(C) Texas Tribune This story was originally published by Texas Tribune and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Blast: Fundraising and session worlds collide [1] [] Date: 2023-06 LINING UP TO LINE THEIR POCKETS Although there’s no sign the legislating’s coming to an end in the Capitol, the biennial moratorium on campaign contributions is about done, and lawmakers are wasting no time lining up fundraisers in the capital city. Members of the Legislature and their political committees are subject to the state’s moratorium on contributions every two years from the lead-up to the wind-down of the regular session. This cycle, that moratorium kicked in Dec. 11 and will lift after June 18. Already, lawmakers are setting their calendars for fundraising season. Rep. Valoree Swanson, R-Spring, will hold an event in the lobby of 919 Congress Avenue the afternoon of June 20. When that event ends, doors will open at a reception for Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, just around the corner at The Austin Club. Later that week and into the following week, at least a half-dozen other senators and representatives from both parties will hold fundraisers — as will Republican Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham. And those are just the ones that made it to my inbox. It’s the normal cycle for lawmakers — session, fundraise, campaign, rinse, repeat. However, this year, lawmakers have a packed schedule of special sessions plus the Senate impeachment trial of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton. Gov. Greg Abbott has said he will keep calling special sessions until lawmakers come to an agreement on property taxes and has confirmed there will be a future special session on school vouchers, not to mention potential special sessions on other pet projects. The House and Senate aren’t any closer to an agreement on property taxes than they were last week, so for now, the opportunities for a summer break look bleak. The moratorium on contributions is supposed to address the conflict of interest that would emerge from lawmakers and state officeholders passing laws with one hand while collecting cash with the other. However, those protections don’t continue into special sessions. According to Rice University professor Mark Jones, part of the logic could be that there’s less oversight to the regular session than during a special session, when lawmakers manage a handful of bills in a matter of weeks, not thousands over months. That makes it easier to track potential quid pro quos. However, in Jones’ eyes, the fundraising moratorium isn’t that effective at preventing interests from buying votes. What it does do is protect lawmakers and donors from engaging in activity that would undermine public trust in the legislative process. “The moratorium law does a good job creating a veneer of propriety during the legislative session and avoiding the most direct and transparent attempts to sway lawmakers via donations,” Jones told The Blast. “But at the end of the day, the lobbyists have sufficient time to give money before the session starts and after it, and during the session, they can signal to the lawmakers that they’ll be there to attend their events in the summer after the moratorium ends.” During special sessions, lawmakers and lobbyists have to police themselves because of how contributions might appear. It’s also about how lawmakers’ opponents view the transactions. Take, for example, Paxton’s trial. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick selected seven senators to research and present rules to govern that trial. That presentation will come on June 20. “If you were, say, Tim Dunn and wanted to try to make sure that the rules were crafted to benefit Paxton, you probably wouldn’t be giving money right then,” Jones said. “You would be talking to those people and telling them that you’d support them in the future.” Similarly, all eyes will be on the two dozen school voucher holdouts from the House Republican caucus, making large donations from pro-“school choice” groups unlikely. As for extending the fundraising ban to special sessions, doing so would give the governor a potential weapon against the Legislature: the power to call repeated special sessions to keep them on the chamber floor and out of swanky ballrooms. But it would be a double-edged sword. Not only are the governor and other statewide officeholders subject to those restrictions, it would limit how many special sessions the governor could call before lawmakers tell him to knock it off. [END] --- [1] Url: https://mailchi.mp/texastribune/the-blast-fundraising-and-session-worlds-collide Published and (C) by Texas Tribune Content appears here under this condition or license: Used with Permission: https://www.texastribune.org/republishing-guidelines/. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/texastribune/