News From the 83rd Legislative Session
By Charlie Wilkison - Director of Public Affairs for CLEAT
If you look at a map of the U.S. you can point to almost every large state and to a sad story of how the police lost some major right or benefit over the past five years.
Not in Texas, not in 2013.
Every legislative session has its own special aura. This one was colored by a huge political turnover in the Republican primaries with tea party calls for changes to everything.
Early on, we agreed that issues like pension system transparency and ethics issues should be embraced, supported and allowed to pass. My belief was this tactic would get us in all the higher level meetings where we could play at the grown up table. That strategy paid off time and again as we were able to play inside ball and slow down some of the very bills that many elected folks thought we supported.
Because of the national threat against pensions I wanted CLEAT to attempt to remain on defense. You agreed with me that by limiting some of our exposure to a big legislative package that we would be better prepared to defend retirements. It worked.
We locked down tight on our enemies early and we just refused to give any ground. We were attacked early in the session at the County retirement (TCDRS) level but we orchestrated a well-timed and well executed counter attack that seemed to shock our enemies at how well we were prepared for war.
Next, came the bills that would have hurt the Texas Municipal Retirement System. These worried me a great deal because of their early hearing dates and most of those pieces of legislation seemed reasonable, which made them more dangerous and harder to defend against.
The Hours bill, HB 626, the anti-COLA bill, HB 718--dead. Six years of killing the COLA bill.
Because we gave the impression that we enjoyed the conflict -- our enemies blinked. They blinked on the constitutional amendment to outlaw defined benefits.
Because I had asked the Speaker to split the House Pension Committee, and asked for a Chair from a defined benefit city, and asked him to put a former police officer on the committee -- I believe those actions helped to save us. We still had many huge battles. There were bills that would have taken away pension ownership from the officer under the guise of punishing criminal misconduct.
Of course we had to battle the official oppression bills, civilian oversight, bills that would have burdened line officers with determining mental illness, and threats to civil service and collective bargaining.
Our fights with the police chiefs over the SOAH became pretty wild at times. In the end, we won and the hearings are intact and the findings have to be filed both with TCLEOSE and the former employer. Big victory for the little guys with no rights.
Then the states’ rights, federal supremacy fights erupted with Texas peace officers placed squarely in the middle. Bills that would have charged officers criminally for enforcing federal gun laws and forbid you to assist any federal agent or agency passed the House by large margins. Scared us to death.
By any means necessary we were able to kill each of these bad bills in the Senate against a backdrop of demands from the second amendment folks, and every crazy person in Texas.
About your competitor: TMPA was on the chiefs’ side every time. We never saw them engage in any of the battles that mattered. Their top issues were drones and trying to hold onto a law to allow the ISD police to issue tickets for chewing gum in class. Unfortunately, a by-product of war is that some of our good bills were killed in retribution over our killing of other interest's bills. We witnessed the death of our waiver of sovereign immunity for first responders bill, victim impact statement for surviving families bill, our bill forcing cities to return officers to work who've won their arbitration, and the sad loss of our retirement carve out for ISD and University officers.
Believe me, the loss of these bills were a bargain in comparison to the bad bills that we were forced to kill. Somehow we also managed to pass a few good bills. We helped protect your family privacy. We protected hearing rights and employment files. Wrote and passed a bill that created a TCLEOSE licensed school marshal, permanently funded the peace officers monument and several more bills we'll mention in the Texas Police Star.
Walking down from the Capitol to our offices on Sine Die has become somewhat of a tradition for me. It always falls on the Memorial Day weekend and I work it alone. This time I made it about to the Supreme Court building before I noticed there was a giant smile on my face -- We did it, CLEAT performed at the top of our game to save officer retirements.
Texas could have easily become the next state to fall to the anti-worker, anti-cop, the anti-pension big moneyed interests...But we didn't. We planned ahead and we executed a battle plan that put pressure in just the right places to kill or outlast all the bad legislation. All of those turds they rolled in powdered sugar have been flushed.
Don't worry; they'll all float back up next session with a better, more sophisticated plan to hurt you. They'll have more money and a sharper message, but hopefully, so will you.
Thanks for all your support this session. It has been my highest honor to have represented Texas' Finest during the past ten legislative sessions (19 years) that I've worked on your behalf.
With Highest Regards,
Charley Wilkison
Director of Public Affairs - CLEAT
