Pub. 60 2019-2020 Issue 4

34 13% pay raise for teachers at the Deaf & Dumb Institute, the Colony for the Feeble Minded and the State Lunatic Asylum into an education measure. The 1919 Legislature that had one Republican in the House and none in the Senate had expected to have more money to spend in the future as a consequence of a Better Schools Amendment that Texas voters would approve in 1920. The constitutional revision set the stage for local tax hikes with no limitations as a way to reduce the state’s share of the public school bills. Local taxes on property across the state more than doubled within the next three years as a result of the new system that would have the unintended effect of increasing disparities between school districts with more taxable wealth than others. Texas lawmakers found time in 1919 for a vote that made the Pecan Tree the official tree in Texas. The fight over female voting rights triggered the most explosive fireworks display at a Texas statehouse that had many during the sessions that were held when the state was emerging from the deadliest pandemic in modern times. Hobby and the Texas Equal Suffrage Association’s leaders feared that the notoriously conservative Legislature with a male monopoly wouldn’t be inclined to go along in a state where women had been able to vote for the first time in the 1918 primary election. So they added an incentive with a tradeoff proposal that would have made it harder for im- migrants from Mexico to vote here. Legislative leaders with the governor’s encouragement pack- aged the women’s voting rights expansion measure with a proposal that would have disenfranchised voters who had applied for citizenship in America but hadn’t been granted it yet. Hobby’s legacy would haven taken a major hit if voters hadn’t defeated the compromise in a constitutional amend- ment election in the spring of 1919 when immigrants who hadn’t become official citizens still had the right to vote. But the Legislature voted in a special session two weeks later to ratify the 19th Amendment that Congress had ap- proved in one of the many highlights in the post-pandemic lawmaking flurry of 1919. With advantages that state lawmakers didn't have 101 years ago like television, technology, testing and sophisticated virus modeling, the current Texas Legislature’s members will be more concerned with logistics and advance planning than their counterparts had been in 1919 when they didn’t realize that the Spanish Flu hadn’t been fully eradicated. With tensions mounting over the pace of the reopening that Governor Greg Abbott has been directing, which has since moved into a second phase, the Department of Public Safety would probably feel compelled to increase security in and outside the Capitol as a preventative measure when the session is under way. The temporary use of the lower chamber’s second level for members only could apparently be formalized in the rules that the House approves at the outset of a regular session as the first act of business after the speaker is elected on opening day. The seats on the floor could be designated on the basis of seniority or another criteria if representatives don’t give the speaker the singular power to make such a call in the rules. William P. Hobby Texas Governor 1917-1921 With tensionsmountingover thepace of the reopening that Governor Greg Abbott has been directing, which has sincemoved into a second phase, the Department of Public Safety would probably feel compelled to increase security in and outside the Capitol as a preventative measure when the session is under way.  TEXAS LEGISLATURE — CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33