Today's Committee Meetings on the LRL website is a calendar of legislative committee hearings with links to agendas. Below are resources related to upcoming hearings.

February 25
House Committees on Energy Resources and State Affairs (Joint Hearing)
The Committees on State Affairs and Energy Resources will hold a joint public hearing to consider the factors that led to statewide electrical blackouts during the recent unprecedented weather event; the response by industry, suppliers, and grid operators; and changes necessary to avoid future power interruptions.

The committee will hear invited testimony only on:
- Statewide electrical blackouts-contributing factors and response

Senate Committee on Business & Commerce
Purpose: The purpose of this hearing is to examine extreme weather condition preparedness and circumstances that led to the power outages as directed by Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The committee will also review generator preparedness and performance, utility outage practices, natural gas supply, and the reliability of renewable generation, as well as overall ERCOT system resilience.

March 4
Senate Committee on Jurisprudence   CANCELED
Purpose: The purpose of this hearing is to examine the legal responsibilities that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) owe to the people of Texas. The committee will review the legal framework for governance and oversight of these two entities, their relationship to one another under the law, potential legal liabilities, and the legal limits on increases to consumer electricity rates during an emergency.

The committee will also examine price gouging under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act and receive an update from the judiciary on how the judicial system is managing its operations during the ongoing statewide emergency.

Reports:

• "AG Paxton Sues Griddy, LLC Energy Company: Customers Hit with Exorbitant Energy Bills" (Press Release), Office of the Attorney General, March 1, 2021
• Energy Emergencies | The State Legislative Role in Planning and Response (PDF version), National Conference of State Legislatures, January 22, 2021
• Reliability Guideline: Generating Unit Winter Weather Readiness – Current Industry Practices – Version 3, North American Energy Reliability Council, Reliability and Security Technical Committee, approved December 15, 2020
• Report on Existing and Potential Electric System Constraints and Needs, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), December 2019
• Modernizing the Electric Grid: State Role and Policy Options, National Conference of State Legislatures, November 2019
• The South Central United States Cold Weather Bulk Electric System Event of January 17, 2018, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation, July 2019
• Scope of Competition in Electric Markets of Texas: Report to the 86th Legislature (Previous Scope of Competition Reports, 1997-2017), Public Utility Commission of Texas, January 2019
• 2018 Long-Term System Assessment for the ERCOT Region, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), December 2018
• Dynamic Stability Assessment of High Penetration of Renewable Generation in the ERCOT Grid, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), April 19, 2018
• Report on Extreme Weather Preparedness Best Practices (Mandated by SB 1133, 82nd Legislature, R.S.), Quanta Technology, LLC for Public Utility Commission of Texas, September 27, 2012
• Investigation of the ERCOT Energy Emergency Alert Level 3 on February 2, 2011, Potomac Economics, Ltd. for Public Utility Commission of Texas, April 21, 2011
• Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011: Causes and Recommendations, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation, August 2011
• The Story of ERCOT: The Grid Operator, Power Market & Prices Under Texas Deregulation (Includes a history of ERCOT), Texas Coalition for Affordable Power, February 2011
• Public Utility Commission of Texas (Sunset Review Documents for 2012-2013 Review Cycle, 83rd Legislative Session), Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, September 2009–July 2013
• Electric Reliability Council of Texas (Sunset Review Documents for 2010-2011 Review Cycle, 82nd Legislative Session – Includes History and Major Events within ERCOT's Self Evaluation Report, September 2009), Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, September 2009–July 2011
• Electric Utility Response to the Winter Freeze of December 21 to December 23, 1989: An Evaluation of the Actions Taken by Texas Utilities to Correct Technical Plant Equipment Problems, Public Utility Commission of Texas, Electric Division, November 1990
• Texas Business and Commerce Code Chapter 17, Deceptive Trade Practices
• The Joe K. Longley-Philip K. Maxwell Deceptive Trade Practices Act Collection: Legislative Archive 1973-2001 and the Mark L. Kincaid Papers, 1995-2015, Legislative Reference Library

