Tales from the West Texas Dust

[Austin American-Statesman:] (1.) Sen. Bill Ratliff (R--Mount Pleasant) and Rep. Rob Junett (D--San Angelo) have unveiled a proposal for a new Texas Constitution to be considered during the upcoming legislative session and which might be the most ambitious effort of the session. If the respective bills pass, some potential changes include:

(a.) Increases in the length of legislative terms (House terms from two to four years, Senate terms from four to six years; limits of eight regular sessions for House members, nine for Senators)

(b.) Establishment of a new commission to determine salaries of major state officials (with the Governor and Lieutenant Governor being paid the same and the Speaker of the House at the rate of 90% of the Governor's salary)

(c.) Provisions barring lawmakers from representing clients before state agencies

(d.) Giving the Governor more power in terms of appointing these offices: (1.) Agriculture Commissioner

(2.) Railroad Commissioner

(3.) Land Commissioner

(4.) District, appellate, and Supreme Court judges (Note: Within this, the Court of Criminal Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court would be combined into a 15-member court with justices appointed by the governor and facing retention elections after their appointment.)

(e.) Could possibly funnel more money into the UT and A&M University systems to increase their competitiveness nationwide and end the practice that came from past court decisions over school equity in state funding that required wealthy districts to share local tax revenues with school districts

(f.) Will also formally define marriage under state law as being for only a man or a woman - making it difficult for a ban on homosexual marriages to be repealed and also establishes the concept of community property without saying who has the right to it... (2.) Religious leaders and prominent civic and community officials recently participated in a workshop on conflict resolution sponsored by the Bible-based Plowshares Institute. The workshop was part of a larger campaign to improve race relations in Austin....

(3.) Blues-rock group Storyville, winners of over 30 Austin Music Awards, gave their last concert at Antone's nightclub on Jan. 2nd. The group announced in November that they were making a semi-amicable split due to what group guitarist David Holt described as being "purely out of frustration," Group members also cited an exhaustive workload and concerns for not advancing in their musical careers as ther reasons for the breakup....

(4.) Austin arts groups areending '98 in black ink and are positioned for expansion with record revenues and more than $250 mllion in new money anticipated for new building projects. WHY? Because of the disciplined spending even through the worst of seasons in the '80s and even up until the present . As a result, most of these 300 groups carry little or no debt and are evenclelbrating a record year with $104 million in revenues from an attendance of 3.8 million people in the '97-'98 season.

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