Bill To Close Office Of State-Federal Relations Before Committee This Morning

The House Defense Affairs & State Federal-Relations will consider legislation in a public hearing this morning to close the Office of State-Federal Relations and merge its functions with the governor’s office.

The bill, HB 2102 by Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham), essentially follows the Sunset Advisory Commission’s earlier recomendation (report) to ashcan the OSFR and combine its functions with the Governor’s Office.

Although Texas Governor Rick Perry has previously halted contracts with the Abramoff-tied lobby firms his office had previously hired to lobby Congress, the Kolkhorst bill does nothing to prevent new lobby contracts from being signed by the Governor’s Office and provides only minimal oversight mechanisms for such contracts.

It’s always been difficult to fathom why Texas needed paid lobbyists given that we have 32 members of Congress and two U.S. Senators. Now, with the closing the Office of State Federal Relations and vesting of its powers and duties to the governors, this would place a considerable amount of control in the hands of the governor over both what the state’s “Congressional agenda” is and who lobbies for them.

This is pretty much the extent of the oversight provisions in Kolkhorst’s bill:

(1)  guidelines regarding contract management;
(2)  a competitive procurement process and method to assess the effectiveness of a prospective consultant;
(3)  a technique for assigning a value to a prospective consultant’s ability to provide services at a reasonable price and level of experience;
(4)  a process for determining a prospective consultant’s ability to work with influential members of the United States Congress and serve as an effective advocate on behalf of the state; and
(5)  a method to verify that the interests of a prospective consultant or the consultant’s other clients do not create a conflict of interest that may jeopardize the state’s interest.

Of course, what the “guidelines,” “methods,” “techniques,” and “process” actually are or would be remains to be seen. Since the legislation doesn’t spell them out (and, admittedly, that would be quite a lot to spell out)  it is presumed the Governor’s internal political appointees would get to write the “guidelines,” determine the “methods,” create the “techniques,” and “design the “process.” It’s not exactly a textbook case of governmental accountability we’re talking about here.

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