Winds Of Change Sweep The Lone Star State

By Richard Woodbury/Austin

Statehouse veterans scoffed last January when Democrat Ann Richards vowed to create a "new Texas" ruled by a responsive, "customer-oriented" government. Now the skepticism has turned into shock. In only three months the first woman to govern Texas in 56 years has moved with the speed of a Panhandle twister to shake up the good-ole-boy network that has long dominated the Lone Star State.

Days after settling into her office, Richards began to prune and energize the bloated bureaucracy and "make government mean something in people's lives." She quickly imposed a hiring freeze and pushed a sweeping audit of state operations to eliminate such excesses as the 16 separate agencies that deliver health and human services, including the several panels that administer Medicaid to the poor.

She made good on a campaign promise to open the corridors of power by appointing dozens of women, blacks and Hispanics to the boards and commissions that regulate and oversee the machinery of government, and promised ongoing training to keep them on their toes. Among her most significant appointments: former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, a member of the House Judiciary Committee that voted for the impeachment of Richard Nixon, as her special adviser on ethics, and John Hannah Jr., a distinguished former federal prosecutor, as secretary of state. Richards is also pushing for sweeping reforms to limit campaign contributions and require full disclosure of lobbyists' spending. Texas badly needs the reforms. Political payoffs are so ingrained that two years ago an East Texas chicken farmer seeking changes in a workers- compensation law brazenly doled out nine $10,000 checks to lawmakers on the floor of the senate.

Richards' blitz is decidedly populist. Her targets are special interests that have grown accustomed to kid-glove treatment from government. She stunned the chemical industry by forcing a two-year moratorium on the construction of new hazardous-waste sites and the expansion of existing ones and by proposing to set up an environmental SWAT team to enforce regulations that have long been ignored. She fired the entire top echelon of the corporation-minded commerce department and refocused the agency on small-business development and job training. She smacked the insurance industry by temporarily blocking a 26% increase in auto premiums and vowing to clamp down on other "outrageous" rates. Accusing the insurance regulatory board of being too cozy with the firms it is supposed to oversee, she threatened a takeover if two members did not resign. One agreed to step down.

Richards is moving so quickly in part because her official powers are limited. Under the state's "weak-Governor" constitution, a legacy of the post-Civil War Reconstruction, her authority is primarily confined to appointments and vetoes. If she hopes to get the backing of the largely conservative Democratic legislature for her liberal programs, she must rely mostly on persuasion.

In eight years as state treasurer, Richards learned the importance of courting the legislature. Unlike her recent predecessors as Governor, she has personally wooed the lawmakers, inviting them to breakfasts and lunches at the Governor's Greek-revival mansion. She talked state representative Pete Laney into releasing a lottery bill from his committee on state affairs by plying him with bagels and doughnuts. Her snow-white bouffant hairdo and folksy charm have become familiar at committee hearings, in which she often testifies. "The legislature is excited because at long last they're being paid attention to," says Richards' press secretary Bill Cryer.

For all her reforming zeal, however, Richards has not completely turned away from politics as usual. She has rewarded several fat-cat campaign contributors with appointments -- among them Walter Umphrey to the parks and wildlife department and Barnard Rapoport to the University of Texas board of regents. She has sidestepped some prickly issues: refusing to help devise a court- ordered plan for equalizing school funding and to introduce a state income tax to ease Texas' $4.6 billion budget shortfall. "Her honeymoon is over," , warns Tom Craddick, leader of the Republican legislative caucus. "She needs to draw up a budget to show how she'll pay for all the programs. So far, she hasn't said anything."

Polls show that Richards' constituents are supportive of her fast start. As she puts it, "The mood of activism seems to be pleasing people." With admirers mobbing her whenever she leaves her second-floor office, Richards can afford for now to ignore scattered criticism and bask in the honeymoon glow. The real test of her political skills will come when she has run out of boards to appoint people to and can no longer avoid tough decisions.