August 13, 2005

Texans on NCSL Seattle Program Find Travel
Plans Touch-and-Go Amid Session Uncertainty

Several Texas lawmakers who are scheduled to have prominent roles in the National Conference of State Legislatures annual meeting in Seattle next week won't know until Tuesday whether they're also supposed to be in Austin at the same time for a final potential vote on a school finance package.

The state's biggest star at the Washington state event will be State Senator Leticia Van de Putte if she makes it there after missing a vote last week on the Senate's latest school funding plan while vacationing in Bermuda. The San Antonio Democrat is set to become the first Hispanic to ever be named president-elect of the national bipartisan policy organization. No other Texan has ever been honored with that distinction.

Van de Putte, who is the immediate past president of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, may also be the first pharmacist with six children to ever serve as NCSL's president-elect and the first officer of that stature in the organization to have ever led a month-long Senate boycott after fleeing the state to block debate a congressional redistricting bill. As the Senate Democratic Caucus chair, Van de Putte organized an escape from Austin by air to Albuquerque where she and 10 other Senate Democrats spent part of the summer two years ago in order to deny Republicans a quorum needed to bring up the GOP's remap plan.

But Van de Putte may find an escape to Seattle to be more problematical. She plans to be in Austin for the start of the week - and her travel plans will be touch and go until she gets a better idea whether the Legislature will sine die early or keep working through the week until the special session must end.

Van de Putte will be one step away from NCSL president - a position she will assume in 2006. The NCSL vice-president for the past year, Van de Putte will be replacing State Senator Steve Rauschenberger, an Illinois Republican, as the new president-elect. Rauschenberger and Van de Putte, who is the immediate past president of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, are scheduled to lead a Monday meeting of the Executive Committee Task Force on State and Local Taxation of Telecommunications and Electronic Commerce as the panel's co-chairs.

The list of Texans who are slated to speak at the annual meeting program includes State Senator Troy Fraser of Horseshoe Bay and State Reps. Todd Baxter of Austin, Helen Giddings of Dallas and Aaron Pena of Edinburg. Fraser and Baxter are Republicans while Giddings and Pena are Democrats.

Texas lawmakers who've served on NCSL committees during the past year include State Senators Todd Staples of Palestine and Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio and State Reps. Warren Chisum of Pampa and Rob Eissler of The Woodlands.

But the Texas delegation to Seattle isn't expected to be as big as it would have been had the Legislature not been meeting in a special session that could go on until midnight Friday - the final day of a week-long NCSL meeting. More than 100 Texas legislators had tentatively planned to make the trip, which they can bill to the state. But that number has dropped considerably amid the possibility that the Legislature may still be in session during the NCSL event, according to news reports.