The Texan Podcast - Committee Assignments Committed: Smoke Filled Room Ep.13

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

In the latest episode of Smoke Filled Room, Senior Editor McKenzie DiLullo and Senior Reporter Brad Johnson go line by line through the long awaited committee assignments released by Speaker Burrows Thursday morning. Listen to more Smoke Filled Room podcasts from our team wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review.

Thank you for reading off that list. It was riveting podcasting, I must say. I asked you if you thought it was a good idea and you were like, yeah, sure. What am I trying to say? Established. No, like... Instituted. I don't know. No, I...

Pull up the thesaurus.com. No, it's not because I'm thinking of a totally different word. I'm not going to be a man telling a woman that her idea is terrible. That's never stopped you before. I'm a fan of the scuttlebutt. I can read. Believe it or not, I do read and write for a living. Did I say that correctly?

Okay. Wow. After your stutter, you did. After my stutter you did after my stutter howdy folks it's mackenzie here with brad another episode of smoke filled room recording on thursday committee assignments came out today were we super grateful that they came out today so we'd have something really substantive to talk about on this podcast yes very much so were we a little nervous perhaps that they weren't going to come out in time for us to talk about them before the release of this podcast for sure they did i think the worst scenario would have been they come out at like four o'clock on friday or on friday yeah well

we couldn't record this tomorrow yeah usually we Usually we could have. Yeah. But tomorrow I have a difficult schedule. You have a very important purchase to make. Although that may not actually go through because this tree has not been removed from the yard. And if it's not removed today, we have to push closing. That stinks. Yeah. So I'm tracking my phone call. My husband and I bought a house. So what you're saying is you might not be able to take advantage of the world-renowned record-setting homestead exemption that just passed.

No, it was so funny. Our realtor was talking to us about homestead exemptions, and I'm just sitting there like, oh, tell me more. Tell me more about homestead exemptions. It was great, though, and he did his due diligence, but it was great though and he did his due diligence but it was funny i also found out that if a tree is over 19 inches in die and nope circumference man this is really embarrassing if i got that wrong 19 inches around yes um you can't just remove it without a permit you have to it's like a heritage tree and you can't remove it ours i'm not kidding you was like 18 inches around so we're good so you can remove it yourself yeah i mean not ourselves i'm not i'm not out there with a chainsaw but somebody else who's very qualified is we're just hoping it gets done today i have cut up a tree before that fell on a house, or not on a house, on a backyard that could have fallen on a house, and it was a lot of fun.

Wait, so it had already fallen, and then you chopped it up and it was on the ground? We were sitting on my buddy's porch back in Cincinnati as this windstorm was happening, and we saw the tree fall. And it ripped. It was massive. It ripped half the ground out. That's so scary. See, that's the reason we – this is so not important to talk about this on this podcast. But the reason we had to get the tree removed is because it's right up next to the kitchen, next to the house.

And its roots are definitely, like, affecting the foundation. Not in any crazy way. But enough to where it needs to be removed now, right? And I just don't understand why people plant trees right next to houses. It is like two feet from the siding of the house. They didn't plan very well. No, they didn't. Nor did the arborist plan very well to get it done three days before closing,

but I digress. Hopefully it will be fine. All I have to say, we most likely would not have been able to record tomorrow. So here we are. But you know who did plan kind of well? Who? Or at least did a lot of planning. The Speaker of the House when he made these committee assignments that we got.

He did a lot of planning. They're putting 150 members onto committees, albeit with all of the criticisms that this has been done, you know, they're long awaited. People have been waiting for a very long time for these to come out. It's still a heck of a task. And we'll get into all the nitty gritty. But this is 150 members that are slotted to different committees. Members, this is just like some inside baseball kind of, but when you're looking at these committee assignments, it's not just the speaker saying, hey, this person's going to be on this committee for kind of a nebulous reason. Members, it can be.

The speaker can just appoint people to do whatever they want. But technically, members write out on a card their preferred committees and say, hey, here's what I'm thinking. Here's where I'd prefer to be. You know, let the will of the speaker be done, but this is where I want to be for session. And sometimes those are granted. Those requests are granted. Sometimes they're not.

But that's where this is all coming into. Like a lot of those requests are taken into place or taken into consideration. Well, because ultimately, whether they're your ally or they're your enemy, you want them to be on a committee that they know about, that they have something to offer, right? Most of the time. There are certainly times where a very urban member is put on the ag committee and it's laughable and people make fun of it for many sessions. was sitting there watching this unfold, watching them being read off. An example of this was I was Matt Morgan, freshman from Republican from Fort Bend County was within my line of sight.

And he and I had talked about his committee assignments the other day. And he said he put in his biggest request was insurance. He's a, I think an insurance estimator or adjuster. And as they read it off, I think it was the last assignment for him they read. And then he just does a little fist pump. Because obviously that's the one he wanted. That's where he has the most expertise. Totally. That's like a direct correlation between what you do in the professional sense

because you do not make a ton of money as a state representative and what you can bring to the legislature. And some of these committees are really broad, like state affairs. Totally. It covers a ton of money as a state representative and what you can you know bring to the legislature well and some of these committees are really broad like state affairs totally covers a ton insurance but also a very powerful committee so you want to be on state affairs right yeah but like insurance pretty narrow scope now that touches a lot of things and it's going to be a very important committee this session because of how much we've talked about insurance rates climbing across the board but um you you know, it can vary. This one is more special, a specialized committee,

whereas state affairs is a catch-all. And calendar is very much a catch-all. If you were a state representative, what three committees, let's put three committees, would you want to be on? I'd say state affairs. Really put me on the spot. You didn't give me any time to think about this.

No, definitely not. I don't know what you say and then come back to me. Okay. I mean, I'm putting myself on the spot too because that question had not been in my brain

15 seconds prior to when I asked it. But I would say state affairs. I would kind of want to be on general investigating. I want to know the scuttlebutt. I'm a fan of the scuttlebutt. And that is where it all comes to fruition.

