By Cyrus Reed
40 days. Give or take.
That what’s left in the regular 87th Legislative Session to pass a two-year state budget (not including federal funding from the American Progress Act apparently), pass a series of electric reforms, potentially make voting a whole lot harder, take away city powers to lobby and regulate gas, and consider a myriad of other proposals, both positive and negative.
Even for those of us on the inside, it is practically impossible to keep up as hearings are announced with little advance notice, deals are cut, and behind-the-scenes meetings happen. But let’s try and make some sense of the chaos.
Budget
SB 1 - the state’s two-year budget - was passed by the Senate a few weeks ago. Today (Earth Day), the House of Representatives will take up their version on the House floor and go through about 140 prefiled amendments that are expected to last hours. Most of the amendments will not be adopted if history is any guide. Does it matter? Not that much because when the House does pass a budget -- and they will -- it will get sent to the Senate, which will reject it. And then the real fun begins. Five Senators and five Representatives will be named to a conference committee and they will begin to negotiate final numbers. How much money is spent on air quality monitoring, inspectors, well plugging, park land acquisition, the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan, the Economically Distressed Areas Program for water and wastewater, public education, etc? It will be up to those 10 members reaching an agreement to be rubber stamped by the House and Senate. The Sierra Club will be there advocating to get money where it is needed and will look for help once we know who the 10 lucky members are.
Whatever the case, we do know that neither the House or Senate’s current version of the budget includes billions of dollars in federal money resulting from passage of the American Progress Act, as well as left over money from the CARES Act. There will be an attempt by some to use federal monies for Medicaid expansion, while others will try to utilize monies for public education. But leadership -- led by Appropriations Chair Greg Bonnen -- are considering whether a select few (basically Governor Abbott, Lt. Governor Patrick, Speaker Phelan, and the Chairs and Vice-Chairs of the Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Appropriations) will determine how and where federal money gets allocated, or as many members are suggesting, that federal monies be handled through a special session later in the year. Those competing proposals are being discussed as I write this.
We also know that leadership in the Texas House and Senate really do want to make it harder to vote, and easier to make allegations of voter fraud. We know this because SB 7 (Hughes) passed the Senate on a party line 18-13 vote, and HB 6 (Cain) was passed out of committee, though it has yet to get out of the House Committee on Calendars, meaning Democrats are doing their best to block it.
Sticking it to Cities
Big bills intended to make it harder for city government are still in vogue this year. First, HB 17 -- the bill telling cities they can’t regulate gas appliances or gas hook-ups -- moved swiftly through Sen. Brian Birdwell’s Committee on Natural Resources and Economic Development and could be on the Senate floor this week. Essentially the bill is a slap to the City of Dallas and City of Austin for daring to discuss the potential that future construction may be all-electric so that homes are more energy-efficient and reduce the use of fossil fuels, thus helping to reduce global warming. Similarly, SB 1261 by Birdwell tells cities they can’t regulate pollution that causes global warming. Fortunately, the initial bill that said cities can’t do anything that “indirectly” regulate greenhouse gases was changed to say cities can’t directly regulate greenhouse gases which of course is already true. This week it passed the Senate on a 20-11 vote.
In a much larger move, the Senate considered and passed SB 10 by Sen. Bettencourt on a 17-13 vote, which prevents cities from hiring outside lobbyists and generally takes away the power of cities to represent themselves at the legislature, including through associations. At the very time that the Legislature is taking away city powers, they want to make it harder for cities to defend themselves.
Winter Storm Uri
The House continues to pass some reform bills that do not necessarily solve the issues that all Texans experienced with Uri. This week, the House passed HB 14 by Rep. Goldman, a “mapping” bill of the gas supply network, without requiring gas producers to winterize their supplies, despite the widespread problems. While we continued to press for required winterization (see comments here on HB 14), the House leadership insisted it would take up gas supply winterization later. They did, however, pass a series of “securitization” bills that will allow both natural gas distribution companies to use state-backed credit to pay back debts incurred as part of the winter storm through HB 1520 (Paddie), and then have the rest of us pay it back through our rates. While we tried to convince the House to add consumer protections and conservation programs, our efforts largely fell on deaf ears (See HB 1520 testimony here.)
The House also passed HB 1510 to allow securitization for non-ERCOT utilities to winterize and pay back high bills incurred during the storm, again without protections or demand-side efficiency programs as we had suggested (see comments here).
