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It takes a lot of work to become an informed citizen & to understand how things work. For example, the budget for the City of Dallas FY 2019-2020 is 656 pages long! Thank goodness for executive summary sections. https://dallascityhall.com/departments/budget/financialtransparency/AnnualBudget/FY2019-20Budget/FY%202019-20%20Adopted%20Budget.pdf
I also found out that Texas lawmakers make just $600/month. When the legislature is in session, they get a per diem of $190/day. Those amounts are specified in the Texas Constitution, which also limits the regular session to 140 days/year...
Behind this salary/payment structure is a long tradition of this idea of a “citizen legislature” whose positions are viewed not as full-time jobs but community service. The more I think about this, though, the more I see the socioeconomic bias built into it.
Which citizens can actually be part of such a citizen legislature? People who have a financial safety net—they are independently wealthy or have a spouse who makes enough to support the family, or they own their own businesses.
Working class people can’t afford to take 4-6 months off work while the legislature is in session and expect to stay employed. The structure is untenable. So their interests end up being way underrepresented in the lawmaking, policy writing process.
I’ve often wondered why Texas politics has a certain flavor to it—one that often favors the interests of wealthy white land owners over others—when the state is so diverse. I feel like this kind of sheds some light on that.
People freak out about defunding the police (whose practices benefit wealthy white land owners) but don’t realize that state and local governments have been defunding education (that benefits people who can’t afford private schools) in all kinds of “creative” ways for decades.