And then you're likely not going to get state affairs and calendars. Maybe you would. Maybe, maybe possibly. Let me just make it more policy-oriented. I'd probably do public education that would probably be where i'd land yeah i would do state affairs ways and means for the tax stuff and then it wouldn't matter this time around but i would do redistricting.

So you said city fairs, ways and means and redistricting. And redistricting. Cause that would be fun. That would, yeah. Would it be fun though? That would be one of those committees where you are constantly bombarded with

requests from folks and drawing the ire of many of your fellow members based on how the lines are drawn whether or not you are the one directly making that decision or not you can protect your own a little bit so it's like a productionist from a productionist perspective it's a great place to be during redistricting but i would not i don't know i probably would if that was happening yeah you're right i suppose it's not for the faint of heart but that's not what do you mean i don't know what you're referencing i'm just making a joke about you oh you're calling me faint of heart that's the joke yes well if the shoe fits it's great when i have to explain the joke i thought there was something deeper than just you i should have known it was just a simple slight at me i think you were making a little bit too much hay over that but hey whatever yeah

because you're like you're gonna experience that on most committees i can't believe you didn't choose telecommunications and broadband we joke sometimes that brad has the most boring beats in the world one time we had one of his beats was like the plumbers, the plumbers, the plumbing board. That was like a beat of Brad's. It wasn't just the plumbing board, but yeah, sewage of all kinds. I was trying to. And we're not talking about the halls of the Texas Capitol. You're really hitting it home with the jokes today um i i do wonder i am curious to see what

the delivery of government efficiency committee what that also delivery how that operates how do they choose the word delivery because it's not a department and the one of the federal levels of department i guess i know but of all words it starts with letter d well giovanni capergolione is moving from pensions, investments, and financial services to that. So that'll be interesting. Newly formed stadium committee. Very interesting. Well, should we jump right into it?

Let's do it. Okay. So, I mean, walk us through it. This was something that was supposed to – it was rumored to have come out like a week and a half ago maybe even more two weeks at this point and then it didn't and it didn't and didn't and um here we are finally with the assignments and um i think the unsurprising thing here was that tom craddock and sophronia thompson are the deans of the house um but they're reappointed that's essentially saying hey we've been here for a long time we're the most tenured members of the house and so it's a lot of ways of ceremonial positions that was unsurprising i think that was the first still get a budget increase though

i think you're right dean in the senate definitely does yes you're right but regardless regardless it's mostly ceremonial yes and it does come with some sort of pomp and circumstance, right? There's an honor that comes with being in the chamber that long. They've been in for so long. There's just respect had for them generally. Yep. And this is kind of a. A former speaker and Miss T.

Yep. And this is kind of just a recognition of that. Yep. So. For sure. What else did you notice right off the bat um well like you mentioned we had been waiting for this it sounded like they were all ready um last week early in the week and then something happened i'm not sure what for them to get shuffled around. I don't know if that's entirely accurate, but that's the way it kind of came off.

Regardless, there was a lot of criticism, chatter on social media about this taking so long. I think it took only slightly longer than we've seen in the recent past. I mean, it depends on the session, right? Very much. Some sessions have been very late as well. So regardless, they're now formed. Next week we'll probably see organizational meetings set.

And then we'll see where it goes from there. And to be fair, also with context about the incoming speaker and all of this, a lot, even when Phelan was still in the race for speaker and was still running for reelection to maintain his position, a lot of the reforms that he put forward saying, like trying to, you know, placate the detractors were saying, hey, we're going to get to work a lot earlier. Right. So even Phelan back then, those are the criticisms of the House and they have been forever. the detractors um were saying hey we're going to get to work a lot earlier right so even feeling back then that those are the criticisms of the house and they have been forever now the lieutenant governor lobs that criticism at the lower chamber as often as he can that is certainly something that he is willing and able to do as often as possible it's a favorite slight he likes to to wield at the house but there are certainly criticisms to the speed um at the house. But there are certainly criticisms to the speed that the house operates at within the chamber, right?

And they were even attempted to be addressed by the former speaker. So just keep that in mind, too, that this is not just a coming out of nowhere. This is a long-had discussion about the speed at which the two chambers operate. Some of it's institutionalized in the nature of the beast for, you know, how the house works and some of it. How the two chambers work, yeah. Totally. And some of it is obviously been willingly addressed by, or willingly,

what am I trying to say? Established. No, like. Instituted. I don't know. No, I. Pull up the thesaurus.comaurus because i'm thinking of a totally different word the um the whole point is that there are when people have tried to either

maintain the gavel or take over the gavel they are willingly saying i will make reforms to this process and we can speed it up right so there are things that can be done to speed up the process in the house that's what i'm trying to say. Yeah. You know, the other part of this is that this is a new Speaker and the Speaker had to hire almost all new staff. As far as I'm aware, he only brought back a few, maybe a handful of people from the previous Speaker's administration. It's always harder starting from a new Chief of A whole new set of, you know, procedures and policies in the office. So there are a few reasons why this took so long. I think not the least of which is how difficult it is to make committee assignments and balance, especially after a speaker's race like we just had, balance the competing factions, get people on board who weren't on board during the speaker's race.

The speaker met with all 150 members to ask what their priorities are. You know, it just takes time. And we'll see how it ends up when we hit sine die and whether a bunch of stuff that certain people want to pass didn't pass or other people wanted to kill. Or even just priorities. Right. House priorities, Senate priorities, those kinds of bills. Emergency items from the governor. That's where a lot of the criticism lies.

