- Legislative Reference Library: 87th Legislature (2021) - Effective Dates for Bills.
- Texas Tribune: Topics: 87th Legislature.
- Legislative Reference Library: Today's Clips.
- Texas Tribune: Justice Department sues Texas over new voting law, targeting restrictions on mail-in ballots and voter assistance.
Disabled, elderly and non-English speaking voters risk disenfranchisement under Texas' new voting law passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice claims in a lawsuit filed Thursday challenging the legislation known as Senate Bill 1.
While Democrats and voter advocacy groups have attacked SB 1 as a Republican move to suppress turnout in Texas cities — primarily voters of color who tend to lean Democratic — the Justice Department focused its suit on two provisions which it says violate the federal Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One places strict limits on how much assistance can be given to voters who, because of disabilities or limited English proficiency, may need help navigating the voting process. The second places new constraints on how people who vote by mail verify their identities.
- Texas Tribune: Gov. Greg Abbott includes voting restrictions, critical race theory and rules for transgender student athletes on special legislative session agenda.
Gov. Greg Abbott has announced the agenda for the special legislative session that begins Thursday, asking lawmakers to prioritize 11 issues that largely appeal to conservatives who wanted more out of the regular session. The announcement of the agenda came just over 24 hours before lawmakers are set to reconvene in Austin.
The agenda includes Abbott's priority bills related to overhauling Texas elections and the bail system, as well as pushing back against social media “censorship” of Texans and the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Most of those issues were anticipated after they did not pass during the regular session and Abbott faced pressure to revive them or had already committed to bringing them back.
- Texas Tribune: Texas Legislature close to approving billions to pay for winter storm financial fallout.
The February winter storm was one of the most devastating disasters in the state’s history, killing at least 100 people. It was also one of the most expensive because of spikes in wholesale power prices and natural gas prices. Electricity regulators set power prices at the maximum rate — $9,000 per megawatt-hour — for several days in hopes that market dynamics would encourage more electricity to be supplied.
Because the freeze knocked out many of the state’s power generators, electricity companies had to buy what little power was available at that exorbitant rate (the average price for power in 2020 was $22 per megawatt-hour). Natural gas fuel prices also spiked more than 700% during the storm.
But a package of bills to provide several billions of dollars in financial relief to the state’s electricity and gas market could leave retail electric providers and their customers — mostly commercial real estate companies and small businesses like Bingoland — out of the bailout.
“I see no relief at all for the customers, who did absolutely nothing wrong,” Marcie Zlotnick, a co-founder of two small retail electric businesses, said during a Senate committee hearing on Thursday.
She estimated that allowing retail electric providers to issue bonds to cover their storm-related costs would cost less than $1 per month for customers, and warned that the cost of not doing so could result in more retail electric provider bankruptcies and huge bills to their customers, which ultimately could mean less competition in the market.
