Lawmakers Advance Bill that They'd Been
Conned into Hatching with Staffer's Lies

Capitol Inside
May 4, 2021

The Texas Senate moved forward on Tuesday with legislation that was conceived last week as a show of solidarity for a female staffer who'd been conning them at the time with false claims about a lobbyist spiking her drink with a date rape drug at a club near the Capitol.

The proposal that's packaged as Senate Bill 2233 would require sexual harassment and ethics training for lobbyists at the Texas Capitol as a condition of their registration with the state. SB 2233 was approved on Monday with a unanimous vote in the State Affairs Committee a week after its filing by Democratic State Senator Jose Menendez of San Antonio with most of his colleagues as co-sponsors.

After showing signs of stalling in the Senate committee after an initial hearing last week, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick set SB 2233 for a date on the floor on the local and uncontested calendar that makes it possible to pass the measure without debate. The State Affairs Committee approved the measure on a 9-0 vote that qualified it for a trip to the floor with the fastest route

The lower chamber has its own version of the proposal in House Bill 4611 - a measure that Democratic State Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston guided through the State Affairs Committee on Thursday with a unanimous vote as well. The Thompson measure hadn't moved since the committee vote by the close of business on Tuesday.

More than a dozen lobbyists registered their support for Menendez bill at the hearing on Thursday when none actually testified before the committee on the measure. Four representatives for the Wholesale Beer Association signed on as supporters as well. Some of the lobbyists who publicly endorsed SB 2233 could be falling on the sword for legislative leaders who have the ability to create the appearance of support for legislation on fast tracks.

The lobbyists who pinned their names on SB 2233 could sincerely believe that professional peers need to be trained not to abuse or to harass women in the workplace. Sexual harassment training has been a major weapon for the #MeToo movement that was conceived in Hollywood before spreading to government towns like Austin where accusations of sexually disrespectful behavior that were lodged against a couple of lawmakers who are Democrats in 2017.

The House and Senate both tightened their rules at the start of the 2019 regular session with sexual harassment training requirements for lawmakers and the people on their staffs. But sexual harassment training has been required for all state employees in Texas since 1999 along with employment discrimination education.

The Republican-controlled Legislature had rejected attempts to force sexual harassment training in the private workplace until the hasty filing of the bills that would open the door to potential statewide mandates. SB 2233 and its House counterpart have the potential to be unconstitutional as measures that single out a singular profession for new regulations based on a problem that's no worse in the lobby here than it is among doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers and other independent professionals.

The jump-start for the Menendez plan is a highly risky move that will be viewed inside the statehouse beltway as a way to minimize the embarrassment and shame that many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle should be feeling after learning that the allegations had been a lie with the findings of a police investigation that cleared the suspect and the lobby firm HillCo Partners where he works of any wrongdoing.

HillCo's lawyers have said they can prove that the firm had been targeted in a set up that the accusers' wild allegations had sparked.

more to come ...

 

 

 

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