By Cyrus Reed
We have hit the 30 day mark. The Legislature has met, has been filing bills (about 3,000 thus far), and has even started committee meetings.
An interesting Senate Business & Commerce Committee hearing
On Tuesday, the Senate Business & Commerce Committee met for more than six hours, with invited testimony from the Public Utility Commission of Texas’s Chair Peter Lake, the Independent Market Monitor’s Carrie Simmonds, and a representative from the consultant firm that came up with the preferred “market” change that was recommended by the five commissioners as the way to “fix” our market.
While the discussions back and forth with the senators in attendance were interesting and showed the variety of opinions on the so-called "performance credit mechanism" or PCM, the more interesting issue was the absence of Chair Dr. Charles Schwertner, who had been arrested on a DUI charge in Austin the night before. Leading the meeting was Vice Chair Phil King (R-Weatherford), and Schwertner’s absence was only mentioned briefly. It is too early to tell whether the embattled Senator from Georgetown will hold onto his chair, but we expect the committee, whether led by Schwertner or King, to take up stakeholder views on the market changes and also assess what happened during the recent outages on the grid that impacted Austin and other areas in Central Texas.
Senate Finance Committee meetings continue
The Senate Finance Committee continued to meet all week, mainly focused on education, higher education, and health and human services. Next week they will be taking up both the budgets for natural resources agencies like Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Texas Water Development Board, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the Railroad Commission of Texas, as well as other regulatory agencies like the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Office of Public Utility Counsel. To read all our comments on the budget see here.
House Speaker names committees
And the biggest news of all? House Speaker Dade Phelan named his committees. There were no huge surprises. In general, most committees are controlled by the Republican leadership though eight of the 33 committees will be led by a Democratic Chair. In terms of the committees most relevant to our legislative agenda, Rep. Greg Bonnen will continue to chair the Committee on Appropriations, Energy Resources will again be chaired by Rep. Craig Goldman, Rep. Brooks Landgraf from Odessa will chair the Committee on Environmental Regulation, and Rep. Tracy King (D-Uvalde) will chair the Committee on Natural Resources. In perhaps the one surprise, Phelan named Corpus Christi’s Todd Hunter to chair the Committee on State Affairs, which will handle all things electric grid.
To see all House committee rosters see here.
Over the next several months, our job will be to get good legislation through these committees, and stop bad legislation from proceeding. Let the fun begin!
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