The 89th Texas legislative session starts on Jan. 14, just two weeks from now. Between that day and sine die in the spring, we can expect no small amount of drama.
First up, a likely leadership battle royale on the House side after a very messy and very public intra-party fight among Republicans — one with loud echoes from the previous legislative session and one that continues today.
Blaise Gainey, who covers state politics for The Texas Newsroom, said the frontrunners for the House speakership, Rep. Dustin Burrows and Rep. David Cook, are conservative candidates.
“I think the biggest difference between the two is that there are rumors that Burrows has said he will make sure that school vouchers is not passed,” Gainey said. “On the other side, Cook is not wanting to appoint any Democratic chairs.
And also there’s an agreement out online called a ‘Contract with Texas.’ And it says that anybody that signed on agrees that Republican priorities will be passed on the House floor or voted on the House floor before any Democratic Party priorities make it.”
Lauren McGaughy, an investigative reporter and editor for The Texas Newsroom, said she expects people to be watching for the possibility of a third dark horse candidate entering the race in January.
“I don’t know quite who that would be at this point. But right now, people feel so entrenched,” she said. “And people forget that the speaker does need to get a majority of the House members – 76 members. And if there are any Republicans or a big enough bloc that breaks from Cook, then he would have to rely on Democrats, which he’s not going to do.”
McGaughy said that school vouchers — also called Education Savings Accounts — are expected to be a top priority this session. Gov. Greg Abbott tried hard to pass an ESA bill, which would have allocated public funds to private schools, in 2023. However, the effort failed after multiple special sessions.
“This is going to be a big topic of debate,” she said. “The parameters of the bill are how much funding per kid, how they can use it… There’s only a few other states that have done a full voucher program. And so we’ll have to see whether Abbott bases the bill that he ultimately supports on another state’s legislation or if there’s some kind of Texas version of that.”
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Another issue expected to come up this session? Property taxes.
“We saw in the presidential election and the state elections that people are not happy with how expensive things are,” McGaughy said. “There’s been big bills passed in the last few sessions on this already, but they’re going to revisit that, see what else they can do.”
Gainey said he expects property tax relief to look a little different than it did in 2023.
“I think what they’ll be trying to do is cut down costs for businesses,” he said. “The bill before was more resident-related. I think the new one we’ll see will be more business-focused.”
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also has a lot of power over which bills get passed, since he is the president of the senate. McGaughy said one of his priorities this session is to ban THC products across the board.
“This all kind of goes back to the farm bill, the state and national farm bills that were passed that kind of had this wiggle room for CBD and THC products. We’ve seen some of them come on the market here in Texas, and Patrick does not like them, so he wants to revisit that and close that loophole totally,” she said.
“Except he did clarify that the Compassionate Use Act, which is using medicinal marijuana for a very narrow list of very severe medical ailments, he doesn’t want to touch that.”
Gainey said one thing he does not expect to see come up much this session is immigration enforcement.
“With President-elect Donald Trump coming into office, I believe the state may look at that and say, you know, ‘the feds may be able to handle it this time around,’” he said. “Before, they didn’t trust the Biden administration with the way they were handling the border.”