Photo by: Al Braden
86 days to go and one week left to file new bills in the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate.
That’s right, we have already passed the 50 day mark in the 140-day legislative session. And next Friday March 10 at 5pm is the absolute deadline for filing new legislation in both chambers.
How are we doing? How many bills? Lots and lots.
Thus far, as of Friday, March 3, more than 3,500 House bills, 1,500 Senate bills, and about 200 resolutions have been filed, meaning more than 5,200 bills have been offered.
We expect a couple thousand more bills will be filed next week alone.
Which ones are important and relevant to our legislative agenda? Lots but we are still reading through the gigantic list of bills.
The only bill that must pass is SB 1/HB 1, the two-year roughly $200 billion budget for all state agencies in Fiscal Year 2024 and Fiscal Year 2025. That bill has already had public hearings, and right now legislators are busy “marking up” the bill. Sierra Club representatives gave written and public comments at several hearings last week on the budget, and are now busy helping offices draft “riders” in an attempt to obtain additional resources.
House Appropriations Committee
HB 1: Texas Parks & Wildlife. Feb 27, 2023.
HB 1: Railroad Commission of Texas. Feb 27, 2023.
HB 1: Texas Water Development Board. Feb 27, 2023.
HB 1: Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Feb, 27, 2023.
HB 1: Comptroller of Public Accounts: Fiscal Programs. Feb. 21, 2023.
HB 1: Energy Systems Lab Funding. Feb 22, 2023.
HB 1: Public Utility Commission of Texas. Feb 22, 2023.
Another big and related bill filed this week was SB 30 by Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston), also known as the “Supplemental Appropriations” bill, which adds money to the budget in the current year - fiscal year 2023. Interestingly, that bill would give the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department another $100 million for land acquisition - which is more or less the price tag for buying Fairfield Park – currently closed and slated to be sold to a private developer reportedly for a gated community, golf course, and selling of water rights. It would also provide $400 million for flood infrastructure funding and, most interestingly of all, $3.4 billion for customer relief from high gas costs that resulted from Winter Storm Uri and the passing of those costs to customers.
Moreover, after weeks of rumors, we finally saw the filing of all those “Sunset” bills, the bills which make key reforms to important state agencies like the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and the Texas Water Development Board. The Sierra Club will be commenting and engaging on these bills in the coming weeks. Making the PUCT more responsive to the public, and making the TCEQ actually enforce the law and allow more public participation will be important factors, while ensuring that TWDB actually can manage their portfolio of projects is an important goal of ours for the agency.
- Public Utility Commission of Texas: HB 1500 (Holland) / SB 1368 (Schwertner)
- Texas Commission on Environmental Quality: HB 1505 (Keith Bell) / SB 1397 (Schwertner)
- Texas Water Development Board: HB 1565 (Canales) / SB 1351 (Perry)
Water update
A bill gaining lots of attention is SB 837, filed by Sen. Charles Perry (R-Lubbock) and its House companion, HB 2483 by Rep. Tracy King (D-Laredo). These bills establish the “Water for Texas Fund” at the Texas Water Development Board.
This fund would focus on much-needed investment in Texas’s water infrastructure in addition to addressing water loss as a strategy for bolstering our state’s water supply. However, Sierra Club has specific concerns about the fund’s priority for “new sources of water” including desalination, produced water treatment, and importing of water from out of state. There is substantial work the state still needs to do prior to the widespread use of seawater desalination. Specifically, the state needs to prioritize the welfare of coastal communities and economies by ensuring protection of our bays and estuaries prior to additional desalination capacity.
Also, a reminder if you haven’t taken action yet to protect coastal ecosystems and communities from pre-production plastic pollution please do so here!
Fixing the Grid… What’s the status?
This week also saw the first hearing of the House Committee on State Affairs. We watched and participated! Sierra Club was invited to testify on grid fixes, and we went deep into the customer-sited solutions we would like to see to make our grid more reliable, less expensive and beneficial to residential consumers. Even as others push solutions like state-financing of gas plants or implementation of the PUCT solution (paying generators more through a “PCM” - Performance Credit Mechanism”) we highlighted the need to invest in energy efficiency, demand response, and smaller customer-sited generation like solar and storage. To see our written comments, go here. Want to add your name in support of our comments? Take our online action alert!
In the meantime, a variety of great bills we are supporting that are aligned with our goals to fix the grid were filed recently. Here’s a partial list of some great bills we are supporting.
- SB 258 (Eckhardt): Relating to energy efficiency goals for electric utilities.
- SB 114 (Menendez): Relating to the provision of electricity service in the ERCOT power region.
- HB 1254 (Darby): Relating to certificates of public convenience and necessity for certain transmission projects.
- HB 2502 (Reynolds): Relating to the creation of an energy efficiency loan guarantee program
- HB 3061 (Zwiener): Relating to the creation of certain energy efficiency programs.
- HB 3078 (Hernandez): Relating to a program to provide assistance for certain retail electric customers.
- HB 3239 (Hernandez): Relating to the participation of distributed energy resources in the ERCOT ancillary services and wholesale energy markets.
- HB 3312 (Hernandez): Relating to certain regulations adopted by governmental entities for the building products, materials, or methods used in the construction of residential or commercial buildings.
We are calling on our members and supporters to tell the legislature they want bills like these to pass. Take action here to let them know!
What’s next?
Hearings are happening quickly for individual bills and we will be monitoring, testifying and writing written comments, even as we continue to follow the budget process.
We are also gearing up for some upcoming lobby day activities. First, we will be supporting our friends at the Citizens Climate Lobby for their lobby day on March 27, and we are gearing up for a large lobby day presence on April 11 with a large group of organizations collectively known as the Alliance for a Clean Texas (ACT). The focus of that lobbying will be the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Sunset bill, and related bills on protecting communities from pollution.
Finally, if you'd like to get these updates in your inbox, sign up for our legislative email list here!