Yeah. So jury's still out. We'll see. But now we've got committees and. And Lord, is it an undertaking even just listen and we'll get into and i'm looking at our we have some redundant notes here um but um i think this is when you look at this and you know speaker burrows very quickly thereafter came out with a statement kind of outlining the priorities actually i don't think we ever done

but um outlining the priorities he had when putting together these committees. And of course, this is the first time we have Republican-only chairs and Democratic-only vice chairs, per the House rules that were passed a couple of weeks ago. That was the big package that caused a lot of hubbub in the chamber. Some folks were super excited about it. Some folks were super critical. But regardless, that is how this worked out. In addition, the number of standing committees was reduced. We talked about that a little bit with talking about the Doge Committee. But that was from 34 to 30. So from 34 standing committees to 30 standing committees, six were eliminated, two were created. And that is the delivery of government efficiency

and intergovernmental affairs, which is very interesting. But, I mean, looking at this list and seeing only Republicans as chairs and only Democratic members as vice chairs is really interesting right off the bat. Yeah, I agree. I mean, we had the fight. You did a great job. We had the fight and we watched the fight happen and how that played out. The halting of debate, calling the question, 107 members signed on to that. You know, that's in the past, it's still influencing how people view the speakership and the administration, the leadership.

Yeah. the leadership. But now their job is to put that aside and work on policy. And it'll undoubtedly influence how things shake out later in session. There's no question about it. But we'll see where and when it does. Should we talk about, should I read off the chairs and the vice chairs here? Do you want to do that? You go ahead. You know what?

I will gladly lend my voice. It was your idea. Yeah, this might be, we'll see how long this, the chairs and the vice chairs here or do you want to do that you go ahead you know what i'm i will gladly it was your idea lend my voice yeah this might be we'll see how long this if i can should we do this should we read this off or not do you just want to read the chairs yeah maybe i'm just i'm just going to do both so agriculture and livestock we have ryan guian as chair and bobby gara as vice chair appropriations we have greg bonin as chair mary gonzalez as vice chair calendars todd hunter as chair tony rose as vice chair corrections sam harless as chair benton jones as vice chair criminal jurisprudence john smithy as chair gene wu as vice chair subcommittee on juvenile justice we have david cook as chair

and jolanda j Jones as vice chair. David Cook getting a chairmanship. Very interesting. Culture, recreation, and tourism. We have Will Metcalf as chair. Lulu Flores as vice chair. Delivery of government efficiency. Doge.

Giovanni Capriglioni and Salman Bajani. Elections. Matt Shaheen. John Busey. Energy resources. Drew Darby, Eddie Morales. Environmental Regulation, Brooks Landgraf, Claudia Daz. Journal Investigating, Keith Bell, Aaron Gammas. Higher Education, Terry Wilson, Donna Howard. Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Veterans Affairs. That is a heck of a combo. I never really thought about that till now.

Cole Hefner as Chair, Ray Lopez as vice chair, subcommittee on defense and veterans affairs. We have Philip Cortez and Mark D'Orazio. That's one of those subcommittees with the Democrat in the chair. House administration, we have Charlie Guerin and Cheryl Cole. Human services, Lacey Hull, Christian Manuel. Insurance, we have Jay Dean, Hubert Vo, intergovernmental affairs, Cecil Bell, Aaron Zwiener. Subcommittee on county and regional government david spiller and cheryl cole subcommittee on state federal relations carl

tepper cassandra hernandez judiciary and civil jurisprudence jeff leach and ann johnson subcommittee on family and fiduciary relationships harold dutton and richard hayes land and resource management gary gates someone suliman Lallani. Did I say that correctly? Okay. Wow. After your stutter, you did. After my stutter. For some reason, all the L's really tripped me up there for a second, even though I know in my brain. Licensing and Administrative Procedures, Dade Phelan and Sinfornia Thompson. Dade Phelan gets a chairmanship. Gets a chairmanship. I kind of knew he was going to get one. It was just a question of which one. I was really, yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about that. Local and Consent, Jared Patterson and Renna Bowers. Natural Resources, Cody Harris and Armando Martinez. Pensions, Investments and

Financial Services, Stan Lambert and Nahila Playsa. Public Education, Brad Buckley and Diego Bernal. Subcommittee on Academic and Career-Oriented Education, Trent Ashby and James Tallarico. Public Health, Gary Van Deaver, Elizabeth Campos. Subcommittee on Disease Prevention and Women's and Children's Health, lots of possessives in that. James Frank, John Busey, Rita Sartine, Cody Basut, very interesting, and John Rosenthal. State Affairs, Ken King, Cassandra Hernandez. Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Broadband, Brad's Bread and Butter, Rafael and Wilbert Kaff, Trade, Workforce, and Economic Development, Andrew Chinbutton and James Tallarico, Subcommittee on International Relations, John Lujan and Oscar

Longoria, Subcommittee on Workforce, Oscar Longoria and Caroline Harris-DeVilla, Transportation, Tom Craddock and Marianne Perez, Subcommittee on transportation funding, Terry Canales and Lacey Hull. Ways and Means, Morgan Meyer and Drew Martinez Fisher. And finally, subcommittee on property tax appraisals, Chris Turner and Candy Noble. If you do not care to hear that list, I so hope that you fast forwarded through this portion of the podcast. It felt like a good idea at the time. Looking at this, there are only a few repeat chairmen on these committees. There was a lot of shuffling around.

First of all, there were four Cook voters who got standing committee chairmanships. Cook got a subcommittee chair. But I'm not seeing a lot of repeat chairs here. Morgan Meyer is Ways and Means. Greg Bonin is Propes. But other than that, there's a lot of shuffling around. Part of that was members lost in the primary who would have been aligned with leadership here. But other than that, you know, there's – I'm not seeing a ton.

Some retirements, like I think energy resources, that was Craig Goldman. He's now in Congress. Drew Darby takes that spot. Yeah, pretty interesting. So a friend of mine texted me asking what the five most powerful slash important committees are in the House. And here was my list that I gave him. It's difficult to compile because it kind of depends on the session. What the big issues are. Yeah. So but the ones I listed were calendars, top appropriations, state affairs, general investigating, House administration.

