September 23, 2016      6:32 PM
In Texas Energy Report: Energy all-star panel reveals legislative game plan for oil and gas
Fast-tracking Railroad Commission Sunset, tapping $10 billion Rainy Day Fund and more
HOUSTON – A long-elusive sunset bill to reauthorize the
oil-and-gas regulating Texas Railroad Commission for 12
more years will be fast-tracked next spring and stripped clean of such
controversies as replacing the agency’s outdated name or moving certain
functions elsewhere, a key lawmaker said Friday.
Rep. Larry
Gonzales, R-Round Rock, chair of the Sunset
Advisory Committee, promised members of the state’s leading oil and gas
lobby that the RRC’s sunset bill will contain what members of his committee
deem necessary instead of the traditional recommendations of the Sunset
Advisory Commission staff.
“The idea is the (sunset) staff won’t write the bill. We
the committee will write the bill. I would like to see the sunset legislation
in the first 60 days. We’re going to take the Railroad Commission up early on
the House
side so it is not changed so much in May and becomes this terrible
thing that won’t pass anymore,” said Gonzales, referring to the legislature’s
practice of tagging otherwise dead or “zombie” bills on to sunset legislation.
In the Senate, “We will pass a Railroad Commission Sunset
bill, and it will be a clean bill,” added Sen.
Craig Estes, incoming chairman of the Senate Natural Resources and Economic
Development Committee. “It won’t have any bells or whistles on it to
drag it down.”
The full story is in the Texas Energy Report.
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