Whatever happened to the party of limited government, not to mention the weak...
, thereby sidestepping carefully crafted checks on a gubernatorial office that Texan forefathers intended to be one of the weakest in the nation.
While governors — and local county judges and mayors — need special authority to act in the face of fast-moving, deadly crises, such power is poorly suited for ongoing emergencies that can linger for years. Lawmakers who updated emergency powers laws in 1987 must have known this on some level, as they made a governor’s declaration good for only up to 30 days. What they likely hadn’t anticipated is a crisis that drags on and a governor who would so liberally define “emergency” as to include the influx of migrants at the border, a situation that is already policed by thousands of federal personnel, including armed border agents.
“Our constitution was written in the nineteenth century by people terrified of centralized government,” said Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, just ahead of the 1999 session of the Texas Legislature, when heto consolidate much of the state’s executive authority under the control of the governor.
“Ironically, though I lost that race, the call for the constitutional convention succeeded,” Barnes told the editorial board last week. “My plans had been to recommend that we strengthen the office of governor, and in particular its authority in the budget-making process. People have always perceived that the governor ran the state, but the real power — especially the power to write the budget — has rested in the hands of the speaker and the lieutenant governor.
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