"Interview: Rep. Carl Isett on the Sunset Process"

The following is an excerpt from a November 9, 2007 article from the Lone Star Report.

By Christine DeLoma
November 9, 2007
Volume 12, Issue 14

Rep. Carl Isett (R-Lubbock) was recently appointed chairman of the Sunset Advisory Commission to a four year term. With more than two dozen agencies, boards and commissions up for sunset in 2008-2009, he certainly has his work cut out for him. LSR caught with Isett recently to get his take on how he expects the upcoming Sunset process to work.

LSR: What are your plans for the Sunset commission?

Isett: Ever since I've been in the Legislature I've tried to work on legislation that would change the way we do business in Austin, and I've found many times that it wasn't just a matter of passing legislation. We could change the laws but what we really needed to do was change the culture to one that's more forward leaning or progressive in terms of delivery of service or product to the citizens of the state of Texas.

Many times I was frustrated because I learned the term "institutional resistance." It's where the institution itself just plain didn't want to change. And I think that the seven worst words in government are, "That's the way we've always done it." So I view Sunset as an opportunity to have broader conversations about the philosophy of the state of Texas as an enterprise in how we deliver services to the taxpayers...

LSR: What are the things that you will be looking at next session?

Isett: The agencies that are before us, there are several controversial agencies in there, not the least of which is TxDOT [Texas Department of Transportation]. Many people have been frustrated with some of the actions they've taken over the past several years, and so there probably will be a philosophical discussion about how we build highways, how we fund them, how we make those decisions.

But more broadly, when you look at TYC [Texas Youth Commission], which has been in the news for nearly a year now, it still seems to struggle with taking care of kids in our system. The Texas Department ofInsurance, of course, has so many moving pieces. It touches so many people's lives both as payers and as insurers. The doctors, obviously, and the health plans will be a controversial issue.

But we'll be looking a lot at the process, how agencies go about their business, whether it's in terms of licensing or dispute resolution or any of the pure business functions that they do. [We] won't necessarily change the policy of what they're doing.

But we'll be looking at both what they do and how they do it. And we'll make sure that they're only doing things for which they have legislative authority, and that if they are doing something for which they have legislative authority to do, see if it needs to be done and give them that authority or conversely if they're doing things that are no longer necessary quit doing them. [We can] take away the legislative providence of them.

LSR: You mentioned the Texas Department of Transportation is up for sunset. Last session, there was a great display of mistrust between several lawmakers and the agency. How do you think the Sunset Commission can work through these issues and reconcile the level of mistrust?

Isett: I think in all the agencies it's important to remember these are executive branch agencies. It is part of the checks and balances in our government to bring them before us and examine how they are doing. So there will need to be some work done, I think, between the agency and the leadership of the agency and members of the legislature as well as the governor.

We hope to have him and his staff involved as we go so what we do makes sense. Remember, we're only an advisory commission and we will draft legislation as we move forward. And he [Rick Perry] will still have an opportunity to veto that legislation. But those agencies do fall under the governor's leadership and we'll be certainly willing and engaged with them as we move forward.

LSR: Another agency up for review a second time is the Office of State-Federal Relations. Where do you see that going this session?

Isett: We'll take a look at it and see. We have bandied about what to do about that group over the last couple of terms. I don't really have any preconceived notions of where I want to see any agency [go]. This is the time where the agencies have to justify their existence to prove that the reason they were created still exist. To the extent that they still need to exist, are they doing it in the best way in regard to serving the citizens of Texas. Again, what are they doing and how are they doing it? [These are] the questions that we have to think through.

LSR: You said you'd like to work against the "institutional resistance." How do you think you can accomplish that goal?

Isett: One of the things we're going to be looking at, broadly, among all agencies is how we enter into contracts. We'll be looking at just that process because a lot of the problems that we have or that frustrate my colleagues and I are the contracts that either TxDOT entered into or we find out weren't managed properly over at TYC. We need to look broadly at that process.

I'll just give you an example. When I first came to the legislature Iintroduced legislation to use activity-based costing.

It's just an accounting tool to find out where your costs are and [it] identifies costs that don't add value to the end product. [It is] widely used in both the service and production sectors of the economy. But when I came in six terms ago it was not widely used, if at all, in Texas government.

Well, we did pass some pilot programs and agencies generally told us it was a bad idea and everything. Now, many, many agencies use it in their decision making model simply because they caught up to the rest of the market.

When you bring an idea forward they are not used to or feel uncomfortable [with]or don't have the expertise to do, you have to be willing to give them the resources necessary to execute.

So that institutional resistance, I know there is a desire by the agencies to keep having jobs and certainly having jobs and delivering what Texans need are not mutually exclusive. But it doesn't mean that we have to continue to do it that way we've always done it. So we will just be looking at how they do it and see if they're using the best business practices and all of those tend to deal with process.

We're for the most part, I think the Speaker's leadership has been, in most cases lately Sunset has really focused on process, not policy. Now [former Sunset Advisory Commission chairman] Burt [Solomons] rewrote the workers' comp law. That was all policy. But as a rule, we're probably not going to go very deep into policy but really focus on process.

There are critics of the sunset process and not without reason. But the truth of the matter is, when you read the law, that says you can either shut down an agency, recommend shutting down an agency or reorganize it or modify it - all of those are valid options. And we're not going to quit building roads. So we're not going to shut down TxDOT. We're not going to quit regulating insurance. So we're not going to do away with the Department of Insurance.

While we will continue to look for efficiencies in the delivery of goods and services, I still think it's a viable and necessary process to have a real close scrutiny of these agencies from time to time.

...I don't have any preconceived notions of the outcome I'm looking for today, not having all the information ahead of me... Let's get in there. Let's identify the problems that we want to address, and then let's look at options on how to address that. And then let's do what's best for Texas.

LSR: Is there anything that you'd like to add?

Isett: This is a process and not an event. We will be looking to the leadership in the House and the Senate, not just the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor, but the chairmen... of the committees who have [jurisdiction] over the agencies.

This will be very much an all- hands evolution, and we will be taking input from anyone who's interested in helping us.

I'm looking forward to working with the agencies and the affinity groups and our other colleagues as we move forward.

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