ACUTV proudly presents
On Campus with your host, ACU
vice president and dean of campus life,
Dr. Gary McCaleb.
Here's Gary Bootcamps today.
We're pleased to welcome Weston, where
he is the associate director of the
Christian Life Commission and visiting
at the present time or have been in
Abilene to talk with the Taft Institute.
We're glad to have you in Abilene and
appreciate you coming out and being with
the Taft Institute.
Thank you very much.
It's good to be here again.
I've been here several years and
and always enjoy the group.
You might help us at the beginning
by explaining a little bit about what the
Christian Life Commission is and
your role with K?
I work with the Baptist
General Convention of Texas in an
agency called the Christian Life
Commission, which is assigned
the area of working in
the ethical side of
the Christian faith.
What what do you do with your Christian
faith and daily work
in race relations, church
and state?
What does Christian faith mean
in Austin in the political scene?
What does it mean when you have to talk
about AIDS or when you have
to talk about the abortion
regulations?
Or what does it mean in terms
of public policy for the state
in public education
and all of those areas?
And one of the you
know, we we speak to Texas
Baptists, but don't necessarily
speak for Texas Baptist.
And the commission is a board of
15 men and women, laypersons
and pastors, that that sits
together to work through issues
and to challenge Baptists
and others in the state
to put the best Christian
face, if you if you will, on those
issues.
And I am a registered
lobbyist and work a good deal in Austin
and and also try
to work with churches across the state
on issues that vary
as much as from, say,
welfare issues, AFDC
issues to opposition
to gambling are
working on passing a piece of legislation
to prohibit drinking and driving that
kind of thing.
And perhaps we'll have a chance a little
later get back and talk about some of
those specific issues and how they affect
specific pieces of legislation.
But you mentioned the term lobbyist.
All I know is that is that the role in
which you find the focus for most of
your area of work?
Well, the I am a
lobbyist.
And spend about two days, I guess,
a week in Austin,
the we have another staff person who's
there full time in Austin, assistant
to me, and
but the role of lobbyist is simply
the role of promoting
a given public policy,
doing what you can to either
encourage the passing of a given piece
of legislation or the defeat
of a given piece of legislation.
Unfortunately, over the years, I think a
lot of people have have associated
negative connotations with the role
of lobbyist. And yet I know that
I've talked with congressmen,
with senators, with representatives
who who really have a very high
regard for, I guess, what you'd
call the best
lobbyist or the lobbying function
in the proper way.
Well, sometimes we're called the third
house because of
the influence that lobbyists
exercise.
Now, there's a lot there's lots
of ways to lobby.
And all good lobbyists
do it with personal relationships
and friendship and
and providing information
and knowledge.
You realize that these legislators
look at five thousand
bills in a session.
You know, a guy decides to read all the
bills. He goes crazy.
If he decides to read all the bills in
his committee, he has a difficult
time.
One of the jokes is that after the third
session, the representative said, well,
this time I'm going to read all the bills
that I introduced.
You know, it's it's hard
to to do that.
And what a lobbyist does
is to provide good
information, honest
information to legislators
on given areas.
We try to provide information in
areas that we have, expertize
largely, if you will, human
services issues, things
like we're very concerned about
the welfare of children in Texas,
child abuse in Texas.
We're very concerned that Texas
does not need
additional outlets for gambling
in the state. We don't see that is a
benefit to the state.
So we try to provide as lobbyists
good information to
legislators on those issues
to enable them to make decisions.
And in some cases, we might try to help
write a bill or participate in
writing amendments to bills that are
under consideration and
as a, if you
will, a church lobbyist.
And there the Texas Conference of
Churches has a couple
of persons there.
We are there.
There are others that are involved
and in being, if you will, Human
Services, church type
lobbyist.
We we are concerned
that we can't lobby with money.
We don't have money to give in terms
of political contributions and that kind
of thing. So we try to lobby with
good information
and also we lobby from
the district.
That is, we have a constituency,
for example, Baptist churches in Abilene
or, you know, if we were
if we were lobbying our good friend Bob
Hunter here in Abilene, we would likely
call ACU and ask you
to to speak to Bob about
a given issue that was of concern to us,
as well as going personally to him
in what you might call the
evolution of a bill, or,
in other words, the life of a bill from
its beginning to
its final stages of adoption.
It goes through a lot of different phases
of the process in committee, out
of committee, into the
House, onto the Senate.
So all of those different things are
there. Are there key times
in the life of a bill over that process
that that is the
is the most important time for a lobbyist
to to introduce
his information or his feelings about
that?
I think the lobbyist is if he can,
it's got to be there first.
