Lens on the Legislature: Day 60

Today is the 60th day of the 79th Session of the Texas Legislature. That's a very important milestone in the legislative process.

Both House Rule 8, Section 8 and Senate Rule 7.07 allow bills to be introduced only during the first 60 days, except for:

• emergency appropriations;
• emergency matters specifically submitted by the governor in special messages to the legislature;
• local bills (as defined by the House and Senate's respective rules); or
• bills for which the rules are waived by a 4/5 vote. In the Senate, which has a tradition of granting the waivers, 4/5 of the total membership (i.e. 25 of 31 Senators) is required. In the House, which often will not waive the rule, 4/5 of those members present and voting must agree.

The Senate rule does not apply to resolutions. There is precedent in the House, however, for subjecting joint resolutions to the 4/5 vote requirement.

News reports about the millions of taxpayers who wait until April 15th to file and similar stories of Christmas shoppers who wait until December 24th to do their buying make it obvious that many humans are deadline driven. It should come as no surprise, therefore that in the last legislative session, 21.7% of all bills and resolutions were filed on days 58 through 60. The comparable percent was 16.9% and 17.6% in the two prior sessions.

So how is this session looking? As a point of reference, there were an average of 112 bills and resolutions filed each filing day in February. On Wednesday of this week (day 58), 350 bills were filed. Yesterday saw 590 bills filed. Through 3 p.m. today, 265 bills had already been filed. Next week's Lens on the Legislature will give the final tally.

Some of the databases supporting online inquiries, e.g., search by subject, are not updated real time (because each bill must be categorized), so it will probably be next week before those tools can be effectively used for today's filings.

Additional procedural deadlines begin to kick in on and following the 120th day (May 10th), leading to adjournment of the 79th session on the 140th day (May 30th). These will be more fully described in a later column.