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Update on SB 5 TLO actions

Actions taken by either house on a bill are entered and updated in the Texas Legislature Online system (TLO) manually by Legislative Reference Library (LRL) staff, and for that reason there is a delay between the time the action takes place and the time the action is entered into TLO.  TLO is not the official record of those actions, and LRL enters actions on TLO as a public service independently of the officers of the house or senate.  
 
The LRL strives to ensure the information in TLO is timely and accurate, and as part of our normal business process, the LRL ultimately verifies actions posted in TLO against the official journals of the senate and house.  TLO actions should be considered preliminary until verified against official senate and house records. When the senate took its final actions on SB 5, the LRL floor staff was unable to hear the motions made or the result of votes taken.  After midnight the LRL floor staff confirmed that a vote was taken on the motion to concur in house amendments and that the motion prevailed. The system used to enter actions for TLO defaults to the current date, so when the concurrence action was initially entered, the system automatically entered 06/26/13.
 
In reviewing the actions initially entered by LRL staff, and based on our best understanding at that time that a vote was taken on the motion to concur, we modified the date of the action to 06/25/13.  During or after the senate's deliberations on SB5, LRL did not enter or alter any information on TLO at the direction of any senate officer or member.
 
After confirming the date of the final vote on SB5 to have been 06/25/2013, the LRL has now corrected the entry on TLO to reflect the official record.  
 

83rd Regular Session Wrap-Up

House and Senate Bills
Filed 5,868
Sent to the Governor 1,437
Signed by the Governor 1,395
Signed by the Governor/line item veto 2
Vetoed by the Governor 26
Filed without the Governor's signature 14
Sent to the Comptroller 5
Joint Resolutions
Filed 193
Filed with the Secretary of State 10
Concurrent Resolutions
Filed 256
Sent to the Governor 176
Signed by the Governor 176

Bill statistics:
Midnight, June 16 was the last day the governor could sign, veto, or allow to become law without his signature bills passed during the 83rd Regular Session. When the deadline had passed, the governor had vetoed 26 bills (not including the line-item vetoes on SB 1, the General Appropriations Act, and HB 1025, a supplemental appropriations bill), signed 1,573 bills and concurrent resolutions and filed 14 bills without his signature. Joint resolutions that passed both chambers of the Legislature were filed with the Secretary of State, and will be on the ballot for the November 5, 2013, general election.

Vetoed bills:
Texas Constitution, Article IV, Section 14 states that if the governor vetoes a bill after the session has adjourned, he or she is required to give notice in the form of a proclamation. The library has compiled veto proclamations issued by Governor Perry for the 83rd Regular Session and made them available here.

Effective dates:
The library reviews the text of all bills that become law to determine their effective dates, and enters the information into the Texas Legislature Online. To find the effective date of a bill, check the "Last action" field on the bill's main page. In some cases, different sections of a bill may have different effective dates, in which case additional remarks will be given to provide the information.

In addition to updating the Texas Legislature Online with effective date information, the library compiles a list of bills and their effective dates following each regular and called session. The list is made available on the library's website once it is complete.

Signed copies of bills:
Bills that the Governor signed or allowed to become law without his signature are sent to the Secretary of State’s office, where they are made available online on the Bills and Resolutions page.

You can determine whether a bill sent to the Governor was signed or filed without signature by checking the bill in the Texas Legislature Online. If the bill passed but was filed without signature, you will see the action "Filed without the Governor's signature."

Session law chapter numbers:
The Secretary of State’s Bills and Resolutions page also lists the session law chapter number that is assigned to each bill that has become law. The session laws contain the text of all bills passed into law during a particular legislative session. Chapter numbers are used primarily for citing a bill in a legislative history annotation.