House speaker presided over broad state sales tax

Jimmy Turman, a one-term speaker of the Texas House  who presided over the establishment of a state sales tax, died Wednesday in Austin at the age of 91. The cause of death was a stroke.

Turman had just won his fourth term from the East Texas town of Gober when he narrowly won the speakership in 1961.

It was a tumultuous period of civil rights and a shifting Democratic Party, but during his one-term stint as speaker a more prosaic issue dominated the Legislature: sales taxes.

He initially cast the tie-breaking vote against the sales tax proposal, aimed at shoring up the state’s finances, during the regular session after Gov. Price Daniel had declared he would veto the legislation. But after Daniel agreed to allow the tax to become law without his signature, Turman allowed the legislation to move forward during a special legislative session.

At the time there was already a sales tax on motor vehicles, gasoline and cigarettes, but the 1961 legislation established a 2 percent levy on a broad menu of items.

Turman also presided over a pay raise for Texas teachers, and during his speakership, the House Chamber was modernized with the installation of air conditioning.

He left elective politics after losing a runoff for lieutenant governor in 1962.

He subsequently served in a series of federal posts and then worked as chief of staff for then-U.S. Rep. Jim Mattox, D-Dallas. As regional director of a government resettlement program, he helped resettle Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon, according to his family. He then re-entered state government, working for several years as a senior research analyst in the office of Comptroller Bob Bullock before retiring.

Turman earned two degrees at East Texas State Teachers College (now Texas A&M University–Commerce), and at age 24 became a junior high principal in Paris. After service in the Navy, he enrolled at the University of Texas and earned a Ph.D. in education and psychology in 1957.

While in school, he followed a passion for politics, winning his first election in 1954, at age 26, to the Legislature.

“He managed to win office from East Texas without engaging in any racial demagoguery that I could find,” said Michael Phillips, a historian who interviewed Turman for the book, "The House Will Come to Order: How the Texas Speaker Became a Power in State and National Politics."

He said that Turman told him that on the campaign trail he used to call himself “a compassionate conservative.” Though he was generally skeptical of federal government, “by the standards for Texas politics, he was pretty liberal for the era,” Phillips said.

Turman, who was predeceased by his ex-wife, Ira, and his son Art, is survived by his wife, Joan Turman, and four stepchildren — Paul Fern, Susan Thompson, Catherine Franklin and Charlie Fern — as well as his sister, Mary Ann Reagan, of Houston, and her two daughters. He is also survived by five stepgrandchildren and one grandchild.