Highlights from our interview with Representative Cody Vasut, Republican state representative for Texas House District 25 (south and western Brazoria County).
Lone Star Standard: What is an important issue the House Judiciary Committee is looking at during the interim?
Vasut: I would say that we can have a government that is too big and be a threat to individual liberty, which is what I’m primarily focused on, protecting individual liberty. But we can also have the government be so underfunded that it can be a threat to individual liberty. For example, we haven’t had a judicial pay raise in the state in a very, very long time, particularly for entry level judges. And at some point in time, the lack of pay for our judges is going to affect who fills those roles, either the quality of the candidate or the number of candidates in the competition that comes with it. If you don’t have a good judge, we can have the justice system take away your individual liberty. So, we have to look at this to make sure that we have an adequately funded judiciary in the state of Texas that’s able to clear cases. You think about the classic liberty, what is the role of government. Well, enforce contracts, right? What if somebody breaches your contract and you go to court and they can’t get a hearing on it for two years? What good is that to you? So, we need to make sure we have a robust, adequately funded judiciary that can step in and protect individual liberty in the state of Texas. That’s one of the key issues we’re going to look at.
Lone Star Standard: What are you trying to change about campaign finance reporting in Texas?
Vasut: Ronald Reagan always said that the greatest disinfectant is a little bit of sunshine. So, having access to government records, whether through open records or campaign finance records, is critical to keeping your government accountable and knowing what’s influencing your elected officials. Right now, under the law, my campaign finance reports, district judges, appellate judges, statewide officials, all of those campaign finance reports are online on the Ethics Commission website. Easily searchable. You type in my name, you can pull up my reports. You can even search for individual transactions. You can see, maybe there’s a group you want to know who they are funding. You can easily see every candidate they fund by searching those transactions. We can’t do that for our local elected officials, city councils, school boards, courts, special purpose districts or county officials. So, if you had the same question of whether or not some out of state group was funding your local county officials, it’s much more difficult to find. Last session, we changed it so they had to post their campaign finance reports online on their individual websites. So, Harris County is on the Harris County website. Brazoria County, on the Brazoria County website. But picture that a website for every single political subdivision in Texas. It’s thousands of them. You can’t just go to one place and search it. And, so, all my bill would simply do is, when you go on to the Ethics Commission website as a city councilman, you can fill out your ethics report. The Ethics Commission already comes up with the forms, interprets them, answers any questions they have. The local candidate has to click print right now, fill it out, get it notarized, and file it online. They scan it and they put it on a website. All I want to do is simply say you fill it out on the Ethics Commission website and click submit.
Lone Star Standard: Are there going to be efforts to increase transparency, like for public information?
Vasut: I had a bill that went through State Affairs last session, but ran out of time in the House with it and we might pursue it again, about making it easier to access government records and setting place some penalties for when certain things are not disclosed. I think it ought to be much easier. And, it should be really easy for individuals to access public information and, certainly, I think anything we can do to make that process of filing open records requests easier to do is a good thing. And, so, we’ll look at that and there’s a host of other things. The Ethics Commission itself is up for sunset this time around. And, so you’re going to have a host of things. On the campaign finance side and transparency side that they regulate, that’ll probably be up for discussion. I would be interested to see the Sunset Report when it comes out. There will be plenty of bills and issues on transparency this next session.
Lone Star Standard: Who is the House Parliamentarian and what do they do?
Vasut: The House parliamentarians are set out in the rules. They were changed in the 86th session to include up to two parliamentarians. They were appointed by the Speaker. We have, historically, maybe one parliamentarian historically affiliated with one of the parties. I’m not saying that’s definitely how it is, but historically that’s been the thought. And, so the parliamentarians, their role in the Texas House is really just to advise the Speaker and the members on issues of procedure. So they’re lawyers. They have an advisory role. And then they also have what I call a tribunal role. They sit up there when a point-of-order is called on a bill and a point-of-order is when a procedure has been violated. The members go up there and argue pro and con, for and against the point-of-order. And parliamentarians will listen to that. They will then consult the precedents of whether or not it’s a good point-of-order or not. If they think it’s a good one or bad, they will consult with the Speaker and they’ll tell the Speaker what they think. But it’s the Speaker that ultimately rules on the precedents. Typically, whatever the parliamentarians advise the Speaker, 99 times out of 100, the Speaker’s going to go that way. So, it matters. It’s very important who the parliamentarian is. It’s very important what the rules say. A lot of times we focus a lot on policy. Policy is critical. Policy is a good thing. When you’re on the floor of the House, policy does matter. But the procedures matter a lot too. It’s kind of like you step out of the policy arena and into the procedural arena when a bill makes it onto the floor of the House. I have seen dozens of bills rise or fall based off of arguments of one member on the floor of the House. That’s what the point-of-orders are all about. My role, traditionally, has been to defend conservative priorities against points-of-order on the floor of the House. I’m one of the few lawyers on our side that handles those. I think I argued more than 150 last session and I don’t know if that’s a record or not. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.
Representative Cody Vasut represents House District 25, which comprises southern and western Brazoria County. He currently serves as Vice Chair of the Business & Industry Committee and member of the Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence Committees. Rep. Vasut discusses the need for additional transparency with campaign finance records, affordable housing, potential changes to the house parliamentarian and points of order, and more.
This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Listen to the full discussion here: https://texas-talks.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-32-rep-cody-vasut.
