Texas bills sacrifice local control on issues such as knife toting

The San Antonio lock-blade ordinance is just one example of overbearing municipal regulations that risk turning regular citizens even ones who have consulted state laws to ensure they are in compliance into criminals," Stickland said.He is among a handful of lawmakers, mostly Republicans, pushing to limit local control a conservative tenet with bills that reach into other lawmakers’ districts but have no immediate effect on their own constituents.The bills include bans on some local ordinances and restrictions on school district policies. Lawmakers see tension between local control and personal rights, and there’s an ongoing debate among conservatives about how much the state needs to protect Texans from local officials."What you’re observing is the debate within the Republican Party and the conservative movement, for which there is no consensus," said Steve Munisteri, chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. "In most conservative minds, you can use government to trump local control to protect a different [constitutional] right. But the rub comes in with, when does that occur and when is that balance justified?"

Two bills by Rep. Drew Springer, R-Muenster, have drawn some fire from Central Texas lawmakers because they affect Austin and Pflugerville about 260 miles from his district north of Dallas.One bill would prohibit bans on plastic bags, a direct hit on an ordinance that went into effect in Austin in March. Officials in other cities, including Dallas, are considering similar bans.The second would cut some funds from school districts that offer benefits to people who are not employees and not dependents of employees a run at the same-sex domestic-partnership benefits offered by the Austin and Pflugerville school districts."To think Pflugerville has sued the state for more funding, while at the same time bankrolling a lifestyle most Texans do not agree with, is quite disturbing to me," Springer said when he announced his measure in February.