Then you have a bunch of policy ones, pub ed, elections, energy resources, pub health, natural resources, redistricting ways and means that vary based on what the topic of the day is, what the top priorities during this particular session are. But what do you think of that? Say the list again. Calendars, probes, state affairs, GI, admin. I mean, GI and admin, I think for me, it very much depends on the session. They're much more insidery in importance. general investigating can investigate but do they almost but do they that's the thing is you're right they have the jurisdiction to investigate a lot of different

like they have subpoena power they can investigate things throughout the state but most often in recent memory the committee has been used to investigate things going on within the chamber itself, right? I mean, last session we had the expulsion of Representative Brian Slayton, the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton. Like, there were some very big issues. So in those instances, certainly wielding a lot of power, but not outside the Capitol in much. Matt Krause compiled the whole list of all the obscene library books in across the state yeah that's also very true so like the power is there it's just a question of whether the the chair decides that was even when the investigating committee did that we were all

like oh i kind of forgot that they could do that it was not necessarily something that was even familiar to most folks at the time like we forget the general investigating committee can do that um so i don't disagree that it has the power. I am more saying that, is that typically how it's exercised? Not really. I'd almost put, which this might be, it also depends on the session. In terms of money, transportation's up there. Transportation's a very powerful committee in terms of what is delegated. And this session will be, it'll be big. Yes. that was interesting, too. Terry Canales has historically been chairman of that committee. And he, as a Democrat, was moved to chairman of a subcommittee on a similar

transportation-related issue. Transportation funding, I think, was the subcommittee that he is chair of. But that's interesting. Also, you know, transportation is probably one of these state affairs definitely is. health definitely is education probably. But there are committees that get lobby attention or a lot of lobby attention. And that comes with like a lot of money, donations, but also for staffers perks, you know, getting taken out to lunch a lot or bought lunch for quite a bit. Just attention. Then there are committees that don't elections yeah doesn't really have a lot of lobby attention unless it's well and it still didn't as much

as even transportation likely that session but when election reform was like the talk of the session two sessions ago 21 yeah um it was a huge committee right it just depends yeah but that's more of an activist focused committee but. But it's still good. And that doesn't come with money. Totally. Agreed. But like you were saying, it just depends on the session, right? My top would be approves for sure, state affairs for sure.

What was the other obvious one? Ways and means. And then I'd put pub ed up there for, like, probably kind of with transportation and a little bit of those senses. Especially the session. It's huge. I think local and consensus sleeper,

but I wouldn't put it in the top five. I don't know. I get what you're saying on admin and house administration and general investigating. I just am not positive I'd put those in the – I guess technically with their purview, they'd be the most powerful. But are they exercised that way? Not necessarily. Depends on the chair. Depends on the chair.

Depends on the chair. Okay. So. Go ahead. Thank you for reading off that list. It was riveting podcasting, I must say. I asked you if you thought it was a good idea and you were like, yeah, sure. I'm not going to be a man telling a woman that her idea is terrible.

That's never stopped you before. Anyway, so Burroughs. That's an insane statement you just made. I was quoting one of our old employees. Yes. There's multiple layers to it. Still insane that you think you would not tell me. Congrats.

We're both part of an inside joke now. Wow. Okay, so Burroughs, his winning coalition of 85 members was made up of 36 Republicans and 49 Democrats. Of those 36 Republicans, of course, we knew chairs were only going to be Republicans because of the rules. But of those 36 R's, eight are either freshmen or sophomores who are traditionally ineligible for chair positions. Now, we did see a couple. I haven't counted exactly how many, but I know Carl Tepper's one sophomore chair of a subcommittee,

but none of them are chairs of standing committees. So Burroughs veered off a little bit from that tradition, but not much. I mean, the standing committees are the big ones here. What do we mean when we say standing committees? Just the main committees, because subcommittees fall under the jurisdiction of those main standing committees. The subcommittees will ideally help move certain legislation through the process or take bulk of legislation off the standing committee's plate to hash out details at a lower level before it gets to the standing committee to pass.

The nitty-gritty. Yeah. That's the idea. How it's going to the standing committee to pass. The nitty gritty. Yeah. That's the idea. How it's going to work out, who knows. So what I mean by pointing out that group of eight, that means it was likely, and we see it did happen, that some Cook supporters were going to be getting committee assignments or chair assignments. Sure enough, we had four. Ryan Guillen, Republican from Rio Grande City,

got the Ag and Livestock Committee. He takes over for Briscoe Cain, who was one of the ringleaders for the opposition for the Reform group. Cain is still on the committee. He's just demoted to a regular member on that. Guillen also notable was one of the late flips. He flipped on opening day. He was the one that flipped from Burroughs to Cook, whereas the other two flips we saw went from Cook to Burroughs.

On the day of. On the day of. Yeah. I was not surprised to see him given one of those positions. And, of course, Cook was the runner-up in the Speaker's race. John Smithy, Republican from Amarillo, got the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. That was chaired by Joe Moody, Democrat from El Paso, who got the Speaker Pro Tem position. We'll talk about that in a sec. Smithy was announced yesterday by Senator Joan Huffman that he will be carrying her bail reform package through the house. This screams to me that this was a request or demand made by the lieutenant governor. And this is an olive branch to the lieutenant

governor by Burroughs. Patrick has lauded Smithy in public a lot ever since Smithy's speech against impeachment on the floor. And so Smithy getting this, not just a chairmanship, but this one with what sounds like the Senate's, you know, maybe not top, top priority, which might be ESAs, but damn near close to that, is this bail reform package. Smith, he's not only is getting to carry that, but he's running the committee through which this will go. Which we'll talk about the bail reform in the Senate a little bit more later, as long as we have the time to. But it's a very, it's been one of these issues that has been attempted by Republicans to be pushed through the legislature time and time again and has failed to make the threshold. So we'll talk about that in a minute. But it is a high stakes policy item for Republicans.

