The resolution was adopted by a vote of 119 to 27. Tony Tinderholt (R–Arlington) took issue with the adjournment. On March 2, the House adopted a resolution allowing them to adjourn for more than 3 days from March 3 to March 9. The first House committees did not even start meeting until March 1 one month after Abbott laid out his emergency legislative priorities, with the exception of the House Administration Committee meeting briefly to adopt certain rules, the House Appropriations Committee to begin organizing, and a joint hearing between House State Affairs Committee and the House Energy Resources Committee to investigate the fallout of the severe winter weather in February. 82nd Legislative Session (2011): 91 days or about 472 hours.83rd Legislative Session (2013): 84 days or about 345 hours.84th Legislative Session (2015): 86 days or about 386 hours.85th Legislative Session (2017): 86 days or about 399 hours.86th Legislative Session (2019): 76 days or about 394 hours.Compare that to previous legislative sessions over the course of the last decade: Of those 77 days, they convened as a body for about 313 hours. In total, the Texas House of Representatives convened 77 days of the 140 allotted. The Senate assigned members to committees on January 15. The House of Representatives assigned members to committees on February 4. After the severe winter weather in February, the governor added reforming the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the winterization of power generation facilities across the state to his list of priorities.īrass tacks are that the legislature chose not to act on any of the legislative priorities at all within the first 60 days which means that they instead consumed time in the remaining 80 days of the legislative session. The emergency priorities laid out by the governor included expansion of broadband services to rural and underserved areas of the state, preventing the local defunding of law enforcement, reforming bail practices, election integrity, and business liability protections from COVID-related lawsuits. It’s true that a severe winter storm precluded them from doing so in mid-February and certainly changed the focus of leadership in both legislative chambers. This allowed for about 35 days or so for the legislature to solely focus on those issues. Greg Abbott gave his biennial state of the state address on Feb 1 a whole 20 days after the legislature had convened. Governor’s Emergency Legislative Priorities The bill filing deadline was on March 12, or day 60 of the 140-day session, but most legislators had the ability to pre-file bills since November 9 of 2020, or 64 days before the session began. This legislative session began on January 12 and ended on May 31. Even then, it is up to the legislature to determine what technically fits into the broad policy area the governor lays out. The first 60 days preclude them from considering any legislation that is not an emergency priority of the governor’s according to Article 3, Section 5 of the Texas Constitution. The legislature is allotted 140 days to complete their work for a regular legislative session. The 87th Legislative Session has concluded, much to the chagrin of many activists across the state who believe that little was done in the interests of many of the issues they hold important.īut did lawmakers really “run out of time” to pass conservative priorities?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |