Advocacy at the Texas Capitol: Five times Texans changed minds

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Cody Stephens, a Crosby High School senior, had deliberate to attend Tarleton State University on a soccer scholarship when he died of sudden cardiac arrest whereas asleep on his father’s recliner on May 6, 2012.

Months later, when Scott Stephens realized an electrocardiogram — a noninvasive check {of electrical} exercise in the coronary heart — may have saved his son, he made it his mission to get extra student-athletes screened.

It would take six years and 4 common legislative periods, however in 2019, the Texas Legislature handed a regulation that permits mother and father to go for their youngsters to get electrocardiograms as a part of the bodily exams required for student-athletes.

The Legislature strikes slowly, and it’s a lot simpler for a invoice to fail than to go. But civic engagement and advocacy from members of the public could make all the distinction in whether or not a invoice passes.

“You can’t just take a bill over there and expect it to pass the first time,” mentioned Scott Stephens, an actual property appraiser. “You got to kind of build your case. And you can’t quit. It’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon.”

Here are 5 times public enter or consideration changed the course of politics in the Texas Legislature.

A father works to detect coronary heart issues amongst student-athletes

With the assist of testifying medical doctors, coaches and oldsters, Scott Stephens started advocating for legislation to make coronary heart screenings a part of the bodily exams required for student-athletes except mother and father opted out.

In 2017, after two earlier makes an attempt, the laws died after prolonged debate amongst state representatives. Former state Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, who had filed the laws, took to the House ground to make a plea to fellow lawmakers.

“And so tonight as we go home and think about what we’ve done, I would ask that you pray for the Stephens family and that we adjourn tonight in the memory of Cody Stephens,” Huberty mentioned.

After that impassioned speech, Huberty mentioned he gained the help of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott in making the laws a precedence for the subsequent common legislative session.

“That’s really what it came down to, being able to explain why it’s important,” Huberty mentioned. “And legislation like that is meaningful because it impacts lives and impacts kids’ lives and impacts your constituents.”

In 2019, it was the first bill filed by Huberty. That was additionally a turning level for Scott Stephens, who agreed that 12 months to tweak the laws to make coronary heart screenings an opt-in for student-athletes.

Cody’s Law handed, serving to the Cody Stephens Foundation work with extra Texas faculty districts to offer free or extra inexpensive coronary heart screenings.

“I wasn’t gonna quit, and the state Legislature finally figured that out and helped me get it passed,” Scott Stephens mentioned.

Conservationists safe secure funding for state parks

In 2019, Texans voted overwhelmingly to enshrine in the Texas Constitution that each one income from the sporting items gross sales tax ought to fund state parks and historic websites.

It was the fruits of years of advocacy for Texas parks by conservationists like George Bristol.

The thought to fund parks with income from gross sales and use taxes on sporting items wasn’t new. In 1993, the Texas Legislature allowed all of that income to go to state parks and historic websites. But the Legislature typically used some of those collections to balance the state budget or fund other programs, and state parks had hassle maintaining with upkeep and plans for initiatives underneath fluctuating budgets, Bristol mentioned.

Advocates obtained the Legislature to provide all of the available sporting goods tax revenue to parks in 2015 and most of it in 2017, however they wished a everlasting resolution.

So, in 2019, they pushed for a constitutional modification, which requires two-thirds of votes from every chamber of the Legislature to be placed on the poll for remaining approval from voters.

By then, extra environmental and leisure teams, sporting items corporations, native leaders and Texans had joined the trigger.

“There were almost 100 groups that stood by the sporting goods tax legislation in 2019,” Bristol recalled.

The advocates wrote letters, confirmed as much as the Texas Capitol and obtained consideration from the news media — all with one message.

“We had very strict orders that everybody would be for the entire bill,” Bristol mentioned. “It worked. They all got behind it, stayed behind it.”

Former state Rep. John Cyrier, R-Lockhart, who authored the House model of the laws, started advocating for the invoice even earlier than lawmakers gaveled in for the legislative session.

He obtained a few of the strongest Democrats and Republicans, together with the chairs of the House appropriations and calendars committees, to champion the laws via a compromise permitting the sporting items income to be redirected towards different makes use of throughout an emergency if two-thirds of every chamber accepted it.

He additionally satisfied all different state representatives to signal on to the laws. When he couldn’t attain a fellow lawmaker, he obtained advocates and constituents in that individual’s district to name and draw consideration to the laws, he mentioned.

“It’s definitely a success story on how to push big legislation through,” he mentioned.

Parents cut back state exams for highschool college students

In the fall of 2012, Theresa Treviño obtained a discover about adjustments to the state’s testing program from the principal of the Austin highschool her son went to and her daughter was slated to attend.

High school students would soon be required to pass 15 state standardized tests, referred to as end-of-course exams, to graduate.

Treviño, a toddler and adolescent psychiatrist, teamed up with a number of different mothers who had authorized expertise and commenced researching how different states carried out state assessments. They discovered Texas’ to be an outlier in the excessive variety of exams it required.

