The Lt. Governor renews breakfast meetings with the Speaker and wishes him well. Is it a turning of the page on the relationship between the Lt. Governor and Speaker? Will it be a more congenial legislative session than anyone predicted? Only one way to know—keep watching!
Senate hits the ground running
Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, who sets the tone for the Senate and the pace of the legislation passing in the upper chamber, released 25 of his priorities for the legislative session and appointed Senators to their committees. The Finance Committee has already begun its hearings this week. The following priority bills (which have not yet been filed) are the ones that may affect prosecutors, so we will be monitoring them closely for you.
Senate Bill 3 – Banning THC in Texas
The Legislature will address the numerous cannabis dispensaries that popped up around Texas since the legalization of the sale of consumable hemp in 2019. The law was intended to help Texas farmers, but Lt. Governor Patrick feels the law has a loophole allowing retailers to sell products with unsafe levels of THC, especially to minors.
Senate Bill 8 – Requiring Local Law Enforcement to Assist the Federal Government’s Deportation Efforts
The Senate signals its commitment to securing the border and assisting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation mission. Also, Governor Abbott issued five executive orders directing state agencies to partner with the Trump Administration to assist in its border and homeland security operations.
Senate Bill 9 – Reforming Bail – Keeping Violent Criminals Off Our Streets
The Senate will assist the Governor with his priority of bail reform to increase or eliminate bail for certain offenders accused of violent crimes. Senator Bettencourt hopes to change the Texas Constitution to allow judges to look at the full picture when determining bail. The Senate passed a constitutional amendment on bail reform last session (and the session before that, and the session before that), but it never made it out of the House due to lack of support from the minority party. At least some Democratic support is needed to overcome the two-thirds majority required to put an amendment on the ballot in November. The Governor may have more influence with his priorities in the House this session. In the interim, Governor Abbott largely fulfilled his promise to successfully primary House members who did not pass his school choice bill.
Senate Bill 19 – Stopping Taxpayer Dollars for Lobbyists
Senator Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) filed Senate Bill 239 along with five Republican House members who filed similar bills. Middleton believes that local governments use public funds to lobby against their citizens’ own interests. The Legislature and local government have had a contentious relationship the last few sessions with the Legislature passing laws to limit local government’s powers. For instance, last session’s House Bill 2127, known as the “Death Star” bill, created a cause of action for private entities to sue cities and counties over local regulations that have not been approved by the Legislature. A lobbying ban bill passed the Senate in 2019, 2021, and 2023 but never made it out of the House. Whether the Lite Guv’s SB 19 priority bill will be identical to Sen. Middleton’s SB 239 or approach the issue from another angle remains to be seen.
Senate Bill 20 – Stopping AI Child Pornography
Last session, the Legislature passed House Bill 2700, which expanded the definition of child pornography to include visual material that uses an actual child’s image to create pornography, including content created with artificial intelligence. However, the ever-changing landscape of AI and its capabilities requires updated laws. The Legislature will need to construct such a law without violating the First Amendment.
Senate Finance Committee recap
The Senate Finance Committee held the Legislature’s first substantive hearing of the session on Monday by taking up Senate Bill 1, the state budget, and luckily enough it was focused on funding the judicial branch. That could have been because the committee chair, Sen. Joan Huffman (R-Houston), is a former district court judge, but it’s more likely that the judicial branch accounts for only a minuscule 0.4 percent of state spending, making it a good way to ease into such a complex, multifaceted issue.
First up was the Texas Supreme Court’s new Chief Justice, Jimmy Blacklock, who advocated strongly for an increase in the current judicial benchmark salary of $140,000. Despite the offer of a 15-percent increase in Sen. Huffman’s SB 293, it appears that the judiciary would like to make that number the start of discussions, not necessarily the end. However, we’re not sure they got the positive feedback they were seeking. In fact, when committee member Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) remarked that he’d like to see the judges get an even larger raise, Senator Huffman told him point blank to go ahead and file that bill himself—but then also said she would not co-author it with Senator West when he asked her directly. This led to much laughter from the committee members and staffers on the dais because they all know such a bill is dead on arrival if the committee chairwoman doesn’t support it. What remains to be seen is whether the judges know that.
