New Congressional map of districts was pushed by President Donald Trump.
By Karen Brooks Harper
Dallas Morning News
https://www.dallasnews.com/
Stephen Spillman / AP
AUSTIN — With less than three weeks to go before the second special legislative session ends, Gov. Greg Abbott is still waiting for nearly all of his priorities to land on his desk.
The first one to hit will be a new Congressional map of districts that is designed to flip five seats to favor Republicans in Washington — a plan pushed by President Donald Trump that has torn apart the Texas Legislature in recent weeks.
Legislation dealing with flood relief and disaster response are in negotiations between the House and Senate, and a couple of bills addressing property taxes, state judges and police personnel files have passed both chambers — although some may go into negotiations before they head to Abbott.
Many other Abbott priorities, of which there are 24 on the special session agenda, are still waiting to pass before lawmakers run out of time on the 30-day session, which began Aug.15.
Bills that are still moving through the Capitol include legislation throwing out the mandatory STAAR tests for public school students, a regulatory framework for retail consumables containing THC, stronger enforcement against the abortion pill, limits on transgender students’ use of public school bathrooms, a ban on taxpayer funded lobbying and approval for the Texas attorney general to prosecute election fraud.
The Republican governor had called lawmakers back to Austin in late July to deal with the same list of priorities, but the session stalled out when more than 50 House Democrats left the state to stop a vote on Congressional redistricting. When it became clear they would stay away until the session ended, Abbott called the second session in mid-August.
House Speaker Dustin Burrows has said he hopes to have business completed before the Labor Day weekend, which starts Saturday. But lawmakers have a long way to go, with only one priority on the way to his desk.
Burrows praised the chamber’s work Monday, when several bills won final passage.
“The Texas House continues to work through the special session call by passing a range of priority legislation to make Texas a stronger, more prosperous, and fairer state,” Burrows said in a statement.
House Bill 4, the redistricting bill by Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, passed both chambers last week and is expected to be signed by Abbott within days.
Most of the holdup is in the Texas House, which was at standstill for the first three days of the second special session as Democrats trickled back into the state after fleeing for two weeks to delay a vote on the new Congressional maps.
As of Monday evening, the House had passed about half a dozen bills — mainly dealing with redistricting, flood relief and property taxes — although House leaders have scheduled votes for Tuesday on public school accountability legislation, deed fraud, human trafficking and the attorney general’s prosecution of election fraud.
The Texas Senate has almost finished its work, with all but four Abbott priorities awaiting House action. Included in those four is the creation of a regulatory framework for products that contain tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana and hemp plants.
The Senate passed a total ban last week, but it’s likely to be vetoed; Abbott killed a similar bill in June saying that it violated not just federal law but the rights of adults to access those products.
Legislation has been filed in the House that also would ban it, but a bill by Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, would more closely align with Abbott’s request to strictly limit the sale of low-dose, hemp-derived THC products and regulate them similarly to how the state regulates alcohol. That bill is awaiting a hearing.
Karen Brooks Harper is a Mizzou alumna who has covered Texas politics in and out of Austin for nearly 30 years. She’s also covered the cartel wars along the TX-MX border, Congress in Mexico City, 3 presidential races, and 6 hurricanes. Raised on blues in the MS Delta, she lives in ATX with her son, her boxing gloves, and her guitar. In that order.
This story, originally published in The Dallas Morning News, is reprinted as part of a collaborative partnership between The Dallas Morning News and Texas Metro News. The partnership seeks to boost coverage of Dallas’ communities of color, particularly in southern Dallas.