You know, if if you're there in the
beginning, for example, in
this session, I had a person write me an
email saying we would like to get a
certain thing passed.
And, you know, it was too
late to even consider
that kind of legislation in this session.
So you've got to begin a year ahead to
build your coalition to define
your ideas, define your bill
sponsor, to come to agreements
with him or her so that you're
putting all of these things together.
And often it takes one
year, you introduce
it and maybe it's two years later
that you might pass the bill
because it takes a certain amount of
educ. Heating of the House
and the Senate to a concept to
to pass it into law.
So are you saying if if
a bill has already come out of committee,
that then it's too late for you to expect
to have very you can you can still
you can still influence
bills very significantly with
with amendments.
But if
you have to do that,
unless you've done it intentionally, you
may have waited too long
because you may not you may not get
your amendment in. There are various
reasons why in the last
couple of weeks of the session, this last
time, bills were changed
radically.
And that's not necessarily
good for the process because things
happen. Even the bill's sponsor doesn't
know what's happening to his bill
and maybe he doesn't even like
his bill after it's ready to pass.
So
I would say the good lobbyist
has his his input
as early as possible.
Now, one of the functions of the
legislature is not just to pass bills,
but also to to reject
bad ones.
Yeah. You know, there's an awful lot of
legislation that's passed
that's passed, but there's an awful lot
more that is rejected.
And so it's really
probably more easy
to defeat a bill
unless it's really a good a good idea
then to pass a bill.
That's one reason we have
you know, you've got to have a two thirds
margin to pass a constitutional
amendment. It's hard to do that.
And and it ought to be hard.
Shouldn't it be hard?
Yes, it was meant to be hard.
Right.
Does it bother you you're talking about
the volume of bills that
one representative may have to be dealing
with? Does it bother you to think that
one man
may be down there and going to vote
against something, a piece of legislation
that you think's important?
And he's never read that bill?
It does.
It does bother me.
But at the same time,
those of us who are concerned
about good policy
for the state need to
influence our legislators.
And they hear us.
They respond to the people from
their home districts.
If if we say
this is important,
you need to know about this, then
they will read it.
Because most bills nobody's saying
that about most bills are
not significant. And I, I can think of
some bills that passed that I didn't
think people read.
And I was angry about it.
But I, I only had
myself to blame because
I had not done my
part in those instances
to say to those legislators
who voted for that what I considered a
bad piece of legislation, I didn't
really let them know
fully what I thought about that
legislation.
So there's a mutual responsibility
that works in this thing.
And it's not just that those guys down
there are are doing
bad things.
We are all in this process
together. We elected those men.
They're down there to represent us and
are representing us well in
most cases.
And and
but they do need to hear from us
in their home districts.
Now, speaking of hearing from you, you
can take you can multiply that same
effect, because if you talk about all the
bills that they're trying to read or
have have or have not read
the sheer volume of those.
And then you add to that the sheer volume
of people who are wanting to talk
to them about each one of those bills.
You get into another time crunch
time crunch on behalf of that senator
or that representative who has
all of these people who are each wanting
to talk to him about their particular
bill. So how important
is it in each case for you to
have had an opportunity to talk to one
on one, face to face every
one of those potential voters?
Well, for a politician.
People is like food,
they like to be touched, they like to be
called, they like to be encouraged
if if you like to vote.
Of all of your representative
on an issue, let him know
if you let him know twice, he'll remember
you and
and your influence will grow
in that kind of that kind of thing.
Now, for
some issues, you know, the gambling
issue has been a very big issue and lots
of legislators have heard from lots of
people on the issue.
Other issues are
not so big in a in a in a dozen
letters.
On an issue, might be might appear
to be an avalanche,
you know, this year, one of the things we
tried to do was to encourage
increase, slight increase
in funding for protective services
workers, for child
abuse victims.
Texas only serves 45
percent of the children
that we know.
Are either physically or sexually
abused by investigative report,
because we don't have enough budget
and enough staff, one
of the things that we did was to work
through churches in the state to
communicate to legislators,
to give a small increase
in that budget and in the midst
of all of the pressures to go down and
to cut and all of that, I think we
will have achieved a small increase
in the protective services rather
than the kind of devastating
cuts that can occur now
if people in the home districts get
concerned about an issue like child
abuse, AFDC,
abortion, regulation,
or whatever the concerns are that they
have, they need
to learn how to communicate
to that representative's office,
not necessarily with him every time,
but with that staff aide to
to share ideas, to write an intelligent
letter. And that is what
the democratic representative
government system is really all about.
They hear us.
Yeah. We need to take a break.
And when we come back, though, there are
a couple of those issues, parimutuel
betting and the state lottery
that I'd like to talk specifically
about. Good.