Articles:

• "Extreme Winter Weather is Disrupting Energy Supply and Demand, Particularly in Texas," Today in Energy, United States Energy Information Administration, February 19, 2021
• "Texas' Electricity Resources: Where Power Comes From — And How It Gets To You," Fiscal Notes, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, August 2020

Legislative Reports
Search interim committee studies on various topics. Search by charge keyword or by the following subjects:

• Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)
• Electricity transmission and distribution
• Electricity supplies
• Natural gas
• Public Utility Commission of Texas
• Railroad Commission of Texas

Legislative Archive System
Search past legislation across sessions by subject from 1939-2019 in the Advanced Search:

• General Subject Index:
  • Business & Commerce--Trade Practices
  • Disaster Preparedness & Relief
  • Energy--Alternative Fuels
  • Energy--Conservation
  • Energy--Fuel Storage
  • Energy--General
  • Oil & Gas
  • Utilities--Electric
  • Utilities--Natural Gas
• Governmental Agencies:
  • ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL OF TEXAS  (for bills from the 76th Legislature)
  • ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL OF TEXAS (ERCOT)  (for bills from the 79th-86th Legislatures)
  • PUBLIC UTILITY COMMISSION
  • RAILROAD COMMISSION

The tile image, "electricity pylon" by fsse8info, is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. / Resized from original.

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Basic bill information for enrolled bills from the 12th–15th Legislatures (1870–1876) is now available in the Legislative Archive System (LAS). This includes bill numbers, captions, chapters numbers, and session law scans. We've also added the joint and concurrent resolutions that were published in the General and Special Session Laws to LAS from these sessions.

Enrolled bills from the 12th–15th Legislatures are accessible through both the direct search and the advanced search. When using the advanced search, select "View All" for the bill status.

 

Please note that enrolled bills from the following two sessions are only accessible through the direct search in LAS:

• 12th Adjourned Session (Sept. 22, 1871–Dec. 2, 1871)
• 14th 2nd Regular Session (Jan. 22, 1875–March 15, 1875)

For related information about these and other sessions, don't forget to check the session snapshot and the scanned House and Senate Journals.

Since LAS is a work in progress, complete information is not available for all bills and all sessions. Visit LAS' status page for more details about this ongoing project. For assistance using LAS, please contact the library.

 

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Want to improve your knowledge of parliamentary procedures before the 86th Legislature begins? The LRL has a resource guide for you! You can download Resources in Parliamentary Procedure as a PDF, peruse it on our website, or check out a physical copy.

 

Of course, studying Texas parliamentary procedure starts with the House and Senate Rules. When House and Senate rules are silent, the Legislature relies on resources such as Mason's Manual of Legislative Procedure and the practice of the United States Congress as reflected in published precedents such as Hinds’ Precedents and Cannon’s Precedents (see House Rule 14, Section 1, and Senate Rule 20.01).  Additional reference materials available in the LRL include the Texas Legislative Manual, historic Texas legislative procedure and rules materials, other congressional guides and precedents, constitutional reference materials, Hugh Brady's editions on Texas house and senate practices, and more. When available, the guide links to digitized resources.

 

Images, left to right: The Texas Legislative Manual; Constitution, Jefferson's Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives; Texas House Rules; Senate Manual; and [Texas] Senate Rules are significant resources for understanding parliamentary procedure in Texas.

 

Senate Parliamentarian Noel Brown and House Parliamentarian Collier Read Granberry review a legislative manual for the 50th Legislature (1947). Collier Read Granberry Papers, Box 3Y92, The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.

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We’ve been sharing regular posts about upcoming interim hearings…but are you wondering where you can find information about all of the committees and the 350 charges? Currently, we have a link to the interim charges list on our homepage to make them easy to find. However, you also can use the Committees section of the LRL website to refine your research. 

