Sixth Street Shootout Could Have Swayed
Veto Decisions on Juvenile Justice Reform

Capitol Inside
June 20, 2021

Governor Greg Abbott had given the sponsors no signs or hints of problems that he might have with a juvenile criminal redemption bill that had produced one of the most eloquent oratories at the Texas Capitol during the regular session this year.

House Bill 686 had been a masterpiece in the art of compromise - a measure designed to give kids a second chance at lives as law-abiding adult by reducing the time they have to wait before becoming eligible for parole after breaking bad as juveniles. But the measure had cleared the Legislature two weeks before a gunfight that left one dead and 15 injured after erupting in downtown Austin last weekend.

With one suspect who's 17 years old and a second who's even younger, Abbott might have decided that it would be a bad time to look like he'd gone soft on violent crime in a way that might eventually benefit at least one of the young gunmen on Sixth Street. That could explain why he vetoed HB 686 and another juvenile justice reform measure this weekend.

The Republican governor killed 20 bills with the red pen on Friday night after a line-item veto the day before that wiped out the Legislature's biennial budget in a show of revenge for the death of a GOP election restrictions package in the House. The deadline for signing or vetoing legislation is Sunday night.

A half dozen Abbott veto pen victims had passed with unanimous support. But the other 14 bills that Abbott vetoed this weekend had drawn some degree of opposition from conservatives in the Texas House.

With Abbott eyeing a potential bid for president in 2021 and catering increasingly to Donald Trump's base on the hard right as a result, a smattering of dissent from conservative lawmakers in either chamber might have been all the governor needed to see in the deliberations on whether bills would live or die.

Two-thirds of the bills that Abbott vetoed focused on the criminal justice system and issues like domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, dog cruelty and hazing on Texas university campuses.

Two of the bills that the governor nullified this weekend - House Bill 1193 and HB 686 - had been aimed at giving young people who've committed crimes better shots at fresh start that they needed to be productive adults. HB 1193 would have given juvenile courts the ability to have the records of certain offenders sealed as a way to keep the transgression of youth from following them throughout their lives.

Abbott actually appeared to be making a case for HB 1193 in the opening line in the veto proclamation on the measure that a pair of Houston Democrats in State Rep. Gene Wu and State Senator John Whitmire had guided through the west and east wings.

"People who commit youthful indiscretions should have the opportunity to turn their lives around and not be burdened by a criminal record as an adult," Abbott explained. But the governor said the state already had laws on the books that allow juveniles to "clear their records in appropriate circumstances" - and he said that HB 1193 would have made it possible for people who commit "serious violent crimes to hide their acts from society" if it hadn't died with a red pen stroke.

HB 686 had been a more unique story - however - having had GOP Speaker Dade Phelan on board from the outset and a belated green light from Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick in a move that paved the way for the measure's passage in the upper chamber during the session's final week.

Democratic State Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso had passed HB 686 on its first trip through the House with 39 Republicans voting against the measure. Patrick appeared to be holding the bill hostage for more than a month in the Senate where Democratic State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. had been carrying the proposal.

But Whitmire saved the measure on the floor with an amendment that brought most of the Republicans on board in the nick of time for a final vote in the House. GOP State Senator Jane Nelson of Flower Mound cast the lone vote of dissent on HB 686.

After requesting a conference committee that Phelan and Patrick would appoint on May 28, the House discharged the negotiating panel two days later with a vote to concur in the Senate changes with only six conservatives in the dissent.

Abbott even praised HB 686 as admirable and agreed that it was needed in the formal explanation on the veto that he attributed to a relatively innocuous provision dealing with jury instructions.

Abbott sunk another piece of legislation that have strengthened state restrictions on the restraint of dogs in an effort to protect them them from cruel treatment by owners. Abbott noted that "Texans love their dogs" in a veto proclamation on Senate Bill 474 - a measure that Democratic State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville had shepherded to the governor's desk with Democratic State Rep. Nicole Collier as the sponsor in the lower chamber in regular session this year.

SB 474 had strong support from law enforcement, officials in the state's major cities and animal rights advocates.

But Abbott asserted that the state already has sufficient laws on the books to prevent "true animal cruelty" in the formal justification on the SB 474 veto - portraying the measure as an act of bureaucratic overreach with restrictions that were tantamount to nitpicking.

"Texas is no place for this kind of micro-managing and over-criminalization," Abbott said in a veto proclamation on the pet protection measure.