Then you have Matt Shaheen, Republican from Plano, getting elections. It's not a very high profile committee this time around. It was in 21. but this time and last session, it was just not very – there's not a lot of big stuff moving through there, but that doesn't mean there isn't going to be notable things to watch moving through it. Shaheen was also – he was not an early signer onto the Reform Caucus stuff, but he did show up at the September barbecue meeting and was with them ever since, voted for Cook. Shaheen, of course, used to be in the Freedom Caucus,

left, I think, after last session in 23 during the summer. Pretty quietly, if I remember correctly. Yep, very quietly. So there's that. And then Cody Vasut, Republican from Angleton, gets redistricting, which is notable for a couple different reasons. First of all, Vassut was one of the other big ringleaders for the reform group. And so it's not just someone who voted for Cook that is getting this chairmanship. It's someone who was tantamount to the opposition,

first against Phelan, then against Burroughs. So there's that. But then redistricting, this is kind of a – at this point in the decade, redistricting is just kind of a throwaway committee because the maps were drawn in 21, and they will be drawn again in 31. Every 10 years.

Yep. However, there was a Galveston County lawsuit that threw out a lawsuit about maps in Galveston County. Ended up throwing out their commissioner's maps. And basically, I think splits it tossed the rule under the Voting Rights Act about majority minority districts and how you have to preserve populations of interest and specifically minority populations as you have to you can't crack them in redistricting or you have to do everything you can not to crack them into different districts. You have to keep them,

give them a seat. It's like a due diligence. Yes. Yeah. But the lawsuit in Galveston County threw that out. And so there's a lot of talk about, well, the legislature could come back and redraw districts if they wanted to. It's not going to happen. I don't think anyone has much, or at least not anybody, but leadership across the board, not just in the House, has the appetite for that. I don't think they're going to want to waste political capital on redistricting. They already had the fight. Republicans made it out pretty good. Why push the envelope on this? But if that were to

come up, that'd be Vasud's committee. Very notable that Vasud has a chairmanship, even though everything you said, I think, is spot on with how it's unlikely that this committee sees anything of big substance walking through at this session. But suit was you know top three uh detractors um and cook supporters detractors of the burroughs slash phelan um opposition and then certainly um right up there with you know cook's top supporters so watching him score a chairmanship is very interesting he was very quick to congratulate burroughs when he did secure the speakership, which caused some, you know, discontent online for sure from folks. A lot of that going around.

Absolutely. There's just discontent online no matter which side of any fight on any given day. So many people just choose to be mad online every day. Just like you. About everything. You don't know, people, how many things Brad almost tweets because he's discontent online that he chooses not to. No, he doesn't choose not to.

He's told not to. Share. It's not responding to dimwits on Twitter. You also the other day thought I was joking about not tweeting something. I had to be like, no, Brad, I'm serious. Don't tweet that. And then you didn't. I feel very grateful.

Oh, look. Committee alert for appropriations. 218, 219. Hearings? Yes. So there you go. They're already setting them for next week whoo I guess as when this releases this week so there you go I don't know what where you were on your

diatribe right there but I was just complaining about your online anger that sometimes manifests itself in tweets okay anyway so um some other notable trends here none of the democrats who pnv'd on president not voted thank you who present who white lighted the third the second ballot in the speaker's race none of them got a chair or vice chair brad we've gotten so many emails from people saying remember that you guys say acronyms all the time and that not everyone knows what they mean i'm just here to help our listeners and subscribers bradley okay um so yeah There you go. Also, Todd Hunter got calendar's chair.

He was reappointed to that. Last time he was there was 2017. He was calendar's chair under Joe Strauss from 2011 to 2017. Dave Phelan got licensing and administrative. what's the rest of that great question it is licensing and administrative procedures you got it okay capriculone where you mentioned got doge ken king got state affairs that was that's a new i was not expecting that totally but it makes sense in that wildfire prevention uh rehabilitation is going to be a an issue to watch this session and undoubtedly that will go through state affairs because of the panhandle wildfires that happened

last year so that's pretty notable ke Keith Bell as general investigating. You already mentioned that that's the committee that through which Paxson impeachment went. Under former chair and former member Andrew Murr. Greg Bonin returns as appropriations. Expected. Expected, yep. Frankly, I was hearing talk that he'd get it regardless of who won because nobody else wants to do that. At least none of the Republicans. Mary Gonzalez was also reappointed as the vice chair there. Democrat from Clint.

Then you got Joe Moody as Speaker Pro Tem. He, of course, was Speaker Pro Tem under Dennis Bonin as Speaker, but also under Dade Phelan for session in 21 until the quorum break in the summer. And there was a lot of debate then about stripping committee chairmanships from Democrats who absconded to D.C. Nice vocabulary word. And that was the election reform bill. That was the election reform bill that we keep referencing as being a huge deal in 2021. That is the bill that Democrats fled the state in protest over. Yeah.

So I had a thought that I was going to say, and then you just butted in. I'm so sorry. Yeah. So he was, oh, yeah, the debate. There was a debate over whether the speaker could revoke chairmanships. And the speaker's office, legal people, they said that you can't constitutionally once you designate a chair. They are the chair for the biennium. And that's, I don't know if that's right or wrong. I mean, I read the reasoning and back then it sounded fine. I'm sure there's counter arguments to it,

but that sparked the effort to try and change the house rules so that you could uh revoke a chairmanship nothing none of that passed but point being when phelan was getting pressured to revoke chairmanships he came out with that argument but he did say like nothing was keeping preventing him from removing Moody as pro tem. And so he did that. And then I think it was Garen. I believe you're right. Yeah.

So Garen is now back at House Admin. Wilmette Caff was there last session. He's no longer there. He's over at, I think culture and tourism um yep cultural recreation and tourism there you go uh what else do you want to mention about this um about the chairmanships before we go into the subcommittees or do you want to go into subcommittees? Go on to subcommittees.

So this is where it gets a little- Oh, we should mention that all committees, regardless, have GOP majorities. And that's- That's going to come next. The first, I'm saying it before we get bogged down in subcommittees. It's the bullet point right after that. I know that. I can read. Believe it or not, I do read and write for a living. You just wanted to mention it now. Yes.

