The Texas Tribune hosted a panel discussion with State Senators Paul Bettencourt and Sylvia Garcia on Tuesday.

The ‘Houston & The Legislature: What’s Next?’ event was hosted at the George R. Brown convention center downtown. The CEO and Editor in Chief of The Texas Tribune Evan Smith moderated.

The duo of Texas state senators discussed a wide range of topics. Their biggest concern for Houston is the bloated issue of city pensions. “The pension problem is not going away,” Bettencourt reminded the gathering of over one-hundred Houstonites.

Houston consistently spends more than it collects in revenues. Currently, the city has over $5 billion in unfunded employee pensions. “This problem that we’ve talked about is actually here now, and it will be very, very prevalent.” It should be an issue that Mayor-Elect Turner should keep in mind as he’s sworn in Jan. 4.

Bettencourt wishes that Turner will support his bill to replace “budget-busting” defined benefit plans with defined contribution plans. “Until we decide that we can’t afford those anymore, we’re always going to have a pension problem,” Bettencourt said he will reintroduce the bill in the next legislative session in 2017.

“I don’t think the answer is to issue debt to take care of debt,” commented Senator Garcia. She also said the city should honor the promises made, and that Turner should look at the whole financial picture of the city.

Bettencourt said that one broader issue is the local control of the state’s home-rule cities, “bringing out laws that are completely – at times contrarily – opposite to existing state code.” For example, municipalities have been banning plastic bags, but the Texas water code says that cities cannot make such a ban.

“If you have a home-rule city, you need to do what the general-law cities do which is stick to the constitutional laws of the state,” Bettencourt concluded.

“It’s called local control,” interjected Garcia, who believes the state should be focusing on dealing with education cuts and the stressed state budget instead of on a plastic bags ordinance approved by a local government.

“You only like local control when you like the thing that the locals are controlling,” quipped moderator Smith to Republican Bettencourt.

“Local control does mean that you respect what the local community wants to do,” Garcia said.

“There has to be some respect for the rule of law,” Bettencourt replied.

Bettencourt brought up when the city was found by the Supreme Court to have mislead the public three times in writing on ballot issues, “You can possibly be supporting the City of Houston in that type of circumstance.” In this case, the rule of law trumped local control.

The Texas Supreme Court unanimously voided Houston’s drainage fee proposition because the ballot language was unclear on who would pay and how much. Mayor Annise Parker still believed that the fee was legal even after the supreme court ruling.

“If the voters decide, then it’s done,” Garcia was resolute. Bettencourt insisted such decision of the voters is not valid if the people are purposely misled.

This seemed to be a philosophical difference between the Democratic Senator Garcia believing in the rule of the people, and Republican Bettencourt believing in the rule of law.

Houston City Councilman Michael Kubosh took the microphone during the questions and answer portion of the meeting. “Whenever you give the City of Houston local control – if you do that – you’re actually giving the mayor local control.”

Kubosh explained that the last time a mayor had control of pensions, they borrowed from the pension plan, deferring the payments, and started digging the city into the hole of debt and I-Owe-You notes that the city is in now.

Even in her last days as mayor, Parker has tried to keep underfunding the firefighter pensions to try to balance the current city budget.

With Houston’s form of strong mayoral control government, “we have to have more than just local control. There has to be some mechanism in place to fix this pension crisis that we’re in.” Kubosh said he would help the new mayor in whatever way he can.