block grant A broad intergovernmental transfer of funds or other assets by the U.S. Congress to state or local governments for specific activities such as secondary education or health services but with few strings attached. Block grants are distributed according to legal formulas defining broad functional areas such as health, income security, education, or transportation. They are used for a variety of activities, largely at the recipient's discretion. For example, the community development block grant program, administered by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, funds community and economic development programs in cities, in counties, on Indian reservations, and in U.S. territories. A block grant's relative lack of restrictions allows recipient jurisdictions to spend the money to supplement other resources as they see fit.

bully pulpit U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's description of the presidency as a position from which to command attention and attempt persuasion.

casework The services performed by legislators and their staffs at the request and on the behalf of constituents. Casework is an important means by which legislators maintain oversight of the bureaucracy and solidify their political support with constituents.

categorical grant An intergovernmental transfer of funds or other assets by the U.S. Congress to state or local governments for a specific purpose. A categorical grant can be used only for specific, narrowly defined, activities, e.g., construction of interstate highways. The legislation authorizing such grants typically details the program rules, funding formulas, and types of eligible activities, though sometimes administrators may determine these.

cooperative federalism A conception of federalism in which national, state, and local governments interact cooperatively, working jointly to solve common problems, rather than making policy separately but more or less equally (the nineteenth century's dual federalism) or clashing over policy in a system dominated by the national government (the more coercive federalism of the late twentieth century). Cooperation was most pronounced during the New Deal between the 1930s and the 1950s when the Great Depression and World War Two spurred states to seek large scale federal assistance including emergency economic measures and job creation, civilian defense, wartime rationing, and the like.

earmark Public funds set aside for a specific purpose, use, or recipient. The term is commonly used to describe money set aside at the request of one or more legislators out of general appropriations for specific purposes. Earmarks are usually intended to benefit just one or a few states, congressional or legislative districts, cities, local jurisdictions, or certain public institutions or other organizations.

entitlement program A government program that pays benefits to individuals, organizations, or other governments that meet eligibility requirements set by law. Among the largest and most common examples are income security programs such as social security, the largest federal entitlement program for individuals. Since entitlement programs mandate spending levels, they have a dramatic impact on annual federal and state budgets, large percentages of which are devoted to such programs each year.

federal preemption The national government overriding or preempting state or local actions in certain areas. The U.S. constitution's supremacy clause established the basis for preemption in declaring itself and federal laws made under its authority to be the 'supreme law of the land.' In practice, preemption became common in the 1960s during the Democratic Johnson administration and increased dramatically in recent years under the Republican G. W. Bush administration. For example, passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002 established national educational goals and assessment methods for the first time.

FTE An acronym for 'full time equivalent' used for management and reporting purposes to define and track types and total numbers of employees, college students, and other groups that represent claims on an organization's resources. For example, fulltime employees, counted as one FTE each, are typically defined as those who work 40 hours per week. Total FTE employment is then the sum of fulltime workers plus the fractional contributions of other classes of employees.

iron triangles The concept of 'iron triangles' -- sometimes referred to as 'subgovernments' -- implies that government policy is largely made by well-defined networks of legislators, government bureaucrats, and private sector interests internally tied together by specific policy matters with which they are all concerned and externally insulated to a significant degree from other subgovernments and from oversight by other parts of government or other groups. For example, key players involved in setting prison policy in Texas include the Senate Criminal Justice committee, the House Corrections committee, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and private interests such as private prison corporations. For the most part, the public knows or seems to care little about the detail or broad outlines of policy in this area leaving the relatively few government and private sector representatives involved with policy making considerable discretion.

legislative oversight Legislative monitoring, investigation, and review of the activities of an agency, department, or office intended to help a legislature determine if the laws it made are being faithfully executed. Oversight takes many forms, for example hearings on agency budget requests in which agency activities have to be justified to the satisfaction of legislators. Committees and subcommittees typically do much of the work of oversight.

