5.12.25 – Houston Public Media
Any House bills or joint resolutions that haven’t passed out of committee by Monday, made it to a calendar by Tuesday or gotten their second reading on the House floor by Thursday are effectively dead for the state’s biennial legislative session.
Time is running out for the Texas House of Representatives to pass its own bills in the regular session of the 89th Legislature. A series of key deadlines for the chamber to act is coming up this week.
Monday marks the last day on which House committees can approve House bills and House joint resolutions. It’s going to be a day of frustration for lawmakers whose bills have yet to come up for a committee vote. But for other lawmakers, and for many lobbyists, it’s likely to be an occasion for celebration.
“It’s much easier to kill legislation than it is to pass legislation, and one of the goals of lobbyists, as well as many other interest groups in Austin, is simply to block legislation they don’t like from passing,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University’s Baker Institute. “And the easiest way to do it is to keep it bottled up in committee, often with the support of the committee chair or other influential legislators.
“There will be many champagne bottles uncorked on Monday when bills that the lobbyists and others oppose die in committee and don’t make it to calendars,” he added
If a House bill or joint resolution makes it out of committee on Monday, it’s still in a race to get a vote from the full House.
“That (Monday) deadline does not take into consideration the time required to prepare the bill analysis, attain a fiscal note, other things,” said Sherri Greenberg, assistant dean for state and local government engagement at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. “Realistically, it could take more than a full day. And that is important, because it has to get to the Calendars Committee with all of the requirements met, and then the Calendars Committee would set it on a calendar for the last calendar, which is Tuesday, May 13.”
Thursday, May 14, is the deadline for House bills and joint resolutions to get their second readings on the House floor.
“You’ve got to complete the second reading of any House bill or any joint resolution,” said Jon Taylor, chair of the political science and geography department at the University of Texas at San Antonio. “If it’s not, it’s not going to advance at this stage. It pretty much is effectively dead if it’s not going out today.”
The exception is if a House bill has a companion bill from the Senate. House committees can still report out Senate bills until Saturday, May 24.
The biennial legislative session, which started Jan. 14, is scheduled to end June 2.