March 14, 2001

Against HB 1113 (Goolsby)

Against public financing of police union lobbying

Written testimony by Scott Henson, ACLU of Texas

Summary

HB 1113 (Goolsby) orders municipalities to create “legislative leave accounts” for police unions, and allows police officers to donate up to 24 hours of vacation or comp time each year up to 4,000 total hours to be used, presumably, for lobbying at the state and local level. The bill applies only to municipalities with a population over one million that have not adopted chapter 143 of the local government code, which are the Texas Municipal Civil Service laws.

* * *

Essentially, this bill requires cities (or a city – clearly some narrow subset is being carved out) to finance lobbying of themselves and you, the Texas Legislature, by local police associations. Police unions already wield impressive power in local elections. This bill would allow each union local to have two full-time lobbyists paid for by the citizens. These would be full-time officers who protect and serve no one but the union’s political interests.

Police unions and local prosecutors are the principal powers in the politics of law enforcement, and the relatively powerless taxpayers, whose concerns are neither solicited nor represented, finance both these powerful lobbies. President Bush has argued in recent campaign finance reform debates that union members should not be required to finance union lobbying efforts with which they don’t agree. Surely, even a stronger argument may be made that the taxpayers should not be forced to do so.

Taxpayers should not have to finance lobbyists who don’t share their interests. That’s why state agencies cannot lobby the Texas Legislature, and why national laws governing the constitutional subordination of the military to civilian government strictly prohibit armed forces personnel from openly participating in politics as such.

The precedent set by allowing this arrangement in other cities cited in the Office of House Bill Analysis summary were ill-advised, and this practice should not be extended.