Government is best that is closest to the people has been a central tenet of our democracy since its founding. Unfortunately, in this session, the Texas Legislature is doing its own version of the Texas Two-Step to dance around that principle interfering with or usurping local authority in different areas.
The first step is reaffirming the district maps passed in the 2021 session. Those maps divided every large population center in Texas into multiple legislative districts dominated by surrounding suburban and rural counties. This step ensures that cities and counties with large, diverse populations are underrepresented at the state level.
The next step is rewriting the rules that have governed state and local relationships for decades. The most sweeping example is the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act which prohibits local governments from enacting laws in areas broadly governed by the State Codes of agriculture, finance, insurance, labor, natural resources, and occupations unless specifically authorized by the Legislature. This scheme upends well-settled law on local home rule by relying on a concept of field exemption, which is not defined in the Act. The Act unleashes private entities and individuals to sue local governments in multiple counties without fear of costs or of facing a defense of governmental immunity.
This pattern is repeating itself in legislation governing local elections. The legislature proposes to empower the Secretary of State, an appointee of the Governor, to suspend or remove local election officials and administer local elections. The bills being considered allow the Secretary of State to take this action based on good cause belief, not actual evidence, and provide no opportunity for the local government to challenge or review the decision. Another bill moving through the Legislature gives the Secretary of State the same power as a district court judge to order new elections in certain large counties.
The Legislature is also proposing to increase and create new civil and criminal penalties for local election workers for election code violations. At the same time, they are opening more avenues for individuals and groups to access election records and monitor election officials. Greater transparency can lead to greater understanding, but it can also create misunderstandings. It is important that our legislators balance laudable transparency with safeguards to protect election workers from unwarranted interference.
Finally, as with the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, the Legislature is considering bills that would permit cases to be brought against election workers in more than one county with no provision for a judicial determination that seeking redress in a county other than the one in which the alleged activity occurred is appropriate. The result is likely to be more about intimidation than about truth-seeking.
Texas is a large and diverse state. One size does not fit all, and while these election bills are being justified by issues that arose in one large county, they apply to the whole, by and large. We elect local officials to decide what is best for our communities because we can easily communicate our needs to them. State law and state officials cannot address every locality’s varying needs. Local elections run by local election officials and workers are essential to our democracy, and the State should not interfere with local authority.