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The Blast: Burrows’ committee chair bottleneck [1]
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Date: 2025-02
Last Tuesday, Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows suggested he would issue committee assignments by the end of this week. Now that it’s Monday, it’s time to preview Burrows’ committee assignments — to the extent that we can.
For the first time in Texas House history, the chamber rules this session limit standing committee chairmanships to Republicans. And thanks to the majority-Democrat coalition that elected Burrows, he only so many Republican loyalists from which to choose.
How he chooses to reconcile that will give us a sense of what kind of speaker Burrows plans to be.
This is where the bottleneck begins: There are 30 standing committees, each of which must be chaired by a Republican. However, only 35 Republicans not named Dustin Burrows voted for him on the second ballot of the speaker election.
Moreover, House tradition has been that the speaker only selects members who have served at least three terms to be committee chairs. That ensures they know the ropes of how the committee and legislative process works. But of Burrows’ 35 Republican supporters, only 26 are in their third term or later. The 26 are listed here in bold:
That leaves four slots unfilled, at least.
Burrows could choose to break tradition and name one of the nine newer members as committee chairs. (Looking at you, Stan Gerdes, Stan Kitzman, Janie Lopez, Angelia Orr and Carl Tepper.) Unfortunately for the sophomores, one member would be left off the list if Burrows filled the final four committees with second-term members.
Another possibility would be to double up some members with multiple chairmanships. However, those chairs would then run into time management problems.
The other possibility is that Burrows extends an olive branch to Republicans who voted against him for speaker by selecting some of their own to fill slots. James Frank and Tom Oliverson were committee chairs who challenged Speaker Dade Phelan last year with their own speaker bids. They could get the nod. Maybe Burrows welcomes back late dissident Ryan Guillen or even grants a first-time chairmanship to David Cook, the third-term member who became the “reform” caucus’ candidate.
Moves like that would telegraph to members that Burrows wants to bring the Republican caucus back together. It would also be a significant break from Phelan’s leadership style, which became a major gripe of the reform movement. Phelan mostly kept a tight, insular circle of leaders, and Burrows has a chance to open things up.
However, the decision to shut down debate on the House rules a couple weeks back suggested to several reform members that the leadership circle wasn’t interested in hearing what they have to say.
As for specifics about who could get what committee, well, we don’t have many. It looks like Greg Bonnen is likely headed back to the Appropriations Committee and Brad Buckley is headed back to Public Education.
But there could even be shakeups within returning Burrows-backing members of Phelan’s leadership. Burrows is a distinct person with his own set of relationships and ideas of who would best fit where, and some committee chairs might be looking for a change in scenery. Calendars, Elections, Energy Resources, General Investigating and Public Health are just some of the committees with vacancies, generating opportunities for upward momentum.
For optics reasons, given the women’s health-focused nature of the committee, Public Health will likely go to a woman. Angie Chen Button and Lacey Hull are the only two Burrows-backing Republicans who have served three or more terms.
After committees are sorted out, there are 12 standing subcommittees that Burrows will have to appoint. However, the rules don’t limit him to Republicans for those slots. Expect several “leadership Ds” to fall into those roles.
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