May 26, 2003

5/26 133rd Day - by 9 AM, last House Local & Consent Calendar with SBs must be printed & distributed. 5/27 134th Day - last day for House to consider 2nd Reading SBs/SJRs on Daily or Supplemental Calendar. 5/28 135th Day - last day for House to consider local &consent SBs on 2nd & 3rd reading. ALL 3rd reading SBs/SJRs on Supplemental Calendar. Last day for Senate to consider ALL bills & JRs on 2nd or 3rd reading. 5/29 136th Day - before midnight/ Senate Amendments must be printed & distributed in the House. 5/30 137th Day - last day for House to consider Senate Amendments (concur or go to conference). Before midnight, Senate copies of CCRs on tax,gen approp, & reapportionment bills must be pr & distr. 5/31 138th Day - before midnight, House copies of ALL CCRs must be printed & distributed. Before midnight, Senate copies of CCRs on bills other than tax, gen appropriations and reapportionment bills must be printed and distributed (24 hour layout). 6/1 139th Day - last day for House to adopt CCRs. Last day for Senate to concur in H Amendments. Last day for Senate to adopt CCRs 6/2 140th Day - Corrections only in House and Senate. Last Day of 78th Regular Session
Sent in separate email.


With Saturday’s House-Senate agreement on a $58.6 billion general revenue budget, the 78th Legislature may have avoided a summer special session. Then again, it may not have. Several bills important to the budget deal are still not out of the woods, and two non-budget “emergency” items have not been resolved as yet.

Of the four major pieces of the budget puzzle, three are pending in the Senate and one awaits House floor action:

*HB 2292, the health and human services reorganization bill, was reported out of Senate Finance Committee on Friday and will on the Senate floor on Tuesday. HB 2292 is unlikely to have smooth sailing on the floor because of stiff opposition from Senate Democrats. However, the addition of more than $1 billion to fund health and human services programs, including a restoration of CHIP funding, as part of the budget agreement may help get the bill over the top. Whether there is time to work out the differences between the houses in conference, however, is a different story.

*HB 2425, the Comptroller’s fiscal management bill, came out of Finance on Saturday and is headed for Senate debate on Tuesday or Wednesday. The legislation raises significant new revenues through administrative changes to refund procedures and other tax enforcement mechanisms. The Finance Committee also added an amendment that attempts to bring certain partnerships under the franchise tax through a so-called “nexus” provision. Under that provision, a Texas partnership owned by an out-of-state corporation that does not otherwise have nexus to Texas for purposes of the franchise tax would be subject the tax. The amendment also taxes certain payments between affiliated entities, including management fees, royalties, and license fees. Thus, the amendment goes well beyond the so-called “Delaware sub” issue, which could cause serious trouble for HB 2425—or at least the franchise tax part of it—when the bill returns to the House.

*HB 3459, appropriations legislation that, among other things, contains the school finance formula adjustments for the next biennium and directs additional state aid to public schools in the form of salary increases for teachers and professional staff, likewise was reported out of Senate Finance on Saturday.

*SB 1952, the $300 million state agency reorganization bill, is awaiting House floor debate on Tuesday. This legislation has become a carrier for every dead bill looking for a vehicle this session, and if it even makes it off the House floor, there is no guarantee that it can get through the conference committee process. Incidentally, the Senate used this bill to send House Speaker Tom Craddick a loud and ugly message, amending it on the floor to abolish the Legislative Council and diminish the Speaker’s role in legislative administration. Call it payback for the House’s refusal to take up the Senate’s school finance plan.

The two primary non-appropriations items that must be completed in order for the Legislature to go home are HB 4, the tort reform bill, and SB 14, the homeowners and automobile insurance reforms. Last week the House refused to concur in the Senate amendments to HB 4 (with a great deal of resistance from the trial bar) and appointed a conference committee. To date the Senate has not responded with a conference committee of its own, raising the question of whether the Senate will appoint conferees or just let the House decide how badly it wants a tort reform bill.

The bone of contention involves the caps on non-economic damages in medical liability cases. The House established a hard $250,000 cap per action; the Senate adopted a $250,000 cap per physician, up to a total cap of $750,000, potentially meaning that three doctors will be sued in every case in order to raise the cap. There is also a separate $500,000 cap for hospitals in the Senate version. The Texas Medical Association has lobbied hard for the House version of the cap and pushed hard for the conference committee. However, there is strong evidence that the Senate is not about to budge, putting the future of the bill in doubt and suggesting the possibility of a special session on tort reform if the deadlock is not broken soon.

SB 14 finally cleared the House floor after three days of debate and is finally headed for conference committee this week. There are substantial differences between the House and Senate versions, not the least of which are the outright ban on credit scoring contained in the House version (the floor amendment to prohibit the use of credit for rating was unanimously adopted by the House) and the House’s limitation of rate regulation to only the top six writers of homeowners in the state. Given how difficult it was to fashion a compromise in the Senate so that Senator Leticia Van de Putte and her 11 Democratic colleagues could vote for it to begin with, it is not a foregone conclusion that a House-Senate conference committee will produce a result that can pass both chambers. With only about three days to achieve such a compromise, perhaps the session’s most important political issue hangs in the balance. Along with the budget and HB 4, insurance reform is the only issue that, if left unresolved, will certainly produce an immediate special session.