Lens on the Legislature: May Madness Ends with the Final Four

Today (Friday) is Legislative Day 137. Today through Monday comprise the final four days of the 79th Regular Session of the Texas Legislature.

Shortly before 5:00 p.m. last evening, Chairman Jim Pitts responded to a question in the House about the status of the various appropriations matters. He said that he was asking for conference committees for HB3540 (a 30 page bill covering a variety of fiscal matters, including employee and teacher retirement), HB10 (relating to supplemental appropriations and reductions for the current fiscal year), and SB1863 (a 94 page bill dealing with a variety of fees and taxes). He also said that the SB1 (nearly 1,000 page General Appropriations Bill) Conference Committee would also be meeting later in the evening, presumably to vote final approval.

Recalling from the March 31st Lens on the Legislature that the House and Senate can only take up or down votes on conference committee reports and recalling from previous discussions in this column that next Monday is reserved solely for technical corrections, it's clear that time would not permit these complex bills to be reworked if either chamber votes them down. In all likelihood, the legislature will trust their conferees and approve these important bills, the final versions of which most legislators will not have read.

The end of session crunch is not unique to fiscal matters. HB2 (Education), HB3 (School Finance), SB6 (Child Protective Services), HB7 (Workers' Compensation), SB11 (School Security) and SB408 (Continuation of PUC; Telecommunications) are examples of major bills for which conference committee reports have yet to hit the full House and Senate as of this morning. In addition to the 74 conference committees that already existed, before adjourning at about 8:10 last evening, the Senate appointed conferees for several more bills. Each conference committee report will require an up or down vote by Sunday.

Looking at the broader statistics, through last evening 480 House Bills and 318 Senate Bills have passed both chambers. By the yardstick previously described in this column, that's slightly over half way to the finish line. The governor has now signed 163 of these bills and the "effective immediately" tally is at 66.

This will be an exciting weekend. While the press has reported consensus on a number of these bills, anecdotes abound about how major bills were killed in the waning hours of prior sessions by a single legislator's point of order or other parliamentary maneuver.

Next week's column will begin to discuss the results, some of which may still be subject to the governor's veto.