And that is apparently the first time since Republicans took over that every committee has a GOP majority. Which is where I was mentioning earlier in trying to give due diligence or like do uh like the speaker has a very hard like this is a big task to put something like this together of 100 members um and certainly if all committees are going to have a gop majority that does also require a lot of math and a lot of considering what committees have been requested by which members like there's a lot that goes into this but um that's notable for sure that all committees have GOP majority. There are certainly times because the margin in the house, the bipartisan breakdown in the house is as close as it is, can be difficult to do. You'd think it wouldn't be,

but it can be very difficult to do, to ensure that all committees have a GOP majority. Well, I was talking to... We're not difficult. It just requires a lot of like forethought yeah i was talking to a former speaker of the wisconsin house the other night and he was telling me that so casual it's awesome i mean he's just a regular activist now but um he was telling me that in Wisconsin, the Republican caucus chooses the speaker ever since they won the House back. And it is interesting how much this is just – it boils down to tradition. There's power politics involved, too, because if you can get a number of – a small number of someone on the other side of the political spectrum to come over to you, you can win, right? So part of it is how close the breakdown is. But there's just a tradition of power sharing. And that influences how members decide to go one way or the other on the speakers

thing. It's just in other states, it's in the water more. And so they all stick to the Republican caucus pick. The culture of the chambers means a lot more than what you'd probably think of somebody who's just watching from wherever you're watching from. And there are a lot of arguments and reasons that it developed the way it did. But the culture of the chamber is so different, even from the culture of the Senate. It is like they're so different in the expectations they have and what's normal there, normal being what i call tradition right it's

like both chambers are so different um and these expectations had my members certainly or something that whoever's in the speaker's chair will hear about for a very long time um let's talk about subcommittees okay six out of twelve are chaired by Democrats, which has been, again, interesting discussion online of folks saying, hey, there's no chairman, but there are chairman of subcommittees who are Democrats. No chairman of standing committees who are Democrats, but there are six standing committee chairmen who are Democrats. One of them that stuck out to me was Chris Turner as a subcommittee chair on property tax appraisals. I remember last session when the property tax fight was happening. He was on Ways and Means.

And there and also on the floor, he was really criticizing the compression and appraisal cap plan that the House had, if I recall correctly. I think he was really pushing for Homestead, or at least implementing more of that in the House's plan. He stuck out as a detractor in this. To the compression. To the leadership on it. So it sticks out that he was chosen to this. And he clearly knows a lot about it.

He's been on Ways and Means for years. He knows a ton about this, about tax policy. Oscar Longoria, Subcommittee on Workforce. Who else? Rafael Anchia, Telecommunications and Broadband. Your committee. I don't know why you keep saying that. Harold Dutton, Family and Fiduciary Relationships.

Juvenile Justice. Previous Chairman of Juvenile Justice and Family Issues. Back when it was called that. Right up his alley there. And then Philip Cortez, Defense and Veterans Affairs. I think he's a – Cortez is a veteran, isn't he? Yes. Yeah.

Obviously that makes sense there. Mark D'Orazio, Republican. Very quiet Republican from San Antonio who was on the reform team. He got the vice chair for that. So, okay. Any other observations you want to make? I mean, the only other, aside from the Democrats, the six Democrats, so half of the subcommittees are chaired by Democrats. Aside from that, the notable thing we've already touched on a little bit is that David Cook is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Juvenile

Justice, which is very interesting and I think gives us a little bit of insight into what potentially behind the scenes conversations have looked like between Cook and Burroughs. It's interesting to see that happen. And it's still a subcommittee. It is not a chairmanship of a major standing committee. It's not wild necessarily, but he still was given a leadership. It's not throwing him in the dust pile. Absolutely. I think that's notable. Like some others were.

Yes, absolutely. Ana Maria Ramos was one, and she didn't get any of these. She was the Democrat who ran. There were multiple Democrats who ran, but she was the Democrat on the day of who stuck around and was the third candidate that Democrats aligned themselves with, that rallied behind. And she, in protest on the second – or on the final couple ballots voted for – or final ballot, actually, because she was on the first – voted for David Cook. Looking through this list, there weren't many people that Burroughs just stuck in the corner with a dunce cap. I mean, take Mitch Little. He got put on criminal jurisprudence. He's a very prolific attorney. Obviously, he was the attorney for, one of the attorneys for Attorney General Paxton during

the impeachment like that's right up his alley that's not akin to putting a rural guy on the urban affairs right it's not an obvious light ag and livestock totally transportation also he's up in DFW and that's a big issue up there as as is many other places, but especially up there. You know, A.J. Lauderback got put on Homeland Security, Public Safety, and Vet Affairs. And all these people that you're mentioning are folks who supported Cook. Right. So, it looks like a real effort was made to try and not just napalm the whole opposition with these committee assignments.

And also, there's only so many committees, especially after you reduce them. So the number of throwaway committees that you have to toss people in is much more limited. That's very true. So there you go. I'm going to have to really get into the nitty-gritty of all the members too because you can that's what's fun about this and it's linkedin brad's piece where we list out all the chairmanships and vice vice chairmanships but you can go and search by member and just see which members on each committee which is helpful instead of having to just control f and find their name. It's much easier to look at it that way. Um, but yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see what kind of bills pass, what kind of, now that this is over

and we have a little bit more insight into how the speaker views these committee assignments in light of what the priorities are this session, it'll be interesting to see what bills are brought through or co-sponsors or, yeah. So, total random thing. Senator Paul Bettencourt has been just beating a dead horse on the Trump impersonations this week. And it was in, first it was in the local government committee. Actually, I think he did it last week in a committee. Then he did it on the floor today. And Scott Braddock tweeted a video of the impersonation on the floor today and said, okay, the Betancourt Trump impersonation is getting out of control. Senator Betancourt replied, Scott, you are right.

