As of Jan. 30, a total of 11 bills have been filed relating to lobbying in the state House and Senate, with two being attached to Texas District 11 Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Wallisville, who represents Brazoria, Galveston and a part of Harris counties. The Texas Ethics Commission defines lobbying as “making direct communications with members of the legislative or executive branch of Texas state government to influence legislation or administrative action.”
Middleton filed a bill with a description stating “Relating to the use by a political subdivision of public funds for lobbying activities,” and another one described as “Relating to lobbying by former members of the legislature; creating a criminal offense.” He described the topic as an important issue for him for this legislative session.
“What [lobbying] does is it diminishes [voters’] voice, because someone's paying to lobby against the things that you believe in with your property taxes,” Middleton said.
Pearland Mayor Kevin Cole said it is important for the city of Pearland’s voice to be heard by lawmakers in Austin. He said he and the council rely on the Texas Municipal League, or TML, as a third party for vouching for the city’s needs at a state government level.
“When there's lobbyists for, you know, [phone companies] or some of these folks, and they've got 100 lobbyists coming against cities ... and we can't match that,” Cole said. “Number one, taxpayers don't want us to go hire 100 lobbyists; that would be wrong for us to do. But if there's any help through TML or anybody else to help with that, we need to have that voice.”
Friendswood Mayor Mike Foreman said the city has no need to employ lobbyists because it has state representatives that he trusts to speak for the city’s needs. He said if the state legislators categorize TML as lobbyists and minimized the group’s impact, it would harm the city officials’ method of staying informed on the state Legislature, also saying TML provides the city legal insurance.
“It wouldn't hurt me in the least if you said, ‘we're not going to let you pay any lobbyists and TML is excluded from that,’ because we still want to be able to use TML,” Foreman said.