We're visiting the David Westin, where
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We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Western, where the associate
director of the Christian Life Commission
as we talk about his role as a lobbyist
in Austin.
And there are a couple of very important
issues important to a lot of
people in Texas. I think in an issue that
people seem to feel very strongly
about, whether they feel strongly for or
strongly against, there seems to be some
emotional involvement in these issues.
And those are that parimutuel
betting and the state lottery.
Is it is it fair
to group those two together?
And in other words, do you find everybody
pretty well feeling?
If they're against one, they're against
both, or if they're the one
their people are not necessarily
divided?
Exactly. Along those lines, people
in Texas are not very knowledgeable about
a lottery.
Lottery has never been a major
consideration in the Texas
legislature in the last year.
Why don't we talk about that one first
then? All right.
If you give us a little background on it
and why it's what's what's happening in
in the nation is that we
have an almost a lottery fever,
if you will, through media
coverage of lottery in an
area, for example, like California, where
they passed lottery in 1984.
They have passed these lotteries on the
basis of initiative and referendum
referenda.
And and
what has happened in California has been
that an outside firm scientific
games of Atlanta, Georgia,
came in, spent two and a half million
dollars, collected the signatures
for the referendum
itself, promoted it in the media.
And even though almost
all of the leadership of the state was
opposed to the lottery, they passed
it in the initiative and referendum.
Now, California is suffering
the the impact of a couple
of years of lottery operation.
One of the problems that they have.
I spoke a year or so ago
with a guy on the radio and
a radio call in show, and he said
California's paying for their education
with a lottery.
And the impression is that,
you know, they're paying immense amounts
for the lottery, for education.
But the reality is that only three
percent of educational
costs were covered by the lottery.
Now, what's happening in California
is that they need to raise taxes
for for education
and for local bond issues.
And the people say we can't have
a local bond issue on education.
We've got the lottery.
And people think that
it is a it's a panacea,
but it's a false panacea.
Our view about the lottery is
that that it is not
proper role for state government
or local government to operate
a game which
for it to be successful, you have to make
millions of your citizens into losers.
The only way the lottery can be
successful in California
or anywhere else is if there are
literally millions of people
who waste their money.
The payoff on a lottery is 40
cents or thirty five cents on
the dollar.
It is it is unconscionable
for state government to be the bookit
and to operate a game
in that regard.
There's a lot of talk about it being
voluntary and the people want
it and that there are polls and this
kind of thing, if you really
scratch under the surface,
there are not people clamoring
across the state saying we want to bet.
What people are clamoring for and
those who are clamoring are those who are
saying, we want to invest
the case of the lottery, it's
it has been the outside firms like
scientific games that I mentioned are
here in Texas. It's been, unfortunately,
the Texas firms,
the Southland Corporation,
which runs the 7-Eleven stores,
that has been the major promoter of the
lottery, and mainly
because they can
make some six percent
of the handle of a given
convenience outlet
on a billion and a half dollar
total handle.
That's nearly 100 million dollars
for the for the stores
that carry the lottery,
where we're currently working very hard
to keep the lottery defeated
in the House and the Senate
for the lottery to pass would require
a constitutional amendment, because for
one hundred and fifty or so years,
our Texas Constitution has said
we don't want any lotteries
in the state.
And our view is we still
don't. Even though south
most, you know, the 7-Eleven
stores may or some people
may, we still don't
think that it's a good idea, even
though you can make money off of the
lottery.
What we've discovered, it's a regressive
tax.
On the poorest people, Jewish
rabbi told me a couple of weeks ago
about the lottery, he said Western,
it's the falsification of hope.
And that's true.
It is.
It is the selling of a lifestyle.
And, you know, you and I probably
have good cars.
We have a nice home.
But the lottery is aimed
at the person who who
needs to buy a dream
and illusion.
And the state doesn't have any business
selling illusions to its people.
We're going to be working hard to make
sure that that we do not
let that thing pass in
in the legislature.
Now, let's move over to the other issue,
the mutual meeting issue.
And if you would sort of set
the date on the status of that issue in
the special session a year ago
because of the budget crunch,
although parimutuel gambling
would have would produce in the
first year, at that time only four
million dollars.
And we needed three billion,
nearly one thousandth of the amount
that was needed.
The horse industry and others were
circulating these bumper stickers that
said don't raise taxes
in Texas, raise horses in Texas
as if, you know, you could avoid
an income tax or you could avoid
a tax by bypassing
the parimutuel bill.
The bill passed by a very
small margin, setting up
a referendum for November the 3rd.
This year, we've got about one hundred
and eighteen days to go.
The churches of the state
or are well organized.
