Lens on the Legislature: It wasn't over long!

With the 79th Session having ended and the deadline for the governor's vetoes having passed, we thought this might be the last article in the current Lens on the Legislature series. A funny thing happened while thinking about the contents for the final issue - the governor called the legislature back to town! Since the May 20th LOL described the scope of special sessions and the authority for calling them, the focus today will be on wrapping up the recently ended regular session.

The Legislative Reference Library provides a good statistical summary of the session. The governor vetoed 19 bills and vetoed a number of line items in the appropriations bill. Proclamations were issued for each veto to enable the legislature and the public to understand the governor's reasoning. A proclamation was also issued about the vetoes of specific line items within the appropriations bill. 381 bills were effective immediately. Nearly all of the others will be effective September 1st. Previous LOL articles have described how to look up the enrolled versions of these bills. Conference Committee reports are also available online. The final version of the appropriations bill is available online on the Legislative Budget Board site.

Three major summaries (typically 200 to 500 pages each) that you can expect to be published by late Summer or the Fall are:

Finally, last week's LOL promised that today's article would cover a third way to research bills on a subject of interest. Most subjects impact certain specific sections of law, so the third way is to determine the law likely to be impacted and search for any enrolled bills (and checking to be sure they weren't vetoed) that impact that law. An example may help�

Let's assume your subject of interest is what is commonly called "Open Records" or "Public Information," or "Freedom of Information." If you look at any bill related to that subject or search TexasOnline, you can quickly determine that Section 552 of the Government Code deals with public information. You can then use an online inquiry available through the Legislative Reference Library to say "show me all of the enrolled bills that affected GC Section 552." In this example, 51 records are returned dealing with a half dozen bills.

Next week's Lens on the Legislature will deal with the special session.

[Editor's Note: Past issues of Lens on the Legislature are available online]