County Government Designed To Fail
Roy Maynard
Sheriff J.B. Smith called me last week with an epiphany.
"I get it now," he said. "County government was designed to fail. They didn't want it to work."
He'd just had lunch with a supporter who is something of an amateur historian; they discussed the Texas Constitution and the fractured power structure at the county level.
I looked into it, and J.B. is right. County government, in its present configuration, is the very definition of "decentralized power."
There's a reason for that. Following the Civil War, Texas was governed by a Reconstruction administration. As in other Southern states, the "Radical Republicans" and carpetbaggers were heavy-handed and, at times, tyrannical.
That doesn't sit well with Texans.
"Reconstruction, under the highly centralized and relatively autocratic administration of Gov. Edmund J. Davis and his fellow Radical Republicans, prompted provisions to decentralize the state government," says the ever-useful Handbook of Texas Online (a project of the Texas State Historical Association).
"Upon regaining control of both the legislative and executive branches of the government, the Democrats determined in 1874 to replace the unpopular Constitution of 1869," it says.
Many of the goals sound familiar to Texans today.
"They wanted all officials elected for shorter terms and lower salaries, abolition of voter registration, local control of schools, severely limited powers for both the Legislature and the governor, low taxation and state expenditures, strict control over corporations, and land subsidies for railroads," the Handbook explains.
Voters called a constitutional convention for 1875, and each senatorial district sent three representatives.
"In the convention, which convened on Sept. 6, 75 members were Democrats and 15, including six blacks, were Republicans," according to the Handbook.
The document they produced is not easy to read.
"The Constitution's more than 63,000 words make it one of the most verbose of state constitutions," the Handbook says. "Its wealth of detail causes it to resemble a code of laws rather than a constitution. Its many requirements and limitations on both state and local governments make it one of the most restrictive among state constitutions. Some of its passages are so poorly drafted as to need clarification for understanding, and others have been declared by the Texas Supreme Court to be beyond interpreting."
One thing it did accomplish was decentralization of powers, at both the state level and the county level. It did so by spreading out the power.
Most public officials are elected - and therefore, answerable only to the voters.
That's very different from, say, city government. A city is organized in a pyramid structure. At the top, is one person who runs things. In most cases, that's a city manager. He, in turn, answers to a city council, which answers to the voters. But the management structure is clear and direct.
Not so with counties. If a city is like a pyramid, a county is like a small mountain range, with lots of different peaks. Because so many county officials are elected, no one answers to anyone else.
County commissioners, for example, set the budgets for other elected officials. But they can't set policy for those officials. Other elected officials set their own policies (in accordance with their constitutional duties), but can't levy taxes to pay for their own departments.
So in theory, everyone has to work together.
But this is Texas, and we're individualists. We can also be a bit hard-headed. The end result is that county government stalls as often as it starts, and it struggles along in a dysfunctional manner.
But that's what the framers of the Constitution intended.
"It all makes sense now," J.B. says. "It's not just here."
Early Returns is the political observations column of staff writer Roy Maynard, who can be reached at 903-596-6291 or at roymaynardtmt@gmail.com.
"I get it now," he said. "County government was designed to fail. They didn't want it to work."
He'd just had lunch with a supporter who is something of an amateur historian; they discussed the Texas Constitution and the fractured power structure at the county level.
I looked into it, and J.B. is right. County government, in its present configuration, is the very definition of "decentralized power."
There's a reason for that. Following the Civil War, Texas was governed by a Reconstruction administration. As in other Southern states, the "Radical Republicans" and carpetbaggers were heavy-handed and, at times, tyrannical.
That doesn't sit well with Texans.
"Reconstruction, under the highly centralized and relatively autocratic administration of Gov. Edmund J. Davis and his fellow Radical Republicans, prompted provisions to decentralize the state government," says the ever-useful Handbook of Texas Online (a project of the Texas State Historical Association).
"Upon regaining control of both the legislative and executive branches of the government, the Democrats determined in 1874 to replace the unpopular Constitution of 1869," it says.
Many of the goals sound familiar to Texans today.
"They wanted all officials elected for shorter terms and lower salaries, abolition of voter registration, local control of schools, severely limited powers for both the Legislature and the governor, low taxation and state expenditures, strict control over corporations, and land subsidies for railroads," the Handbook explains.
Voters called a constitutional convention for 1875, and each senatorial district sent three representatives.
"In the convention, which convened on Sept. 6, 75 members were Democrats and 15, including six blacks, were Republicans," according to the Handbook.
The document they produced is not easy to read.
"The Constitution's more than 63,000 words make it one of the most verbose of state constitutions," the Handbook says. "Its wealth of detail causes it to resemble a code of laws rather than a constitution. Its many requirements and limitations on both state and local governments make it one of the most restrictive among state constitutions. Some of its passages are so poorly drafted as to need clarification for understanding, and others have been declared by the Texas Supreme Court to be beyond interpreting."
One thing it did accomplish was decentralization of powers, at both the state level and the county level. It did so by spreading out the power.
Most public officials are elected - and therefore, answerable only to the voters.
That's very different from, say, city government. A city is organized in a pyramid structure. At the top, is one person who runs things. In most cases, that's a city manager. He, in turn, answers to a city council, which answers to the voters. But the management structure is clear and direct.
Not so with counties. If a city is like a pyramid, a county is like a small mountain range, with lots of different peaks. Because so many county officials are elected, no one answers to anyone else.
County commissioners, for example, set the budgets for other elected officials. But they can't set policy for those officials. Other elected officials set their own policies (in accordance with their constitutional duties), but can't levy taxes to pay for their own departments.
So in theory, everyone has to work together.
But this is Texas, and we're individualists. We can also be a bit hard-headed. The end result is that county government stalls as often as it starts, and it struggles along in a dysfunctional manner.
But that's what the framers of the Constitution intended.
"It all makes sense now," J.B. says. "It's not just here."
Early Returns is the political observations column of staff writer Roy Maynard, who can be reached at 903-596-6291 or at roymaynardtmt@gmail.com.
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