So Treviño and the mothers created the nonpartisan group Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment and commenced touring throughout the state to tell mother and father of the adjustments and attainable repercussions for college kids who failed exams.

They obtained a “groundswell” of fogeys to write down to their legislators, Trevino mentioned, and held stakeholder conferences that included educators and businesspeople.

“It just kind of got everyone within their own circles to meet and to talk about what it is that we were doing in our state and how this was affecting our students,” Treviño mentioned.

In the 2013 legislative session, the group met with elected officers and labored to search out widespread floor with the chairs of the House and Senate training committees, who then launched laws to scale back the variety of high-stakes exams and alter curriculum necessities for commencement.

During hearings, college students from throughout the state spoke earlier than lawmakers. And as lawmakers hashed out variations to finalize the laws, the group persevered.

“We were calling everybody we could think of,” Treviño mentioned. “We were slamming their phones.”

In the finish, lawmakers and the governor signed off on legislation that required solely 5 end-of-course exams.

“We were amazed that we were able to succeed,” Treviño mentioned.

Laredoans create a global college

When Democratic state Sen. Judith Zaffirini first ran for workplace, one in all her foremost motivations was to create a four-year college for Laredo. After repeatedly touring about 240 miles to earn her doctoral diploma from the University of Texas at Austin whereas working in Laredo, she joined many others in advocating for a neighborhood college.

“I didn’t want Laredoans to have to work that hard to get a Ph.D.,” she mentioned. “And I wished a regional college that might serve the area, but additionally entice folks from different components of the state and even different nations.”

At the time, Laredo State University was deemed an upper-level “center” of training in Texas regulation. It was allowed to serve solely juniors, seniors and grasp’s college students and confronted finances cuts and rumors that lawmakers had been contemplating closing it, Zaffirini mentioned.

This galvanized tons of of Laredoans who defended the university in 1986. And when Zaffirini was elected that 12 months, she gave herself 10 years to go laws to make it a four-year college.

In 1987, she and different Laredo lawmakers succeeded in removing the term “center” in reference to the college and established it as a extra everlasting establishment underneath the governance of the Texas Legislature.

But it could take six extra years for Zaffirini to go laws permitting the college to serve freshmen and sophomores, starting in 1995. That laws renamed the campus to Texas A&M International University, opened up extra funding alternatives and allowed it to finally serve doctoral college students.

“The people of Laredo and nearby area were very, very organized and very effective in advocating for that bill,” Zaffirini mentioned. “Groups went to Austin repeatedly to testify to meet with members. They were informed, they were prepared and they were persuasive.”

LGBTQ advocates protest anti-trans “bathroom bill”

In 2017, conservative Texas Republicans, together with Patrick, pushed for a “bathroom bill” to control which public restrooms transgender folks may use.

It wasn’t shocking to Lou Weaver and different transgender Texans who had seen voters in Houston in 2015 reject a local anti-discrimination ordinance after its conservative opponents claimed it could have allowed males to enter girls’s restrooms.

By 2017, Weaver had labored to create a extra politically energetic and visual trans neighborhood in Houston and the state with organizations like Equality Texas.

In February of that 12 months, Weaver — then the transgender packages coordinator for Equality Texas — held an occasion to assist trans folks and oldsters of trans folks learn to share their tales with news media and foyer lawmakers.

And as lawmakers started to debate a toilet invoice, over 100 folks confirmed as much as the Capitol to oppose it throughout a foyer day. At the subsequent foyer day, tons of of individuals joined.

“It just became like a snowball,” Weaver mentioned. “And people just kept coming back.”

People at the Capitol visited with lawmakers who had been keen to speak whereas Texans elsewhere contacted their native elected officers. Public officers, police chiefs, main companies and tourism officers additionally opposed the invoice, cautioning that it may distract police from combating violent crime and damage the Texas economic system.

During hearings for the laws, transgender Texans, households and allies gave hours of emotional testimony, warning that such a invoice would endanger already susceptible Texans.

Rachel Gonzales, one in all the mother and father who had educated with Weaver, waited as much as 14 hours along with her 6-year-old trans daughter and child to testify in a listening to and went back several times.

“It was brutal,” she mentioned. “It was also one of the most incredible days because it brought so many community members together and really got them invested in the fight.”

That willpower gave Weaver hope, as did seeing a lawmaker who had been on the fence specific help for transgender Texans.

“Knowing that our narratives had been able to change and influence a senator’s mind so she had the knowledge to know why it was so important that this bathroom bill didn’t pass, it was one of the most amazing moments,” he mentioned.

In the House, then-Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, held steadfast, blocking the laws from transferring ahead. And regardless of a last-ditch try and go the toilet invoice throughout a particular session, the legislation died.

Disclosure: Equality Texas, Texas A&M International University and University of Texas at Austin have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that’s funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no function in the Tribune’s journalism. Find an entire list of them here.