Criminal Law Blog
May 29, 2007
First on the agenda for the next legislative session: stop future Tom Craddicks.
Mr. Craddick’s actions of the last week or so have been an assault on democracy as we practice it in Texas.
Why? I’d say it’s a fair bet that many of the members who voted for Mr. Craddick would not have done so had they believed that he would, in such a ham-fisted manner, rebuff legitimate, reasoned attempts to vote him out of the Speaker’s position.
The bottom line is this. Each of the representatives in the Texas House represents thousands of Texans. Those Texans expect their representative to do a good job, and if he doesn’t, then those Texans have the right to vote him out again. They don’t expect to be consulted on each and every House Bill that passes in front of their Representative’s eyes. That’s just how a republic works.
Fair enough. So when Representatives see that House business, and the public business of Texans is getting shut down because of how the Speaker does his job, then a mechanism should be in place to dismiss the Speaker. Mr. Craddick’s new parliamentarians advised him that he could not be dismissed based upon a motion to vacate the position of Speaker of the House. It had to be done by impeachment, they said.
Well, I can’t say they’re incorrect. They are the Masters of the House Rules.
I can say this: the first item on the agenda for the next session needs to be to put a process in place to dismiss the Speaker.
Otherwise, who knows how many thousands of Texans will have no one to speak for them in the Texas House of Representatives?