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It’s often said here that the Governorship in Texas is a relatively weak position, and that the real power is concentrated in the hands of the Lt. Governor (who is excellent here), and the House Speaker (who might as well be a Democrat, even though, at times recently, the House was more than 2/3’s Republican).

But Special Sessions are different. Only the Governor can call them. But when he does, it can be very disruptive to the lives of individual legislators, as they are paid $7200 per year, plus $190/day when the legislature is in session (including Special Sessions)...or about $41,000 for 2 years (which includes a 5 month regular session every 2 years). Certainly not enough to live on, particularly for a Swamp Creature.

So our legislators have day jobs. Some (maybe most) are lawyers, others may be doctors, accountants, while others may work for big companies. Some of the larger companies will make up the pay loss if an employee who normally makes, say, $125k has to be in Austin making a pay rate of only around $60,000 (annually). But for the people running their own businesses, such as lawyers, they’re out of luck - if they want to be in the legislature, they lose billing hours and thus income - and on top of that, they’re also not available to their clients.

This becomes important here because Special Sessions are unpredictable and unlimited. When Rick Perry finally decided to start acting a bit like a Republican and pushing for Voter ID (or something similar - requiring our Republicans to vote the way they preach to us), our legislature told him to shove it (that was before we got our excellent Lt. Governor). So Perry called a Special Session...and got the same result So he called a second session...same result. So he called a third session...guess what, it passed! It took 3 times, but with each session being about a month, he simply wore down the legislators...until enough of them told their left-wing leaders that they needed to get back to their day jobs.

So the bottom line is that if Governor Abbott wants legislation bad enough...or at least if he wants a vote on particular legislation, he has the power to pretty much force the issue...simply by making those people stay in Austin and try to live off their (relatively) crappy per-diem pay - as eventually, the legislators will buckle and at least vote on issues.

In our case, 2 big issues are bathroom privacy and bringing some control over property tax increases - two issues our House Speaker won’t even bother bringing to a vote. For bathrooms, the mindset thinking that there’s no issue in forcing girls to shower in locker rooms where boys have free access totally escapes me, at least for Republican legislators. For property taxes we have VERY POWERFUL lobbying groups, which include cities, counties, school districts, and lots of other taxing entities. They get HUGE TAX INCREASES without even having to vote on them with the current system (something like 10% per year)...they want nothing changed and the Republicans in the House don’t mind doing their dirty work and protecting their scams.

But things can get fun as the summer drags into autumn and many, if not most, of our legislators find themselves stuck in Austin, unable to work their day jobs...simply because they refuse to behave as Republicans.