During the first special session this year, much of the activity at the Capitol was brought to a standstill after Texas House Democrats broke quorum over a GOP push to redistrict the state’s congressional maps.
But this week, with the second special session underway, things are moving at a faster pace. Not only have these new district maps already passed, but lawmakers are considering a number of other issues.
Blaise Gainey, who covers the statehouse for The Texas Newsroom, said the new congressional maps were hit with a lawsuit before Gov. Greg Abbott had a chance to sign the bill into law.
“LULAC, the group that is already (part of) a lawsuit right now, has sued the state over these maps saying they’re still the problem, that the problem of breaking up coalition districts is still there,” Gainey said. “The Department of Justice actually asked the state this time around to break up those districts, but that doesn’t mean that the courts will agree with that. So we’ll just have to see how these play out. This won’t be the only lawsuit. This is just the first one.”
There is also legislation on the table that would make it harder for lawmakers to break quorum in the future, Gainey said.
“Essentially the legislation is just saying, hey, if you are gonna break quorum, you cannot use any of your campaign funds to pay for travel. You can’t accept donations during that time. It’s just trying to really limit what money they can use,” he said.
“So that if they choose to break quorum in the future, they are essentially only relying on their checking accounts and any credit they have built up on their own, not as a lawmaker. And so that could make it harder in the future.”
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Lawmakers are also considering bills related to the July 4 flooding in the Hill Country.
“They actually had some families in from Camp Mystic last week, and they passed a couple of bills related to Camp Mystic and other overnight camps, mentioning that depending on how close they are to the water, they need to make sure they have emergency plans, and submit those to the state,” Gainey said. “They could even come with fines if they don’t submit them to the state in time.”
This week, the Senate is planning to take up a bill focused on abortion pills.
“This is similar to other bills that we’ve seen related to abortion in the past where a regular citizen would be able to sort of tell on their neighbor or somebody that they know that is either shipping these pills, receiving these pills or producing them in some manner,” Gainey said. “This is a pretty serious bill, but we’ve seen this before. It just depends on whether or not it’ll make it all the way through.”
A bill that would do away with the end-of-year standardized STAAR test is also on the table for this second special session.
“This bill was up during the regular session. It will replace the STAAR test with three smaller tests – one taken at the beginning, middle, and then end of the year,” Gainey said. “These tests are apparently quicker as far as the students will get the results quicker, and teachers won’t have to teach to a test all year long. But some still don’t like it. They think that this isn’t the right solution, although they do agree the STAAR test needs to go.”