We have a
political action group called
the Texans Who Care
is the overall statewide campaign
to fight against the approval
of the referendum.
And we believe we can win.
We've done studies with
competent research firms and
and looking at the issues,
we see that
Texans do care about
the organized crime relationship
to all forms of gambling and particularly
to horse racing and dog racing.
Texans do care about that.
They also care about the
harm done to families through
compulsive gamblers and gambling.
It is it is a significant
issue in some states now
that are beginning to fund programs
to take care of the gamblers, to
rehabilitate the gamblers that
have been, if you will, encourage
by state operation of gambling
operations.
Texans care about that.
Texans care about the the problem
of corruption and gambling.
There's only been two governors in this
century, in the last 20 years
actually have gone to jail.
And they were both governors
who were involved in bribery
related to parimutuel tracks.
Governor Kerner and Governor Mandele,
Texans care about that kind of influence.
Texans care about the racing
environment, the track environment.
And while,
you know, you may say, well, you
know, horse racing, horse
racing is not a bad thing.
What is not good is that horse
racing is not enough of a sport
that people will go to see it
unless there's gambling on
it. And gambling has never been really
good for any society.
So we have Baptists.
The Methodists have a group called the
Bishop's Methodist Bishops
Task Force Against Legalized Gambling.
One of the things I've been doing here
today is talking to groups here today
about organizing local
Texans who care groups.
And we
we we plan to win
November the 3rd because
we do not believe and
we do not believe it is good public
policy for the state.
To have to become a
part of the gambling operation.
So while the two issues
are different in that one is going to be
determined by a
vote in Austin and the other by a vote
of its rival across the state.
That's right. They have in common
the, uh, the one
single fact, and that is the
issue of funds for Texas.
And if, uh,
apparently one of the things that you're
suggesting, some people are saying is
attractive about these is it provides
ways for funding
of various government things that
otherwise might have to be
taxed.
80 percent of the people, 80
percent of the people who say they favor
parimutuel say they favor it because
of the the money for
the state.
Twenty percent say they'd like to bet on
horses.
These 80 percent, if
they know.
That no state
secures from horse racing more than
about a half of one percent of the state
budget through the operation of horse
racing.
Gambling, no
state gets more than that.
It's a it's a drop in the bucket.
It is not a significant
resolution of any of the
state's financial
problems.
Now, some are saying it provides jobs
and it would provide a few
would provide jobs in the back stretch.
It would provide jobs on some
forms taking care of horses.
But what what we've
discovered is that the horse industry
itself is is not a strong
industry in that
only one out of 10 race horses
makes money.
Only five out of 10
breeders make money.
And for the most part, we agree
with the writer. And I think it's the
Southwest Airlines
magazine has an article this month.
One of the persons quoted in there says,
well, it's really just a hobby.
Horse racing and horse racing
is a hobby mainly
practiced by those who have money
from elsewhere.
And they practice it in order to
because they like horses and horses are
beautiful and what have you.
But we don't believe that the state of
Texas ought to be involved in subsidizing
their hobby.
So as a lobbyist, if you take
the position of opposing both of those
issues, then is that puts you in
the position of supporting
increased taxes?
We have had to take a
you know, one of one of the
testimonies that I gave earlier this
year, I made my testimony
and the legislator said, well, mister,
where where are we going to get the
money?
And our view that we've taken
officially as a commission is
that the state of Texas should.
In cases of responsible need,
raise the taxes to pay
for programs that are needed if we
need programs to take care of abused
children.
Then we raise the taxes to do it.
We don't try to base it on whether
somebody is willing to lose money
at the 7-Eleven store or
at the track, we raise the money
to take care of children and abused
children and and the
blind. We raise the money
that we have to raise to do those things.
Now, that's been a hard position for us
to take.
But in this
and this time, Texas has lost
a billion dollars a year the last couple
of years of severance taxes
on oil. We've lost sixty five thousand
jobs in one year.
And the oil industry, the service
industries, that has been an impact
here in Abilene, I know, and
all over the state.
But some of us are.
We're doing all right.
And we can pay taxes to
take care of the needs,
the genuine needs of the state
of Texas.
You know, it occurs to me as we were
talking that really the role of the
lobbyist is not that much different from
the role of of of an active concern
interested citizen who is
letting his his feelings
be known, letting his wishes be known to
to his legislature.
One of them is representing.
That's one of the great things about
being the kind of lobbyist
that I'm allowed to be, is
that I get paid for doing
things that I think are really
good and needed
and worthwhile,
important things that are also
doable.
And I like it.
Well, we thank you for being with us
today. I'm sorry we're out of time.
Thank you for being with us on campus.
Northwestern where.