Pub. 60 2019-2020 Issue 4

30 T he coronavirus crisis has spawned a wave of collective conjecture on ways to convert the Texas Capitol into a makeshift safe house where the Legislature could convene in January for a regular session that requires a minimal amount of time and togetherness. With COVID-19 expected to still be in play when Texas lawmakers are constitutionally obligated to meet again early next year, the state could probably learn a lesson or two from the regular session that was held in 1919 at the tail end of the Spanish Flu’s murderous rampage across the globe. One of the more creative proposals for the Texas statehouse buttressing for the session in 2021 centers on the possible extension of the House floor to the gallery above it in a move that might make the implementation of effective social distancing possible. Half of the House’s 150 members could be assigned to the upper deck with microphones, voting machines and computers with WiFi access while a similar number of colleagues would be spaced apart down below to reduce the risk of coronavirus exposure and spread. But the current crop of Texas leaders and lawmakers would have a tough act to follow if they wanted to leave a mark as profound and enduring as the 36th Legislature managed to do in the aftermath of a pandemic that had an astronomically higher death rate than the contagion that’s been under way here for more than two months. Texas Legislature Had a History-Making Session in 1919 Near the End of the Spanish Flu Terror Reign Coronavirus Inspires Innovative Brainstorming for State Lawmakers Who'll Convene in 2021 with Health Protection as the Paramount Issue By Mike Hailey, Capitol Inside Editor  TEXAS LEGISLATURE — CONTINUED ON PAGE 33 WithWilliamP. Hobby as the governor who’d taken over after James “Pa” Fer- guson’s impeachment two years earlier, the Legislature bounced back from the novel influenza onslaught with a slew of monumental accomplishments that make the so-called Super Bowl session of 2019 seem pedestrian. Meeting for 65 days in an abbreviated regular session and 65 more in three special gatherings between early May and mid-July, the Legislature in 1919 made Texas the first southern state to ratify the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote. Lawmakers passed a measure that year that estab- lished the system of energy regulation that’s still in place today when they put the Texas Railroad Commission in charge of oversight for the fledging oil industry and tripled the rate of taxes that producers paid to the state. The Texas Oil & Gas Association that’s commonly called TXOGA was con- ceived that year as well. The 1919 Texas Legislature approved the first major shift of public education funding to the local level in landmark legislation that was designed to elimi- nate inequities between rich and poor school districts by giving them the power to control their own property tax rates. Texas legislators centralized and stream- lined the machinery andmanagement of state government that year with a vote to create a Board of Control that would purchase supplies for agencies and pub- lic schools while managing the Capitol and other state buildings in Austin and other towns. After deferring tomayors and local health directors in the Spanish Flu response just