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May 25, 2019 10:09 PM
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Copyright May 25, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 24, 2019 8:45 PM
Here is the
motion for permission for the Loco and Dissent Committee to meet
while the House is in session to set a Loco and Dissent Calendar
for Sunday, May 26, 2019.
Without
objection, though you can be certain portions will be objectionable.
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Copyright May 24, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 24, 2019 3:27 PM
The combination of this new school finance solution and the creation of a revenue cap has eliminated the predictable relief valves in the school finance system; the original priorities of the House have been flipped, per the numbers
Texas
leadership is now putting $11.5 billion into a school finance bill with a heavy
emphasis on property tax relief, and still, the question lingers: “Will this be
enough?”
Some
of this has to do with the lack of a significant new revenue stream for public
education. The Texas Senate was game to cobble together multiple funding
sources to cover the cost of House Bill 3, but that funding source is nothing
compared to what would be produced through a sales tax-property tax swap, which
failed.
Now
that the language of the new plan is being circulated, we can break it down.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright May 24, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 24, 2019 12:08 PM
Chair Coleman demands to know why more information including cell phone video wasn’t released faster; DPS Director McCraw snaps back “You got it!”
Previously
unreleased footage from Sandra Bland’s
cell phone was the topic of a sometimes-confrontational Texas House County Affairs
meeting this morning.
Bland,
a 28-year-old black woman, was arrested by a Department of Public Safety
trooper and taken to the Waller County Jail for failing to
signal when changing lanes back in 2015. She died there three days later, which
officials ruled a suicide. Dash cameras video released by the agency showed an
intense exchange between Bland and officer Brian
Encinia. On the video you can hear Encinia tell Bland: “I will light you up. Get out now. Get
out of the car.”
The
trooper was fired, and the family sued for wrongful death and perjury. They
settled for $1.9 million and the perjury charge against Encinia
was dropped.
But
County Affairs Chairman Garnet Coleman,
D-Houston, was concerned the 39-second cell phone footage released
by WFAA Television earlier this month could have impacted the outcome of
her case.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By James Russell
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Copyright May 24, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 23, 2019 7:35 PM
That’s much more than either chamber had originally laid out, questions about sustainability abound but for now the state’s share of public education costs will increase from 38 percent to 45
The session’s compromise on school finance can be viewed in at
least three ways: the way the leaders pitch it; the way it’s actually written
on the page; and, in this case, the way the leadership pitches it to the masses,
finger in the air, waiting on the next election.
The Big 3 announced
a school finance deal today. Good or bad, no one would argue Gov. Greg Abbott’s point that he, the
lieutenant governor and the speaker are anything but consistent. The three are
one, the one is together, the message is unity this session.
“We’ve stayed together, working collaboratively every single week,
every single day, sometimes every single hour of every day,” Abbott told
reporters at the governor’s mansion this afternoon. “And it’s led to a very
productive, very fruitful session, a session that has addressed and solved
challenges that have plagued our state for decades.”
That sounds familiar. We heard it two weeks ago.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright May 23, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 23, 2019 6:58 PM
Chair Huberty indicates the price tag on the plan is well north of $11 billion
Following
the Big
3’s news conference about how there will be no special session, thanks
to bills on the big issues of the session, there were lot of happy faces in the
Texas
House about the announced agreements on HB2 and HB3.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Andrew Turner
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Copyright May 23, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 23, 2019 11:50 AM
In a shift from Straus era, House members – instead of the speaker – are now primarily responsible for fighting off certain proposals added by the Senate; veterans of the process see the move as deferential to Senate language in the closing days of the session
In
a brief announcement from the dais, Texas House Speaker Dennis Bonnen this week put the members
on notice that the chamber is no longer going to automatically kick back bills
to the Texas Senate when senators have added non-germane amendments to
House bills.
Under
the House rules adopted at the beginning of the session, this is how it will
work in the closing days of the session, Bonnen said: House members need to go through
their altered bills for things that may have been added by senators that could,
in many cases, be quite significant.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright May 23, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 23, 2019 11:38 AM
Geren's attorneys had argued there was no free speech violation and the House is in charge who is allowed on the floor during deliberations
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Copyright May 23, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 22, 2019 9:26 PM
An amendment was added deleting agencies which have had their bills signed already by the governor
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Copyright May 22, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 22, 2019 9:13 PM
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Copyright May 22, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 22, 2019 6:18 PM
Keeping veterans out of House Bill 3703 appeared
to be the concession Sen. Donna Campbell,
R-New Braunfels, needed to pull unanimous support for this session’s medical
cannabis oil legislation.
Veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder have
been some of the most compelling testimony during the hearings on the use of
medical cannabis. But Sen. Brian
Birdwell, R-Granbury, made it clear to the Senate this afternoon that
veterans would not be pawns.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright May 22, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 22, 2019 2:55 PM
After the House acted quickly to save an Abbott priority, this should be on your radar; it seemed to catch folks by surprise as Patrick’s legislative weapon of choice two years ago
As
the Texas
Senate goes through hundreds of bills this afternoon and presumably
into the late evening, one of the questions being asked by staffers, lobbyists,
and others revolves around whether the upper chamber today will put a bow on the
Sunset process regardless of whether any agencies see their individual legislation
fail.
The
Sunset “safety net” language, Quorum Report readers will recall,
was what Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick used to
force the special session in 2017.
Voters
may not remember that much about it, especially after the arrival of Hurricane
Harvey took precedent over the petty.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright May 22, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 21, 2019 11:20 PM
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Copyright May 21, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 21, 2019 9:29 PM
When
Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, called
a point of order on SB 10 early today it was not considered out of the ordinary.
What
did set members talking, however, was that the point of order sustained by Speaker
Dennis Bonnen was on a priority bill of Gov. Greg Abbott, his emergency item on mental health.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Andrew Turner
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Copyright May 21, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 21, 2019 9:18 PM
The changes would raise the current cap from 5 to 250, end the family ownership rules
In
a change to rules that haven’t been touched in decades, Texas lawmakers before
this session is over appear likely to boost the number of liquor
stores a person or company can own and do away with rules about family ownership.
The
last time ownership rules for liquor stores in Texas were changed was in the
1940s.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright May 21, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 21, 2019 3:54 PM
Lt. Gov. Patrick’s anger boils over, Gov. Abbott’s top staff avoid the House floor during debate, professional advocates stung from “being used as political props”
Freshman Rep. Mayes
Middleton’s effort to ban local officials from hiring lobbyists on tax
issues – and provide a red-meat win for Republicans – went down to defeat despite
efforts to massage, narrow and compromise on the bill.
After it failed on the floor, over in the other chamber Lt.
Gov. Dan Patrick threatened to kick
lobbyists out of the gallery. He said some of them had celebrated in the gallery
which he would not allow.
Senate Bill 29 appeared to morph
considerably – and possibly fatally – by the time it got to the House floor.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
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Copyright May 21, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 20, 2019 8:50 PM
DCRP Executive Committee vote was Anderson 77, Lozano 54, Metzger 34
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Copyright May 20, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 20, 2019 5:49 PM
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Copyright May 20, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 20, 2019 9:27 AM
Plenty of moving parts, with HB1, SB2, and HB3 still in negotiations, but if SB 29 passes as now proposed the governor’s team and TPPF will have swept local governments out of the mix at the Capitol if a sales tax increase takes center stage in the 2021 session
Celebrations
broke out Sunday evening as various bills offensive to various groups seemed to
die their end-of-session deaths after the Texas House Calendars Committee set
the final floor debates ahead of Tuesday’s critical deadline for passing Senate
bills.
Earlier
in the session when SB2, the rollback rates bill, was about to be debated in the House
it was clear leadership had baited Democrats by placing many of their
priorities behind it on the calendar in order to speed them through that legislation
so that their bills could make it through the process.
Those
were carrots. They had to know the sticks would be broken out at some point.
The rest of the story, subscribers only
By Scott Braddock
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Copyright May 20, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 19, 2019 7:44 PM
Just after 7pm, an amendment was pre-filed by Rep. Middleton to bar those governments from hiring lobbyists, the amendment also includes increased reporting requirements
Here
is the amendment pre-filed by Rep. Mayes
Middleton, R-“Chambers County”, who’s sponsoring the bill.
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Copyright May 19, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 19, 2019 7:34 PM
Controversial bill assailed by critics as "voter suppression" not set for debate even after Abbott said it "should be supported"
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Copyright May 19, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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May 19, 2019 5:53 PM
So far, all Dems have been present and holding the line against Abbott priority while the governor leans on Patrick to get it done
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Copyright May 19, 2019, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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