AUSTIN — Rep. Lyle Larson saw much of his legislative session’s work go down the drain this year, and he blames it on payback for an ethics bill he championed.

Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed five of the six bills Larson passed, while six of his other measures died a softer death. They passed the House, but Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick didn’t refer them to a Senate committee for consideration.

Larson, R-San Antonio, said it was retribution because he had pushed an ethics bill that would have prevented a governor from appointing someone to a board or commission if that person had given the governor a campaign donation of more than $2,500 the previous year.

His bill also would have restricted appointees to giving no more than $2,500 a year while serving.

It was one of the half-dozen Larson bills that died in the Senate without getting a chance at a hearing.

Senators complained of a crush of bills coming over from the House toward the end of the session, but Larson said the Republican lieutenant governor told him that his “pay to play” measure was the reason his other bills didn’t get a chance.

“He (Patrick) said, ‘You upset a lot of rich people,’ which was weirdly honest,” Larson told me. He said Patrick told him, “‘If you can’t self-fund (a governor’s race), this is one of the mechanisms you can use to raise a lot of money.’ Apparently, that’s just how it works.”

Larson said Patrick also told him that if he were governor and, like Abbott, had tens of millions of dollars in campaign cash on hand, “he would have taken my bill and crammed it down the throat of the Texas Senate.”

Sherry Sylvester, senior adviser to Patrick, disputed Larson’s account.

“We don’t discuss private conservations, but I will say that Rep. Larson’s recollection, which he recounted to you, is not accurate,” Sylvester said by email.

She said a large group of House members, including Larson, asked to speak to Patrick about their bills toward the end of the regular session.

She said Patrick explained that after the House passed relatively few bills in the first three months of the session, “they sent over almost 700 bills to the Senate in the last month. It was impossible to get them all referred and heard in committee, even after scheduling additional committee meetings.”

“Rep. Larson is undoubtedly aware that the Senate passed a strong package of ethics reform this session,” Sylvester added. She said Patrick “wanted to end legislators leaving office and immediately becoming lobbyists” but that the House killed that bill along with “the major ethics reform legislation requested by Gov. Abbott.”

Abbott’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Republican governor had a veto message with a policy reason for killing each of Larson’s bills, most of which involved water issues.

Larson said he learned of the vetoes from Jay Dyer, Abbott’s legislative director, who he said is a friend. “I said, ‘I guess the governor didn’t like the pay-to-play bill,’” Larson said. “He said, ‘This whole circumstance has been unfortunate.’”

Dyer didn’t make a direct comment about the ethics bill, he said, but Larson thinks the connection is clear.

“It’s very interesting. We’ve got a lieutenant governor and a governor that’s being vindictive toward a Republican House member because he filed legislation that everyone in Texas agrees needs to pass in clearing up the pay-to-play problem we’ve got in the governor’s office,” Larson said.

Abbott’s appointees collectively have put more than $8.6 million into his campaign coffers since 2000, the year before he resigned from the Texas Supreme Court to run for attorney general, as the San Antonio Express-News has reported. About a quarter of his appointees were donors as of last year. Abbott’s staff has said he picks people whose views are in line with his.

This isn’t the first time Larson has pushed legislation that would target the governor’s office. He has sought, unsuccessfully, to put limits on statewide elected officials; force them to resign if they run for another office long before the end of their term; and make them foot the bill for their security detail on out-of-state trips that are made for personal or political reasons.

Former Gov. Rick Perry, who was the state’s longest-serving governor and accumulated millions of dollars in security costs while running for president, gave Larson an earful in 2013 over the term limits and security legislation, the lawmaker said. But he vetoed only one of Larson’s bills that year.

“It was much more comfortable to serve under Gov. Perry than it was under Gov. Abbott,” Larson said. “Whether you liked the policy or not, he always told you where he was.”

pfikac@express-news.net

Twitter: @pfikac