End of Session Deadlines Loom

Today is a big deadline day in the Texas House—it’s the last day that the House may consider house bills on 2nd reading. 

For some background, bills must be “read on three several days” in both the House and Senate throughout a bills’ journey through each chamber. Procedurally, the first reading is prior to being referred to a committee of jurisdiction. If and when a committee votes favorably to send a bill to the full chamber for consideration and then set on a calendar, the bill will be read the second and third times. In the Senate, senators can suspend the rules to complete second and third reading at the same time, but in the House this process must occur on separate legislative days.  

Today is the last day a bill can be read on second reading, making Friday the last day for third reading of all house bills in the House. If a bill does not pass through the House by Friday, it will not pass this session. 

With deadlines looming, this calendar also creates opportunities for procedural strategies to slow things down in order to keep bills further down the calendar from coming up for debate. Typically, this activity will be coordinated by the minority party that does not have the numbers to otherwise prevent passage. 

One strategy that democratic house members are fairly notorious for is referred to as chubbing, a strategy by which members ask questions and facilitate discussion on every bill on the calendar, including and especially those that are not controversial, to eat up time and slow down debate. The result is a stacking up of House calendars, numbering dozens of pages of agenda to move through before today at midnight. 

This session, Democrats have been employing this maneuver since the weekend, slow-playing debate as we near this deadline. 

Fortunately, HB 3672, a bill TXPOST is supporting and stewarding through the legislative process, was read on third reading and passed out of the House on Monday. This legislation has a long road before passage with an incredibly short timeline—the bill must get into and back out of committee and be set for discussion on the Senate Intent calendar, all before May 28th. While this is a long shot, it’s still possible. We’re working every day to create more opportunities for Texas kids, including through legislation like HB 3672. 

A number of priority bills still have steps in the process before legislators adjourn Sine Die on June 2. Chief among them, HB 2—the school finance bill of the session—continues to languish in the Senate. Big changes are finally coming to light after three weeks of the bill sitting in the Senate Committee on Education. The bill is rumored to include a much smaller increase to the basic allotment, and modified versions of the Senate’s teacher pay proposal, teacher preparation reforms, and early learning and CTE adjustments. The Senate committee will consider the committee substitute in a hearing today.