.
Another defining issue for African-Americans in Texas, and Sen. Ellis, is voter disenfranchisement. For years the Texas NAACP and other civil rights organizations have catalogued complaints about voting irregularities in Texas, which heavily impact Black voters. Ellis filed SB 212, which would make it a felony for an election officer to interfere with the lawful casting of a vote (for example, by removing a voter’s name from the poll list for their precinct). Another example of interference is an election officer preventing the deposit in the ballot box of a marked and properly folded ballot.
The legislation also contains language that would outlaw deceptive conduct during elections. For example, to deceive eligible voters about the time, place, or manner of conducting an election, or about eligibility requirements, would be punishable by law.
Another key issue is improving education, a caused that Representative Barbara Mallory Caraway has embraced. After conducting a review of the state of public education in her own District 110, she discovered that many of her constituents’ schools were poorly rated by the Texas Education Agency, mainly because of low scores in math and science.
In response, Caraway launched the Career Futures Initiative in 2007.The Career Futures Initiative is a partnership between the public sector and private industry to give high school students first-hand knowledge and practical experience in the fields of math, science, engineering and technology. The program includes a Job Expo and Career Fest held in the spring to assist high school students in getting summer job placement, as well as a College Entrance Exam Preparatory Course that provides free tutorials for high school students preparing to take college entrance exams such as the SAT and ACT.
One of the newest Black legislators, Rep. Eric Johnson of Dallas, has filed House Bill 246, which will force state officials who commit felonies connected to their official duties to forfeit their public pension benefits. It’s not surprising that Johnson would try to make a splash in this area, given the unprecedented circumstances under which he was elected. His opponent in the 2010 Democratic primary, Rep. Terri Hodge, was brought down by the same federal corruption probe that brought down former Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill. Hodge was charged with taking money from developers in exchange for helping them get lucrative tax credits. She eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser count of income tax fraud.
“Transparency and ethics in government are an area I want to try to do some work in that doesn’t cost anything, but that I think is important,” said Johnson.
Under the Employees Retirement System of Texas, no law currently prevents non-judicial convicted felons from receiving pension benefits as a member of the elected class. Johnson’s law aims to change that. In his view, right-minded legislators will join him in deciding that elected officials who abuse the public trust should not be able to enjoy retirement on the public dime. Johnson’s bill would only apply to felonies committed by such elected officials after the bill's provisions go into effect.
But much like Sen. West, Johnson expects the budget and redistricting to take up much of the Legislature’s time.
“We all know that the budget and redistricting are the main thing, so I think that will take up most of the time,” said Johnson. “Redistricting is always a contentious process; it’s a matter of political survival and partisan politics. This is an unprecedented budget deficit we’re facing, so that’s going to be very contentious in the sense that it’s going to be a major flashpoint of whether you try to close that gap through cutting programs that we really can’t afford to cut, or you try to raise revenues some way.”
Johnson adds: “Which obviously, most of the people on the conservative side of the aisle have drawn a firm line in the sand and said they will not countenance any type of revenue-raising measures. So there’s going to be a major showdown.”
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
© Dallas Examiner. All rights reserved.
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