House Refuses to Admit Conning by Aide
with Bill Like Maine Law that Floundered

Capitol Inside
May 9, 2021

The Texas House appears poised to approve legislation that it hatched while being duped late last month by a female staffer's claims about a lobbyist spiking her drink with a drug used for date rape.

House Bill 4661 is set for debate on the floor on Monday. The measure is sponsored by legendary Democratic State Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston with Republican Speaker Dade Phelan's full-throated endorsement. The bill would force lobbyists at the Texas Capitol to take sexual harassment training every two years as a condition of being allowed to ply their trade here.

HB 4661 appears to be modeled after a program in Maine that got off to a terrible start two years ago after clearing the legislature there in 2018 as one of the first tangible products of the #MeToo movement that had been taking the nation by storm amid the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein scandal in Hollywood.

The sexual harassment training mandate for lobbyists proved to be a bust at the outset for a myriad of reasons including the lack of a mechanism that would make it possible for members of the lobby in Augusta to file complaints against the lawmakers themselves.

The first trainer that the state of Maine enlisted to train lobbyists about sexual harassment was terminated a month after the classes began when it became apparent that the training was nothing but window dressing at a capitol where lawmakers had been the culprits in most cases.

Illinois adopted a law in 2017 that mandated sexual harassment training for lobbyists in a move that appeared to be retaliation for a complaint that prompted the state Senate majority leader there to resign. But the Illinois law also applies to legislators and their employes and provides specific whistle blower protections for anyone who files a complaint.

Texas lawmakers have appeared to be moving forward with the lobby targeting measure despite its evil origins as a way to admit that they'd been played in a scam that only would have been believable in a movie or television show. Legislators here have shown no sign of concern on the possibility that the measure in Texas could leave an indelible stain on #MeToo as a consequence of the fact that it's perpetuating a lie of epic magnitude.

Lawmakers are clearly responsible for the lion's share of sexual harassment at state capitols where lobbyists and legislative staffers who are dependent on them are the most vulnerable to such a treatment as a result. But lobbyists also depend on staff members for access to legislators that they need to do their jobs.

The Texas legislation fails to address the chief causes for the culture that it seeks to clean up while spreading the blame for the problem to lobbyists who've been the victims in almost all of the cases involving sexual harassment when they weren't willing and eager participants as consenting adults.

The Texas House and Senate incorporated sexual harassment prevention training requirements for legislators and staffers in their rules at the start of the 2019 regular session. The early results with the Austin Club date rape drug debacle suggest that the policy has been a flop so far as far as legislative staff members are concerned.

HB 4661 is similar to Senate Bill 2233 - a measure that won unanimous approval less than a week after the lobbyist who'd been accused of drugging the state House aide was cleared by the Department of Public Safety and Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza of any wrongdoing in the case that appears to have been a set up to cover up other lies and indiscretions. Senate Bill 2233 also was conceived amid epic outrage over the staffer's wild tale before it was discredited.

With Democratic State Senator Jose Menendez of San Antonio as the author, SB 2233 seeks to crack down on sexual harassment by lobbyists with even more restrictions than the House plan including a clause that would require them to take an ethics course as well.

Phelan used a fiery personal privilege speech on the House floor on April 26 as a launching pad for the lobbyist training measure when he decried a Capitol culture where sexual misbehavior and exploitation has been common in Washington D.C. and state capitals since their inceptions.

The first-term speaker issued a statement with a pair of influential Democratic women allies that acknowledged in ambiguous terms that there would be no criminal charges filed in the case that had inspired the filings of HB 4661 and SB 2233.

But the statement was misleading because the speaker and the Democrats failed to elaborate on the fact that the date rape drug story had been a horrific lie that sought to capitalize on the women's rights crusade. Phelan declared the legal process was over in the drugging fiasco even though it has the potential to spill over into the civil and criminal courts where numerous staffer careers at the Capitol could be destroyed as perpetrators or accomplices in the scheme.

The speaker failed to ensure that all of the House's members received the vague statement on the drugging case's exposure as the basis for an epic character assassination scheme. The movement of the lobby training measure gives the impression that Texas lawmakers who fell for the staffer's story are pretending now that they weren't bamboozled by one of their own employees who they thought they'd been protecting with a tale that they fueled, failed to adequately correct and continue to perpetuate.