Texas Has Been Here Before: Government “Efficiency” Efforts, Then and Now

On this day in 1931, the Texas Legislature created a special joint committee tasked with investigating every corner of state government in an effort to streamline operations and reduce costs.

Legislation: House Concurrent Resolution 58 (HCR 58)

The undertaking was enormous. The committee ultimately produced a report exceeding 2,000 pages covering fiscal and administrative agencies, highways, law enforcement, prisons, health programs, education, welfare systems, and the judiciary. Its recommendations projected savings of more than $6 million annually (roughly $150 million in today’s dollars) without impairing “essential services.”

And yet, despite the scale of the effort and the breadth of the recommendations, almost nothing meaningful happened afterward.

Neither the 43rd Legislature (1933) nor subsequent legislatures seriously implemented the reforms.

That story feels remarkably familiar today.

The Broader Context: Texas Government Continues to Grow

Any serious discussion about government efficiency should begin with an acknowledgment that the Texas government has continued to expand substantially over time, both in spending and administrative scope.

As our budget analysis at Texas Policy Research has documented, the proposed 2026–27 Texas budget represents the largest state budget in Texas history at approximately $337.4 billion in All Funds spending. Since the late 1990s, state spending has grown dramatically, even after accounting for population growth and inflation.

This growth has occurred under both Republican and Democratic leadership nationally, but in Texas, it has largely unfolded during an era of prolonged Republican control over statewide offices and the Legislature. That reality complicates simplistic narratives about fiscal conservatism and highlights the structural difficulty of slowing government growth once programs, agencies, and funding streams become politically entrenched.

To be clear, not every increase in spending is inherently unjustified. Texas is a growing state with real infrastructure, education, healthcare, and public safety demands. But the long-term trajectory matters. Government rarely shrinks on its own, and periods of economic growth often mask the cumulative expansion of bureaucracy and spending commitments that become difficult to reverse later.

That broader trend is an important context for evaluating modern “government efficiency” initiatives.

A Renewed Push for Oversight & Efficiency

Texas once again finds itself in an era of renewed interest in government oversight, efficiency, regulatory reform, and bureaucratic accountability. From the House DOGE (Delivery of Government Efficiency) Committee to the newly established Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office (TREO), lawmakers and state leaders are increasingly speaking the language of modernization, transparency, and fiscal restraint.

There are reasons for optimism.

TREO’s early actions suggest state leadership is at least attempting to move beyond rhetoric. According to publicly released estimates, the office’s first round of agency reviews identified hundreds of regulations for elimination or modification and projected substantial compliance savings for Texans and businesses. That kind of regulatory review is worthwhile. Government accumulation rarely reverses itself without deliberate effort.

Likewise, the creation of the new House Select Committee on Governmental Oversight, chaired by State Rep. Cody Vasut (R-Angleton), signals that lawmakers understand the growing public appetite for accountability and administrative scrutiny. The committee’s jurisdiction is broad, touching on government management, procurement, open records, governmental immunity, and operational efficiency across state agencies and political subdivisions.

Its upcoming hearing on the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act and the Texas Tort Claims Act may provide an early indication of whether lawmakers are prepared to seriously address structural inefficiencies and legal barriers that increase costs and complexity across government.

Texas Already Has Oversight Mechanisms

It is also worth remembering that Texas already has longstanding oversight mechanisms intended to review government efficiency and accountability. The Texas Sunset Advisory Commission has spent decades evaluating agencies and recommending reforms, consolidations, and operational changes across state government.

While the Sunset process has at times produced meaningful improvements, lawmakers have historically been far more willing to consolidate, rename, or restructure agencies than to fully abolish governmental entities or programs altogether. In many cases, oversight efforts lead to administrative reshuffling rather than a lasting reduction in the size or cost of government.

That history does not make current reform efforts meaningless, but it does reinforce an important reality: identifying inefficiencies has rarely been the Texas government’s primary problem. Sustaining the political will/courage to implement difficult reforms has been far harder.

The DOGE Committee Experience

Our prior analysis of the House DOGE Committee found a significant disconnect between the committee’s public branding and the legislative outcomes that followed. While the committee was presented as a vehicle for reducing waste and improving efficiency, legislation advanced through the committee would have increased state spending by more than $223 million in new general revenue costs based on official fiscal estimates.

Importantly, that figure excluded legislation with indeterminate fiscal impacts, meaning the true long-term cost could have been substantially higher.

That does not necessarily mean every bill was bad policy. Some proposals may ultimately improve service delivery, transparency, or administrative modernization, but it does highlight a recurring problem in government reform efforts: “efficiency” is often defined as adding new programs, new offices, new reporting structures, or new layers of administration rather than reducing the size, scope, and cost of government itself.

The Real Challenge Isn’t Identifying Problems

In many cases, government reform efforts struggle not because lawmakers fail to identify inefficiencies, but because meaningful reform inevitably collides with political incentives, institutional inertia, lobbying pressure, and the realities of governing.

Studying problems is easy. Publishing reports is easy. Holding hearings is easy.

Actually shrinking bureaucracy, reducing spending, eliminating outdated programs, and devolving power is much harder.

That is why the success or failure of Texas’s newest oversight and efficiency efforts will ultimately depend less on branding and more on measurable outcomes.

Will regulations actually be repealed? Will unnecessary spending actually decline? Will agencies become smaller and more accountable? Will lawmakers accept political resistance when reforms affect entrenched interests?

Those are the questions that matter.

A Reason for Cautious Optimism

The historical lesson from 1931 is not that reform is impossible. It is that Texas has repeatedly recognized the problem of governmental inefficiency for nearly a century while struggling to sustain the political will necessary to fully address it.

Still, there are legitimate reasons for cautious optimism.

The fact that lawmakers continue revisiting these issues suggests the underlying concerns are real, persistent, and increasingly difficult to ignore. TREO’s early regulatory reviews, the formation of the House Select Committee on Government Oversight, and the renewed focus on accountability all suggest that at least some state leaders recognize that government growth and administrative complexity deserve serious scrutiny.

If these efforts move beyond symbolism and produce measurable, durable reforms, Texas could succeed where previous generations fell short.

But history also suggests Texans should evaluate these initiatives not by their rhetoric, committee names, or press releases, but by results.

Healthy skepticism is not cynicism. It is simply an acknowledgment that Texas has studied these problems for decades. The question now is whether lawmakers are finally prepared to do more than study them.