new federalism New federalism originated in the early 1970s with the Nixon administration's liberal Republican efforts to return federal administrative power to state governments. This involved at first a shift toward a more decentralized regional federal management style. Ronald Reagan's brand of new federalism subsequently sought direct devolution of power and responsibility from the federal government to state governments in an attempt to reduce the federal government's role in domestic programs, a goal tantamount to a return to the nineteenth century's dual federalism.

pluralism Pluralism describes an ideal-theoretical arrangement of society and representative government according to which many different groups with competing interests use their varying but not grossly unequal resources to shape election outcomes and public policy.

revolving door Refers to the movement of personnel between jobs in the public sector, especially the executive branch, and the private sector . Ethics laws in Texas as elsewhere attempt to limit such movement from the executive branch to the private sector. Texas law forbids agency board members, officers, or employees earning more than a legally specified salary from any contacts that are intended to influence the actions of ex-officials' former agencies for two years after leaving office, though it does not forbid employment in regulated industries. Legislators in Texas and nationally, though not in all states, are exempt from revolving door rules.

Sharpstown The Sharpstown stock fraud scandal, the Texas counterpart to Watergate, gripped the state of Texas in 1971 and 1972 entangling officials at the highest levels of the state government. Houston banker and insurance company executive, Frank Sharp, through his companies, the Sharpstown State Bank and the National Bankers Life Insurance Corporation granted $600,000 in loans to state officials with the understanding that they would purchase stock in National Bankers Life to be resold later at a huge profit. Loan recipients helped produce the profits by pushing passage of legislation that Sharp sought benefiting his insurance company and inflating its value. The scheme succeeded, generating about a quarter million dollars in profits for investors. But in 1971 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed criminal and civil charges against key participants in the scheme including former state attorney general, Waggoner Carr, former state insurance commissioner John Osorio, Sharp and a number of others. By mid 1971, anyone in the state government remotely connected to Sharp was under heavy political pressure. Allegations of bribery spread to House Speaker Gus Mutscher, State Representative Tommy Shannon, state Democratic party chairman and state banking board member Elmer Baum and even Governor Preston Smith. The SEC indicted Mutscher, Shannon and Rush McGinty (a Mutscher aide) in late 1971 for conspiracy to accept a bribe from Sharp. They were tried in Abilene in 1972, convicted, and sentenced to five years' probation. Sharp, convicted of violating federal banking and securities laws, received three years' probation and a $5,000 fine. Electorally the damage was severe. In state elections in 1972 every candidate even remotely connected to the scandal (almost all of them conservative Democrats) was defeated by more moderate Democrats, Republicans or other reform candidates. Governor Smith lost his primary bid for a third term to businessman Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde who was elected governor. In addition, in a fit of reform, lawmakers in 1973 passed a series of reforms that required state officials and politicians to disclose their personal and campaign finances.

sunset review Sunset review is a tool legislatures can use to hold parts of the executive branch accountable. The Texas sunset law is one of the most expansive and actively used in the United States. State laws vary, but typically as in Texas the legislation authorizing an agency or program contains an automatic termination clause or expiration date. Agencies about to expire must pass legislative review to continue, though few are actually terminated. Sunset review is more frequently a tool for legislative oversight used to make changes to executive branch agencies.

unfunded federal mandate A national law directing states or local governments to comply with federal rules or regulations but providing no federal money to help pay the cost of meeting the requirements. Examples include clean air or water standards. Underfunded federal mandates may also prove costly to states, a complaint made, for example, about the costs of educational standards and accountability mandated in the No Child Left Behind Act or the standardization and upgrading of voting systems mandated after the 2000 presidential election in the Help America Vote Act. Congress passed an Unfunded Mandates Reform Act in 1995 attempting to limit expensive unfunded mandates. But determination of what is unfunded or even underfunded remains a serious political issue between national, state, and local governments.

Texas Politics: © 2009, Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services University of Texas at Austin 1st Edition - Revision 92