If you’d like a clue to what laws may be up for discussion next Lege session, the mists are parting on the crystal ball. Yesterday, today and tomorrow, Speaker Tom Craddick is unleashing his interim charges for House committees. This list of hot, cold and mandatory topics for review are how committees get legislation at least partially ready for the mad “dash to pass” that will be the 81st session.
Yesterday, Craddick released the charges for financially related committees (most of which deal in nuanced, technical fiscal details that require the MBA that Chronic never got.) But today is the day of the divisive touchstones. First up, it’s voter fraud, which has obsessed the speaker and Attorney General Greg Abbott for years. Of course, considering the media drubbing the House took over the away from the desk voting mini-scandalette, it’s not surprising that House Administration will “study and make recommendations for alternative voting devices in the […] Chamber.”
This comes in a double-whammy with everyone’s old friend tort reform, which gets another airing out over in Civil Practices: this time, they’ll be looking at recovered fees and the darkly-defined “other financial penalties” for anyone silly enough to sue a company and then have the bad grace to lose the case. Then State Affairs gets to charge into the quagmire of creating local immigration policy by examining getting “political subdivisions […] to perform the functions of immigration officers.”
But tomorrow could be fun: Transportation still has to receive its charges. Chronic can only assume that toll-road watchers will be up early, drafting press releases.
Of course, a lot of charges were issues that committees raised, argued about, and failed to resolve last session. Appropriations gets to look at state agency executive salaries again: Culture, Recreation and Tourism looks back over what, if any, facilities should be transferred from Texas Parks and Wildlife to Texas Historical Commission: and Corrections will continue the examination of structural failings in Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission.
This article appears in November 23 • 2007.