As we mentioned last week, SB 293 is not just a pay raise bill but also one addressing judicial accountability, transparency, and discipline, and the committee members peppered the chief justice with questions about those topics, which he answered more deftly than some of the compensation questions. Ditto for Presiding Judge David Schenck of the Court of Criminal Appeals, who got to follow Chief Justice Blacklock and add his own two cents on those topics (along with stressing his focus on shortening the CCA’s disposition times, something he campaigned on last year).
We left the hearing feeling like there isn’t much wiggle room in SB 293 for further negotiation on the size of the increase in the benchmark salary. Whether the Senate (or House) might be amenable to other ways to increase judicial compensation—such as another tier of service, an automatic cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), or an increase in visiting judge payment rates—remains to be seen.
Interestingly, the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee released its interim report this week in which it also addressed the topic of judicial compensation, but in much vaguer fashion. Namely, the report expressed support for an increase in the judicial benchmark salary (without putting a number on it) and for exploring the possibility of passing an automatic COLA for the benchmark, but it also raised a topic unmentioned in the Senate: de-linking legislators’ pension payments from that same benchmark salary. (For those who don’t know, legislators get paid only $7,200 per year, but their ERS Elected Class retirement payouts are determined as if they were paid the judicial benchmark salary of $140,000 per year, just like a district judge or district attorney.) That “linkage” has always been a bigger political issue in the House than the Senate, and it’s one that will bear watching when the lower chamber takes up this issue.
Other happenings at the Capitol
- House members were asked to rank the committees they would like to join and submit them via House committee cards. Those requests were due yesterday, which means that committee membership will likely be named next week.
- The Governor will give his State of the State on Sunday, Feb. 2 at 5pm. The State of the State allows the Governor to outline his legislative priorities. It will be a made-for-TV event this year instead of a live appearance before the Senate and House. This is not the normal operating procedure for the State of the State, but what can we say, we live in interesting times.
- Continuing to race out of the gates, the Senate will re-convene Monday morning and begin its initial “first reading and referral of bills.” That is the formal process by which a filed bill is accepted by the upper chamber and referred to a committee for further consideration. Look for more details about Senate committee schedules in next week’s update.
Training for newly elected prosecutors
Attention all new elected prosecutors! Registration is now open for TDCAA’s Sequel to our Newly Elected Prosecutor Boot Camp. Set in Austin for the afternoon of February 27, the event features experienced faculty who will be on hand to discuss your most pressing concerns. This course is available by invitation only. If you have not yet received an agenda and link to register, please reach out to our registrar, Dayatra Rogers.
Quotes of the week
“Texas politics is now national politics. It’s really hard to divorce what’s going on at the federal level from what now happens at the state level. … [I]t’s becoming harder and harder for members to really kind of see across the aisle.”
—Brandon Rottinghaus, political scientist at U of H, explaining to the Dallas Morning News some of the dynamics behind last week’s contentious rules debate in the Texas House.
“I want to thank Senator Huffman in particular for the bill that she filed and for her willingness to propose a 15-percent raise to the base salary for judges. … I’d like to start a conversation with you about whether we can do even more to make judicial salaries more competitive.”
—New Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock, in his first appearance before the Senate Finance Committee this week.
“I’m saying it now and I’ll say it again: The pay raise comes with the approval of the transparency and the accountability [in SB 293]. It’s a package. So, I look forward to working with y’all, but … y’all figure it out because it’s got to go together, OK? … We want to give you a raise, but we also want certain things from the judiciary.”
—Senator Huffman (R-Houston), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, closing the testimony of Chief Justice Blacklock on judicial branch pay raises.
“Depending on your algorithm #txlege Democratic Reps either just became the supreme rulers of the House or were totally screwed over”
—Tweet on X by Cara Santucci, chief of staff for State Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston), after the House adopted rules banning Democratic committee chairs but making other concessions to the minority party.
“I’m going to do everything I can to help him succeed. So we’ll see what happens.”
—Lt. Governor Patrick talking about his relationship with Speaker Burrows.
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