LOL. To quote myself from three several days, this is the biggest, boldest, most beautiful tax relief Texas has ever seen. Wow. This is real life right now? That is the most Betancourt-y moment i've ever seen moment that's a new adjective i should i should say uncle paul moment uncle paul but yes if you've not been following three several days on twitter with the valentine's

that they've been posting worth a follow this will release after valentine's but regardless it's very they're hilarious so funny stellar even yeah i'd agree any other final thoughts okay what was the most surprising thing to you uh maybe cook yeah i'd say cook oh one thing i did mention Maybe Cook. Yeah. I'd say Cook. Oh, one thing I did mention, four of Burroughs' top supporters publicly, like guys who went on radio spots and went to bat for him. His bulldogs. Yep.

Jeff Leach, Jared Patterson, Cody Harris, and Carl Tepper all got chairmanships. Tepper got a subcommittee chairmanship. Leach is keeping his judiciary and civil jurisprudence. Patterson got local and consent. Harris got natural resources, which I think tells you who's carrying the water bill in the House. I guess we'll see about that. But that was quite notable. And then you have Tepper on the subcommittee.

So the speaker rewarded those members who really stuck their necks out for him publicly, not just voting for him. Yeah. Unsurprising, but still absolutely worth noting, especially when like those are the members of the speaker's team that I'd equate to the same folks we talked about on the, on the, on the cook side, right. Who are the ones organizing the forefront, like you said on radio, on television, doing, you know, the due diligence of their candidates. So it makes sense. Yeah. I would say they're not the only ones that were,

there were some heavily involved that were quiet. Greg Bonin was one, you know, he was not out there stumping for boroughs on the campaign trail, but he was very much in the room where it happens, right? So. Everyone plays their role. Yep. Absolutely. I'd say most surprising thing to me was, I mean, I thought feeling at licensing was really interesting.

Yeah, that's a good point i think that was really i mean there was some talk which is all speculation there were so many folks who were like okay if burroughs was feeling's calendars chair will feel and be burroughs calendar did i say that wrong you get the point burroughs calendar show than feeling will feel and be that for burroughs yeah and And obviously that was not the case. And licensing is not an unsubsidative committee in any sense of the word, but it's certainly not one of the top. You would not put that committee near the top however many committees on any given day for any reason.

So I think it also maybe denotes Phelan's intent to eventually depart and quietly go off into the night and, you know, make this his last term. But he was still, you know, honored by Burroughs and saying, hey, you get a chairmanship of some sort. Well, we'll see if it's the last term. I don't know. You never know. He might choose to go at it again. Totally. Absolutely. It doesn't tell us anything for sure, but that's what it could appear as. Yeah. Okay, well, let's talk about bail reform.

You attended a press conference earlier this week. Again, we talked about this. This is an issue that the Senate's been very vocal about that has had difficulty passing the House in previous sessions. And certainly no punches were pulled at this press conference featuring the author in the Senate, Joan Huffman, and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Yeah, so it first started off with the hearing. Is it criminal jurisprudence in that? No, it's not. Whatever the name of Huffman's committee is. They started hearing this package of bills. These people who had been affected by someone.

They had a loved one killed. Criminal justice. Criminal justice. Who had a loved one killed by someone who was out on bond. You know, they came and testified. But then they, Lieutenant Governor, Senator Huffman, and these individuals, along with Andy Kahn, who runs Houston Crime Stoppers. Holly's written a lot about that. Holly has a really good piece on this issue generally on the site. Absolutely. But the press conference, I had heard all the testimony in the committee.

But for some reason, the press conference was a lot more difficult to hear. Like these very horrible situations that these people are describing. Their loved ones killed. You know, Jocelyn Nongre was one of them that was killed. Her mother, Alexis, was there talking about this. She was at the State of the State.

We talked on the podcast, I think, about the moment that Abbott kind of choked up during his State of the State speech. That was when he was talking to her and giving reference to her and her situation and her daughter who was murdered. Twelve years old. Yep.

Then you had others. April Laguerre is the aunt of someone who was killed. I forget the guy's name. It's in Holly's piece, I think. But a father was at an Astros game with his two sons, and some crazy guy who had a rap sheet a mile long started chasing him and started shooting at him and hit his son in the head. And he was describing having to, his younger son and him,

take the older child to the hospital, and he bled out and died on the way there. It was very difficult to listen to, and it was very moving. You can see why legislators are very determined to get something across the line here. Put the policy things aside and the criticisms of whether this is constitutional, whether this is denying people equal access to justice or bail. Those debates will be had. But, like, this is – there's a problem. And people across both sides can understand that. And, you know, when you're listening to these very difficult stories, you know, it tears at your heartstrings.

Real-world implications, right? Yeah. So that happened. And then Patrick and Huffman discussed their plan. First of all, they passed this out. It's going to go through over to the House probably next week when the Senate comes back. And then they're saying, well, the pressure's on the House. And it's failed the last couple of times in the House because the House couldn't get 100 votes to amend the Constitution and so that left the enabling legislation useless

because what they really have to do is amend the Constitution. The threshold is higher. Yeah and specifically the few proposals on on tap here there's SB 9, SJR. That's a no bail for illegal aliens accused of certain felonies like violence. Actually, that one might just be felonies across the board. Then there's SJR5, which is no bail for certain violent or sexual offenses or of continuous trafficking of persons. So the whole idea behind it is there are people that have been given either by decisions from judges or by mandated release policies that they've been released and they go out and they re-offend some a lot of them if they re-offend it's something fairly minor but then they're enough that it's they kill somebody they

get out they go kill another person um or they commit a lower crime they get out and they go kill somebody so that's the point behind this. I'm sure there's going to be a very robust debate about where do you, what are the guardrails on this? How far does it extend? But Patrick said, as far as I'm concerned, if these bills do not pass the House, I see no reason for us not to go to a special session and another special session and another special session. Huffman added, we're playing hardball this time. Hardball. We have to get this done for the people of Texas, and we're referred to Harris County Democrats in the House who have voted against this and been part of, if not the biggest force preventing it from getting across the line. I asked Senator Huffman who they were.

