Pete Mendoza
Pete Mendoza / Vaquero Radio
On Oct. 16 a member of the Texas House of Representatives came to the UTRGV Brownsville campus to inform the community about how the Texas legislature works and remarked on the importance of voting.
Texas District 38 Rep. Erin Elizabeth Gamez came to the UTRGV Brownsville campus to discuss with the community, the mechanics of the Texas legislature.
“We’re supposed to meet 140 days every other year,” she said. “One of the first things we do is elect and nominate our ‘speaker of the house.’ He oversees all of us and is elected by the majority of our peers.”
Gamez explained the process of how a bill becomes a law. It starts with a proposal, then it is drafted into a bill. After that, it’s reviewed for constitutionality. Once it is declared constitutional, the bill goes to the speaker’s office, to be assigned to a committee. The chair of the committee then decides if the bill is allowed into the committee or not.
She said representatives cannot vote on any bills until 60 days into the session.
Gamez said once the bill gets a majority of votes from the committee, then it moves on to the calendars committee. This group of people is chosen by the Speaker of the House. However, 90% of the bills won’t make it past this stage.
She talked about the Governor’s office and how bills are meant to fail.
“If the same exact version of that bill makes it out of both chambers, then it goes to the Governor’s office and that’s the third and final step.” Gamez said.
UTRGV Assistant Professor of Political Science Dr. Alvaro Corral said bills were designed to fail in both the Texas legislature and the U.S. Congress.
“It’s true of the Texas legislature and it’s true of the U.S. Congress,” Corral said. “The Texas legislature only passes about 15% of all the bills that are introduced. Almost 7,000 bills are introduced every session and only just over a thousand of those get passed into law.”
Marc Kaswan, a UTRGV political science professor, mentioned what are the consequences with the way the legislature runs.
“The fact that they have a restricted amount of time to even debate and to vote on bills makes it very hard for the legislature to actually pass legislation,” Kaswan said. “One of the consequences of that is that it makes it more difficult for the state legislature to address the needs and advance the interests of the people of Texas simply because they don’t have time.”
Gamez expressed that she must communicate with other representatives about how a certain bill could affect her district.
“My job is to bring your boots back to the ground and say how is this going to play out in my community,” Gamez said. “I want to make sure [legislation] has the least devastating impact on my community.”
Corral said how talking to your Texas House representative or Texas senator makes the community feel heard.
“Few people think to lobby and pressure and inform their Texas representative, whether it’s a Texas House representative or Texas senator.” Dr. Corral said. “And so doing that kind of makes your voice a little bit more potentially important and consequential.”
Kaswan said that politicians do not come to the valley very often because of the valley’s low voter turnout.
“We don’t have a lot of money and we don’t vote,” he said. “The outcome of that is that politicians aren’t going to pay much attention to the needs and concerns of people in the Rio Grande Valley.”
Gamez encourages everyone to vote to be able to be heard.
“Making sure that I can advise everyone on how important it is to vote on a local level.” Gamez said. “There’s nothing more important to getting the valley voice heard other than showing strength in numbers in voting.
For more information about Erin Gamez and the Texas legislature, visit capitol.texas.gov.
This is Pete Mendoza for Vaquero Radio.
