Sunday, May 31, 2009
Goodbye Deadline, Hello Special Session?
A major - though perhaps not the - focus of the penultimate night of the session was seeing if CHIP expansion could survive its final incarnation as a portion of the conference committee report on Senate Bill 2080. It was eligible in the House at 11:59 and had to be passed by the midnight deadline. Was it possible? We'll never know.
If bills were chickens, the great Molly Ivins might describe the situation as a "gang pluck."
As midnight came and went, not only had SB 2080 (and many other bills) not come up, the House still had not passed the "sunset safety net" bill, which many state agencies require in order to continue operating.
In the words of Fox News' Steve Doocy - This is HUGE!
This could very well mean that a special session is imminent. The only likely way it can be avoided is if at least two-thirds of the representatives agree to suspend the rules and take up this must-pass legislation tomorrow during sine die, the constitutionally mandated final day of the session.
The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association bill, House Bill 4409, which would also have triggered a special session, managed to pass the House in time. The Senate still has to approve it tomorrow.
In related news, this means Sen. John Carona need not filibuster the now dead TxDOT sunset bill, though he won that battle before time ran out.
Coming to a Texas highway near you: License plate readers
Deep in the Senate's version of the massive TXDoT bill is a provision that, if not stripped out in conference committee, will allow local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to install license plate reading cameras on Texas highways. The technology - already in widespread use in surveillance-crazy Britain - is very powerful, enabling the government to automatically photograph the license plates of moving vehicles and check the information against databases. If the system finds a "match," officers can be alerted.
Continue reading »
Senate Bill 690: Trimming the Grassroots
Karen Hall’s knees still haven’t recovered from gathering signatures door-to-door for an amendment to Bryan’s city charter. “Democracy is a messy business,” she says, “but we like it.”
Continue reading »
Women to Watch: Rep. Kristi Thibaut, D-Houston
After she lost her first campaign for a House seat from Houston in 2006, Kristi Thibaut showed up in Austin anyway. What she encountered, as she lobbied unsuccessfully for lower utility rates with fellow ACORN activists, was almost enough to make her wonder why she'd wanted that seat in the first place.
Continue reading »
One Weekend a Month, Two Weeks a Year, Five Years in Jail
Sometimes our legislators don't even know what's in their own bills. This morning, Rep. Dan Flynn (R-Van) discussed his House Bill 1165 before the Defense & Veterans Affairs Committee and it was evident that he hadn't read - or maybe didn't understand - what all was in it.
Continue reading »
Copyright © 2000-2009 The Texas Observer
- Investigative reporting is supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Institute.
- Books & the Culture is funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission of the Arts.
Comments