Terminado, fini, fertig, finito or just Sine Die. The 89th Legislative Session is over and now we wait to see which bills made the long treacherous journey to the governor’s desk just to feel the cold stamp of a veto. It is a cruel world for all those bills dreaming of becoming law. Lawmaking is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.
Raises
Let’s not bury the lead. Raises could be on their way to elected prosecutors! If you have not been paying attention, then you missed out on the lawmakers’ last-second heroics to pass a judicial pay raise. SB 293 increases the judicial benchmark salary from $140,000 to $175,000. That’s a $35,000 raise (25 percent). If that significant increase avoids a gubernatorial veto, it will take effect on September 1, 2025. We broke down the math earlier this week. Please reach out to Shannon if you have further questions on how this raise affects your salary.
Session for the ages
The legislative session began with over 9,000 bills trying to become law. After 140 days, the lawmakers sent just over 1300 bills to the governor’s desk. Governor Abbott has until June 22 to veto any bills that he does not want passed into law. Any bill that the governor does not sign or veto will pass into law on June 22, and most will go into effect on September 1. Governor Abbott vetoed 76 bills last session. The passage rate for bills this session was just under 14% compared to the historical 20% passage rate of bills. It goes to show that this session was an extra difficult gauntlet to overcome to pass bills. The legislators also passed 17 constitutional amendments that will be on the November ballot, the highest number of amendments since 2003.
Bail reform passes
SJR 5 by Huffman will be one of the constitutional amendments on the November ballot. SJR 5 would allow judges to deny bail to people accused of certain violent crimes. The House added amendments to include the right to an attorney at those no-bail hearings and to require that the State offers proof that a defendant is a public safety or flight risk. Those amendments helped gain the elusive Democratic votes needed to pass a constitutional amendment (which requires 100 votes in the 150-member House). The governor praised the work of the legislature in passing SJR 5 at a signing ceremony in Houston this past week. SJR 5, if passed by the voters, will take effect after that vote is officially canvassed and accepted by the Secretary of State (usually sometime in late November or early December). However, there will be other bail reform measures that will be law in September 2025. SB 9 by Huffman is the omnibus bail reform-enabling legislation for that joint resolution that also serves as a “clean-up” bill for the major bail reform legislation that passed in 2021 as SB 6, aka the Damon Allen Act. This new legislation revises the public safety report (PSR) system, limits appointed magistrates’ authority to set or reduce bail, limits personal bonds for more types of crimes, clarifies the process for prosecutors to appeal allegedly insufficient bail, and makes lots of other changes. SB 40 by Huffman prohibits the use of public funds by political subdivisions to pay a nonprofit organization for depositing bail money on behalf of defendants. It also allows residents the right to seek injunctive relief if these restrictions are violated. And HB 75 will require any finding of no probable cause at magistration to be made in writing and include the reasons for that finding in the court record.
ABCD bills summary
The legislators thought of many ways to task other officials with prosecutors’ constitutional duties this session, but only one passed on to the Governor’s desk.
HB 45 by Hull (OAG prosecution of human trafficking after 180 days of inaction by local district attorney).
Below is the non-exhaustive list of “ABCD” bills that died in the gauntlet of the legislative process (thanks in part to local prosecutors educating the legislators on the real world effects of these bills!).
SB 2384 by Hughes (creation of regional district attorneys)
HB 933 by Spiller and its Senate companion is SB 1210 (SCOTX > CCA)
HB 2309 by Villalobos (OAG forfeitures in human trafficking and other crimes)
HB 5138 by Shaheen (OAG prosecution of election crimes)
HB 5318 by Louderback (OAG prosecution of certain public order crimes)
SB 16 by Hughes (OAG prosecution of new crime of illegal voter registration)
SB 1367 by Hughes (SPA as statewide trial prosecutor)
SB 1861 by Hughes (CCA appointment of special prosecutor)
SB 2743 by Hagenbuch (OAG prosecution of election crimes upon removal of local prosecutor)
And let’s not forget HB 3664, the grand jury reform bill that took multiple different forms during the session as its main proponent repeatedly sought to push something, anything over the finish line despite uniform opposition from prosecutors. Ultimately, that problematic bill died along with the others mentioned above. However, don’t be surprised if one or more of these ideas come up again as legislative study topics during the interim or as future bills next session.
Veto period
We are now in the 20-day veto period that ends on Sunday, June 22, 2025, as mentioned earlier. If you want more information on how to contact the governor’s office to request that he sign or veto a bill, contact Hector for those details. Our next newsletter from Austin will update you on what got axed by the governor’s pen and what new laws take immediate effect (before September 1, 2025).
Quotes of the week
“I told you I was coming for the pimps! I’m going to take their money, and I’m going to give it to the people they’ve been running over.”
—Representative Senfronia Thompson (D-Houston) while introducing an amendment to SB 2167 that would take funds recovered during human trafficking investigations at massage establishments and place them into an account used to combat future human trafficking.
“Are you aware that my dad worked for Oscar Meyer Weiner for 25 years and drove the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile?”
—Representative Jeff Leach (R-Plano) responding to questions on the House floor from Representative Erin Zwiener (D-Driftwood).
“I have never gone back and forth as much between the House and the Senate in one day as I have today.”
—Senator Jose Menendez (D-San Antonio) discussing the debate between both chambers regarding the link between judges’ pay and lawmaker pensions hours before the end of the legislative session.
“And now that we’ve all fought, each other and together, we all know that we’re one House. And if we remember that, we close the historic 89th session today with an eye towards an incredible 90th session ahead. And on behalf of the members of the 89th Legislative Session, Mr. Speaker, we thank you. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House of Representatives of the 89th Legislature Regular Session stand adjourned, Sine Die.”
—Representative Joe Moody (D-El Paso) making the motion to adjourn the 89th Texas Legislature in the Texas House of Representatives, Sine Die.
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