• Using Committees by session, you can see a list of all of the committees, and click on the committee’s name to view its interim charges. (Note that not all of the committees have received charges.) You also can select past sessions to view charges, committee members, etc., from past Legislatures. 
• If you are looking for a particular committee, you can use Committee search to navigate directly to its page.
• On our Legislative reports page, you can search committee charges in the second section of the page. Here, if you want to find every committee that has been assigned a topic that could potentially fall in the purview of multiple committees, you can use the “subject” or “charge text” box to search for that term. (See subject search results for "prescription drugs" below.)

When committees start submitting their reports in the months just before the next legislative session, you also can search on the legislative reports page to find those items.

 

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Although our primary focus is on Texas' legislative branch, the LRL maintains a Texas Governors database with a myriad of resources. In addition to providing biographical information on Texas governors, 1846-present, it features a searchable database of executive documents. You can search by governor, document type (executive order, message, proclamation, speech, veto, and other), date of publication, keyword, and session. 

To see the complete list of Texas governors with party affiliation, years in office, and legislatures as governor, click here. 

We also have a few popular searches saved, making it easy to find inaugural items, the governor's emergency matters and budgets, and disaster declarations (from 2001-present) (see below).

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Now, go back and click on those committee links on the History tab. (This part will only work in TLO.) You'll see a list of the committee members for that session, and on the right, a "Meetings" link. Click here to see a list of all of the meetings the committee conducted in that session. Find the hearing date you determined from the action list to access its hearing notice, minutes, and witness list. Since multiple bills often are considered in a single hearing, do a Control-F for your bill number to find the relevant sections. You can also look on the websites for each of the committees (House, Senate), as they sometimes include meeting handouts and transcripts for the current session.

 

 

You then can use the committee names and hearing dates to search for the relevant recordings in the house and senate video archives (for which links also are available on TLO and on the "Additional sources" tab in a LAS search). There is a chart in our legislative intent guide with more information about which dates are available online or on audio tape. Transcripts are rare, but House Video/Audio Services (512-463-0920) or Senate Staff Services (512-463-0430) may have transcripts or know if one exists (perhaps with the committee records) for a certain committee hearing.

 

Another avenue of committee testimony research is the LRL's committee minutes project, which makes available minutes and related documents for house, senate, and joint committees from the 63rd-74th Legislatures (1973-1995). Some have testimony transcripts--it is always worthwhile to check.

 

For example, a search in the committee minutes database for the Senate Committee on Finance, 72R (1991) yields 92 days' worth of scanned meeting minutes. Most of the documents summarize the proceedings of the meeting and simply make note when testimony was taken, but the March 5, 1991, minutes includes a transcript.

 

The committee minutes database includes interim committees, so even if you don't have a particular bill in mind, searching here can be helpful for many legislative history projects.

 

 

Cover image by Flickr user hyacinth50.

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Every legislative session, about 20-30 agencies go through the Sunset process—the regular assessment of the continuing need for a state agency or program to exist. The Sunset Advisory Commission submitted its Report to the 85th Legislature on Friday, Feb. 10. Per Sunset procedures, an agency, program, policy, or law will be abolished on its "sunset" date unless the legislature passes a bill to continue it. Such bills often enact revised policies as recommended in the review process.

 

Wondering how you can find these bills? The Sunset Commission recently added a page dedicated to the 85th Legislature where you can see which agencies were reviewed and what bills have been filed. They also are tweeting Sunset bills as they are filed.

 

In addition, you can find Sunset bills on Texas Legislature Online. Select "Search" from the top navigation, and pull down to "Bill Search." From that screen, go to the Subjects section and click on "Select subject criteria." This will pull up the box as seen below. (If your pop-up blocker is enabled, you may have to tell it to allow this exception.) Do a search for "sunset," then select "Sunset--Commission Bills (I0772). Click on the right arrow to move it to your "Selected" subjects, then click OK to return to the main Bill Search screen.

 

From here, you can click on "Search" in the top right corner, and you will get your results. You can refine your results to particular subjects of interest, look back at past years' sunset bills, and more.

 

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