She did not want to name names at that moment. She said, go look at the voting record. But Harris County is where this whole debate's focused. And it doesn't just touch Harris County. As Patrick said in the presser, it goes everywhere. But the Harris County is kind of ground zero for this as an issue, not just a political issue, but an issue overall. The localities typically have been, I mean, one is the largest county in the state by a long shot, but also the localities and the officials locally have certainly been at war with state officials over this exact issue and similar criminal justice issues for a very long time. So ground zero for a lot of reasons, but that being among them. A lot of it started in 2018, as I understand it, when the beta wave ushered in.

Democrats flipped a lot of seats, and they brought in a lot of new judges, and those judges started implementing these laxer bail policies. Now, you know, they have their arguments for why they're doing that. But it has caused some of these other problems, whether it's unintended consequences or not. It's a very contentious and personal policy fight. And so now it's going to move over to the House. We'll see what Speaker Burroughs, how much onus he puts on it, how much of his own political capital he puts behind it.

Patrick said that he met with Burroughs and Huffman, along with these parents of children who had been killed. And it sounded like Burroughs gave them his support. Also in there was John Smithy, who was going to be carrying this bail reform package. You know, I think that signals that at least leadership wants to get this done. Republicans have all voted for this. It's a question of whether they can do enough to get enough Democrats on board.

A hundred votes. Yep. And I saw in one of Holly's stories, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Gene Wu was asked about it, I think by Holly, and he said, you know, as long as it's, quote, not quote, hella unconstitutional. That was his exact quote. Then, you know, we're open to listening to this. What does that mean?

I don't know. I don't know what Wu has in mind that's where the constitutional and hella unconstitutional line is. But, you know this is going to be i was asked yesterday if we're going to have special sessions um you know first of all there's nobody wants to be here on june 3rd nobody ever wants to have special but especially now after the last two sessions, nobody in that building wants another special session. So that's working in favor of not having any. You know, I think the fact that Phelan's no longer speaker and therefore the blood feud between he and Patrick's not a thing anymore, I think that probably helps not having these specials. But this issue

is very difficult because there are profound philosophical disagreements at the root of this. This is not just some, you know, how much money should we give for water infrastructure, right? This is, this gets to the reason people are Republicans and the reason people are Democrats. The, I don't know, I don't know where it's going to go, but I think if, if we're going to have a special session, this is probably a pretty big, pretty good candidate for what's going to cause it. Yeah. If this doesn't get across the line. Probably second only to school choice. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? I mean, I'd argue more than that because it's going to be, I think, harder to get this across the line than school

choice. I just mean in terms of priorities. Right. Well, I mean, if that doesn't pass, that's for sure getting. Yes. But this was also on Abbott's. Absolutely. Emergency item list. And that moment in your interview with the governor this last week where you asked him about that moment where he got choked up in his state of the state is very much worth listening to the interview for alone. So folks, go listen to the interview that Brad had with Governor Abbott. Good plug. Thank you. Oh, one more thing on this.

During the committee, Huffman said that Harris County, Houston Mayor John Whitmire and Harris County District Attorney Sean Thierry both back the bail reform package. She then said it again at the press conference but then she corrected herself at the committee after the press conference saying actually Sean Thierry does not support this anymore. I was sent a text by one of his attorneys saying that he did and then now he's rescinding that. Who's right is wrong I have no idea.

We won't know unless we see the text messages or be in the room where Terry is deciding what to do on this. But, yeah, an interesting wrinkle there. Jinx. Let's hit this last thing before we have to move on and let folks get back with their day. But there is a very interesting poll that dropped. This comes out Monday last week. Give us a little bit of insight.

So, Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston put out a poll gauging the 2026 Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Of course, that's the seat that Senator John Cornyn holds. Much talked about. Yep. A lot of talk about Ken Paxton running against Cornyn. He told Tucker Carlson the other day that he's definitely mulling it. We'll see if he jumps in. He's been publicly mulling it for months. Yeah. There's talk about it happening in a couple months. There's talk about it happening later in the year. Who the heck knows at this point? And frankly, I don't think Paxton even knows if he's going to run. But this poll gauged a number of different figures for this primary. And it's a bit confusing because it's not broken up as easily in head-to-head matchups.

But they did break it down by preference per candidate. So they split it into a question where it's, would you consider them ex-candidate for during this election? And they broke it down between definitely consider, might consider, never consider, and don't know. So those are the four categories of percentages that I'm about to read off. Cornyn was 31% definitely, 42% might, 15% never, 12% don't know. Paxton was 33% definitely consider, 33% might consider, 19% never, higher than Kornan's, which was kind of surprising to me to see. And then 15% don't know. Dan Crenshaw, 21% definitely, 30% might, 18% never,

and 31% don't know. At that point, the don't knows drastically climb because they're not statewides. Well, actually, one of them is Glenn Hager's on this comptroller. An interesting addition. An interesting addition. There's a few. Don Buckingham's in there. I think Mary Lees, by the time this goes out, will have a piece written on it. So you can read the results there.

But it's a very fascinating slate that they have of people they gauged. The top two, Cornyn and Paxton, that's what everyone's waiting on first of all we're waiting to see if cornyn's gonna run again uh his team has signaled that they are but you know as in every case you are until you aren't right yeah so um you know if if

you're bored with session there's some 2026 politics to talk about. Absolutely. And I'd encourage people to go read that in its entirety because it is a very interesting poll. And the name's listed. Very interesting. It's just, it was a, it's very interesting. I'm excited for when we get polls with a little bit more head-to-head information.

That will be super helpful for gauging a lot of this, but notable regardless. And the players in the field right now, in the very unofficial field of just community notes and talking, is a very interesting one. So we'll keep an eye on it. Here we go. Did we blather on enough?

I think we did. We're at an hour and six so we're doing actually pretty well for ourselves. Cool. Did you hear what I said?

No. Yeah, I didn't think so. I was reading a text message I got. Sounds about right. Well, folks, on that note, we so appreciate

listening to Snowfield Room and we'll catch you next month.