Houston legislator pushing ethics bills acknowledges bottling up a revolving door measure Representative urges Abbott to add agenda to special session list

State Rep. Jim Murphy takes a photo Tuesday of State Rep. Sarah Davis, right, with supporter Lisa White Watkins outside the Colonial Park Recreation Room.﻿ State Rep. Jim Murphy takes a photo Tuesday of State Rep. Sarah Davis, right, with supporter Lisa White Watkins outside the Colonial Park Recreation Room.﻿ Photo: Erin Hull Photo: Erin Hull Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Houston legislator pushing ethics bills acknowledges bottling up a revolving door measure 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

AUSTIN - Rep. Sarah Davis insists reforming the state's ethics laws is urgent enough for Gov. Greg Abbott to add to Legislature's to-do list this special session, although she bottled up at least one key Senate "good government" bill during the regular session as chair of the ethics committee.

Davis, a Republican from West University Place, said she held back passage of a Senate bill that would have eliminated the so-called "revolving door" that allows ex-lawmakers to immediately begin lobbying for interest groups after leaving office partly as political retribution.

"Almost all of my bills died in the Senate," said Davis, who chairs the General Investigating and Ethics Committee in the House. "That is probably part of the reason why some of the Senate ethics bills didn't move, because my bills weren't moving. But you go home, you take a deep breath, and some of those things are good policy. I'm happy to advance them."

She filed five of six ethics reform bills this week, all of which soared through her committee Thursday. One of those bills attempts to close the revolving door in state law by requiring former lawmakers take a one-session cooling-off period after leaving office before taking a paid lobbying job that would tap their influence, relationships and contacts at the state capitol.

Other bills include banning campaign contributions during a special session, requiring more state officials and vendors to disclose their conflicts of interest, giving more power to the Texas Ethics Commission to watchdog government and banning people who give more than $2,500 in gubernatorial campaign contributions from winning appointments.

While Davis is championing the revolving door bill, a similar Senate bill that was assigned to her committee during the regular session languished without a vote for more than two months before it received a hearing and a vote in mid-May. It passed out of her committee less than two weeks before the Legislature adjourned, with little time to advance to the floor. The bill, Senate Bill 504, died in the Calendar Committee.

Davis said she "absolutely" wished the bill had become law but blamed the bill's demise on the Calendar Committee which schedules bills.

Some lawmakers have been reticent to pass ethics bills that would tie their hands. The House version of the bill trying to close the revolving door, House Bill 504, was watered down by Fort Worth Republican Charlie Geren, who said at the time that lawmakers rejected the idea that the Legislature could tell them what they could do when they left office. He rewrote his bill to make it a crime for former lawmakers to "misuse" information they obtained in office for two years, a provision ethics advocates said was unenforceable.

"I called it the lobotomy bill at that point. It's like, how else are you going to enforce that. They're going to have to forget it, and all I could think was lobotomy," said Carol Birch, legislative council for Public Citizen, a national non-profit advocacy group with an office in Austin. "The guys in charge of making laws telling Texans what they can and cannot do don't want to be told what to do? Really?"

Prioritizing ethics

Abbott has twice asked lawmakers to prioritize passing ethics reform, designating it as an "emergency item" for the Legislature in the 2015 and 2017 legislative sessions. Neither session produced much in the way of reform; however, the governor left the issue off his 20-item special session agenda for lawmakers to tackle during an up-to-30-day period that began July 18.

Davis has played hardball with the governor and his agenda during the special session.

This week she pushed the governor to add ethics reforms to the call, quoting Abbott's past comments that "the faith that people have in their democracy is linked to the trust they have in their elected officials."

Last week she chided his agenda for prioritizing social issues instead of restoring cuts to a program that provides therapy to children with disabilities, saying, "If the governor is going to bring us back here to talk about what bathrooms people can use or what we can do with our trees, then surely the disabled kids should take priority, and hopefully we add this to the call."

Reversing rate cuts

Abbott has so far refused to add anything to the call since issuing his special session agenda July 20. His spokesman this week accused Davis of "showboating" and said the governor would add issues to the call "once the House and the Senate pass all 20 items on the governor's agenda."

While the Senate has all but finished passing bills on the governor's agenda, the House has bucked the governor's agenda and will likely let several of his bills die in committee. Davis and several of House Speaker Joe Straus' committee chairmen have refused to sign on in support of most bills on the governor's agenda.

Although outside the governor's call, Davis convinced the House on Thursday to vote unanimously on House Bill 25 to spend $70 million out of the governor's disaster relief grants to restore funding cuts to the state's Early Childhood Intervention program. The body voted 138-0, a tally Davis said sends a message to the governor that now is the time to reverse the rate cuts. She said 1,192 children are now on a wait list in Houston to receive the therapy, which includes providing therapy for babies and toddlers with developmental disabilities, such as speech delays, down syndrome and autism.

Lawmakers also passed a bill that would increase reporting requirements on abortions that involve a fetal abnormality in the third trimester and on how minors obtain abortions. Critics said the bills tries to create unnecessary regulations for abortion providers. House Bill 215 passed the House 92-48 but not before Davis weighed in on the floor.

"I am still kind of confused about what the point of the bill is," she said.