Capitol Controversy

On Wednesday Representative Drew Darby and Senator Robert Duncan came to San Angelo to discuss the 80th Legislative Session with residents and city officials. However, they also talked about the chaos that took place in the House of Representatives this week. KSAN's Jason Calder reports.

Emotions were at the point of no return on Monday as several state representatives spoke out to try to oust Speaker of the House Tom Craddick. Numerous representatives broke party lines to start a renegade revolt. The news passed quickly and soon it made it to the Senate floor.

Senator Robert Duncan said, "Well it was the best show in town I mean as far as the antics that were used."

However, not everyone left the floor.

"This is an abomination and a pox upon the house," said District 72 Representative Drew Darby. "We have an orderly and prescribed way to elect the speaker. It's done every January. You get 76 votes, you cast your vote, you elect a speaker and that issue is put to bed until next session." 

Darby was one of 94 that didn't leave the floor. He said the revolt happened at one of the worst times it could happen, the last day of the session.

He said, "SB 3, our water bill, our sunset on our corrections system. Do you know that if we hadn't passed a bill at 10:00 on Monday night, two hours from the deadline, that we would have had to come back at great expense to the state of Texas for a special session just for our criminal justice system? Our whole criminal justice system would have sunseted and so we would have had to come back and try to revive that."

Luckily cooler heads prevailed and they were able to pass several important bills before the deadline. So what was the reason for walk out? Darby says it was about future power issues and not about Craddick or this session.

"I want everybody to know this is not about the 80th session. This is about the 82nd session which will be in 2011 which will be in charge of redistricting," said Darby.

Now that the revolt is over everyone can focus on the job both the House and Senate did during the 80th session.

"We had a good session. The only concern I had was that all the hype around that overshadows some of the really good things that were accomplished by the Texas Legislature, both House and Senate," said Duncan.

Now House Representatives will have to wait until January before making a decision on Craddick.