Texas: The Test Case for Big GOP Government
The Texas legislature only meets every other year, so when lawmakers do assemble, it is as if a pressure valve is released, and every issue springs to the surface immediately. This year, the legislature has opted for the red meat of the Republican party today – school vouchers (under the guise of “choice”), bills targeting transgender youth, and the positioning of armed guards at every single school.
However, much of the GOP’s work in Texas has shifted emphasis away from local control and some of it is even creating negative externalities for a large percent of Texas residents. Recent legislation prevents cities from banning fracking and from controlling their own police budgets. This session, the Texas legislature is considering “super-preemption” legislation – a bill that would prevent cities from regulating a host of concerns, everything from labor protections for workers to the use of natural resources to regulating the predatory pay-day loan industry. It would even prevent local control of elections.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the recent proposal to limit prosecutorial discretion. In Texas, as in most states, prosecutors are elected at the county level. They have a great deal of discretion because they must – there are simply not enough resources to prosecute every single violation of the law. We all know this as a matter of common sense. Not every driver pulled over by a cop gets a ticket. Now, when and how law enforcement exercises their discretion is subject to many things, prejudice included. For prosecutors, the problem is even more complicated because the process of filing criminal charges is opaque.
Local control has deep roots in Texas, as it does throughout the South. Largely it is a problem born of a state that abhors regulations – cities, mostly diverse, progressive ones, are left to regulate their own problems. While local control has no doubt taken. toll on the well-being of Texas residents – for example, medical outcomes are one of the worst in the nation – it is clear that the GOP is intent on destroying local control to create an ideal GOP-controlled state, not to improve outcomes for rural residents.
The issue came to the forefront during COVID when cities like Dallas, Houston, and Austin all enacted their own health regulations. Now, the battlefield has shifted to elections – state Republicans have been clear that their focus is on Houston, which votes mostly Democratic. The Texas GOP seeks to create its own election police, limit ballot boxes (something Abbott did two months before the 2022 election), and require local election authorities to report to the state. Limiting the discretion of local prosecutors is an outgrowth of this surge, but it is also one that threatens to remove one of the few discretionary functions localities can use to prevent state encroachment on civil rights.
The Texas GOP has become so focused on controlling issues like access to medical care, education, family planning, and policing that it is willing to abandon the ideals of local control, and, accordingly, some basic principles of democracy. This is clear in the proposed prosecutor bills, which are plainly aimed at Democrat district attorneys in urban areas. As Texas ramps up laws criminalizing parents, teachers, librarians, and doctors, is it a surprise that they would seek to remove local control from the offices that decide exactly how these laws are enacted?