On Energy Efficiency and Fracked Gas Plants
SB 243 and HB 4556 (energy efficiency goal bills by Sen. Sarah Eckhardt and Rep. Rafael Anchia respectively) got hearings in Senate Business & Commerce and House State Affairs on Tuesday.
On the efficiency bills, there was great testimony in both committees, including from individuals who shared their personal stories of the winter freeze and how their homes could not keep them safe. If you'd like to see the recording, see links below.
Utility companies like Oncor and Centerpoint and the larger Association of Electric Companies of Texas are opposed to the energy efficiency bills. However, they did not testify on either bill yesterday. Corporate influence working in the shadows... sound familiar? Instead they went separately to the authors and presented them with proposed bills that would actually do nothing. You heard it here first folks. If the Oncors of Texas want to stop people-first bills behind the scenes, the people should know about it!
We believe there is the potential to move these bills forward but it will take incredible pressure and perseverance to keep these people-centered solutions to the winter storm crisis in the mix.
Meanwhile, the Warren Buffett bills (10 new fracked gas plants backed by your money) continued to make progress this week. This week, Rep. Eddie Lucio III (D-Brownsville) swapped his good bill out with the Berkshire Hathaway bill language as part of HB 3749. You can see our written testimony here. The video on that is below too.
That follows on the heels of last week’s BH hearing with Sen. Charles Schwertner swapping out what was a good bill (SB 2109) with the BH proposal (See our testimony here). We fear that Lt .Governor Dan Patrick is very much pushing this bill in the Senate meaning we need to keep pressure up to stop this wasteful bill.
House State Affairs video:
https://tlchouse.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=46&clip_id=20419
HB 4556 starts around 2:09:47
HB 3749 starts around 2:46:43
Business & Commerce video:
https://tlcsenate.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=49&clip_id=15776
SB 243 starts around 1:39:05
Oil and Gas Pollution
We also had a great hearing on controlling methane pollution. Rep. Ron Reynolds introduced great pieces of legislation to regulate methane from oil and gas production (HB 896) or at least study it (HB 897) (See our testimony here).
While oil and gas producers came out screaming against HB 896 (“don’t regulate us we can meet voluntary targets”), they were largely silent on HB 897, except claiming it might be costly to do a study, which is patently false, since the Legislative Budget Board determined there is no cost to do the study!
Radioactive Waste
SB 1046 by Birdwell did get out of committee, and briefly appeared on the Senate Intent Calendar, but a combination of pressure from environmental groups and - believe it or not - certain oil and gas interests has blocked the bill so far. See our testimony here. While the bill purports to ban the storage or disposal of high-level radioactive waste in Texas, it does so in a way that may not actually accomplish that task, and then opens up Texas to increased imports of low-level radioactive waste, while lowering revenues for the state.
Good News on Water Trust
One bright spot has been the passage of HB 2225 by Tracy King, which would authorize the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to take a more active role in the Texas Water Trust, which seeks to ensure public surface water is used for environmental benefits. That bill overwhelmingly passed the House floor on a 138-10 vote. In another partial victory, another great Tracy King bill - HB 2716 - which would allow TPWD to take a more active role in protecting water and public lands from wastewater discharge and other permits did get out of Chairman King’s committee Thursday morning on an 8-2 vote. On to Calendars!
Electric Vehicle Hope… Maybe
A bill we support -- HB 2221 -- by Chair Terry Canales got out of the Committee on State Affairs this week. It would help pave the way for electrification of our transportation system, while another good bill - HB 3963 - by Rep Ken King, also passed out of the same committee. That bill would allow Texas Parks and Wildlife and other state agencies to contract with third parties to install electric vehicle charging stations.
A series of bills that would impose additional fees on electric vehicles, however, are also moving through the legislature. While Sierra Club supports charging electric vehicles fair fees -- such as the $100 road tax found in the Canales bill -- other proposals by Rep. King, Sen. Schwertner and Rep. Armando Martinez propose fees of $200 or more.
TERP - Texas Emissions Reduction Plan Funding
Another bill we support -- HB 3294 -- by Rep. Cecil Bell received a hearing and passed out of the House Committee on Appropriations (See our testimony here). That bill would continue to ensure that all funding for the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan, including certificate of title fees, goes into a trust fund to be used by the TCEQ to ensure we make progress on reducing ozone pollution through a variety of programs and incentives (including incentives for electric vehicles).
Other TERP bills -- including HB 1533 by Reynolds that would create an energy efficiency revolving loan program -- continue to make their way through the process but their prognosis is... cloudy. Stay tuned!