Texas voters have decided to repeal a constitutional requirement that the state’s attorney general, comptroller, general land commissioner, agriculture commissioner and three railroad commissioners reside in the capital city.
Until the election, if someone won an election for attorney general in Texas, the state constitution mandated that he live in Austin as long as he held office. Given the wide use of mobile phones and email today, many Texas lawmakers thought it was time to allow the attorney general and several other statewide elected officials to commute, or telecommute, from outside the city.
The ballot question, Proposition 3, asked voters what it means to be a statewide executive official in 2015, both in terms of the necessary sacrifices for high-profile positions in public service and the way such a person works in the office. If state officials conduct meetings by conference call, would that be sufficient, or would they be “phoning it in”?
“Voters elected these people with the understanding that they would live in Austin,” said Phillip Martin, deputy director of Progress Texas, a liberal advocacy organization, in an interview before the election. “I don’t want the comptroller to not attend a meeting because his Internet went down in Dallas.”
Progress Texas recommended voting against the proposition in its elections guide, but no group actively campaigned against it.
Bill Fairbrother, the legislative director for the Texas Republican County Chairmen’s Association, supported the measure because he didn't think conservative elected officials should have to live in a liberal city, especially when there are right-leaning suburbs nearby.
“Austin is a very Democratic area," Fairbrother said. "All the statewide elected officials are Republican. If they want to live outside of Austin, they should be allowed to live in an area that’s more like the areas where they got elected from.”
The ballot measure began as Senate Joint Resolution 52, written by state Sen. Donna Campbell, which sailed through the Senate on a 29-1 vote and faced only slightly greater opposition in the House, passing 102-43.
Campbell’s office didn't return calls for comment in October, but in an interview with the Associated Press, she said that elected state officials shouldn’t have to uproot their families to take office. Rep. John Otto, who sponsored the bill in the House, told the Texas Tribune that the residency requirement is archaic.
States vary in their residency requirements for elected executives. The Washington state constitution requires the governor, secretary of state, treasurer and auditor to live in the seat of government, Olympia, but a state Supreme Court ruling in 1958 clarified that those officials could live outside the capital as long as they are close enough to drive to work. The constitutions of Maryland and Virginia require only the governors to live in the seat of government. Many other states allow officials to live outside the capital. In California, for example, the secretary of state lives in Los Angeles, the attorney general lives in San Francisco and the lieutenant governor lives in Marin County. All of them split their time between their own cities and the capital city, Sacramento.
The Texas ballot measure doesn't affect every official though. The governor, lieutenant governor and justices for the state Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals are all still required to reside in Austin.
In fact, the practical impact of the proposition will probably be negligible. Even if the executives would prefer to live in another part of the state, the agencies over which they preside have headquarters in Austin. That may explain why the current comptroller, agriculture commissioner, land commissioner and attorney general all told the Associated Press that they had no plans to leave Austin.
This is part of our 2015 elections coverage. Get more results here.
