Thursday Legislative Round Up: ‘No Bid’ Contracts, More Addressed In Latest Bill Filings

More new bills to report on (after the jump).

HB 592 by Escobar would appropriate an estimated $1.2 billion to the Teacher Retirement Fund to ensure its ongoing solvency.

HB 595 By Yvonne Davis (D-Dallas) would make it a crime to purchase more than one handgun or sell more than one handgun to the same person within a 30-day period, and provides some a DPS handgun purchase form be completed prior to the sale as well.

HB 598 By Guillen is an excellent piece of legislation that would help bring to light instances of the use of “no bid” contracts by the state government, including institutions of higher education. It would require agencies to publish notice in the Texas Register no later than 30 days before entering into a “no-bid” contract of its intent to do. The notice must include all information necessary for another entity to place a similar bid. This has, in my view, multiple implications. For one thing, it would apply to the lobby contracts let by the Governor’s office. It would also apply to boondoogles like the Trans Texas Corridor in which transparancy has been quite lax.

HB 603 by Donna Howard (D-Austin) would make elections for State Board of Education non-partisan. Candidates would run independently and parties would not be allowed to nominate candidates. This is quite interesting legislation considering that the SBOE was one of the government bodies the GOP infiltrated first. Changing the elections to “independent” candidate elections would force candidates to run on individual issues and would stop straight-ticket Republican voting from having a trickle-down effect on the races, meaning more qualified candidates would likely be elected as opposed to strict partisans.

SB 225 by Ellis would prohibit the sale of information concerning wireless communication customers without the customers’ consent.

SB 233 by Harris would allow the establishment of temporary checkpoints on waterways to establish the sobriety of persons operating boats.

SB 234, also by Harris, would require school districts to publisn internet and newspaper notices concerning revenue-generating contracts the districts enter into. I would assume this would include stadium naming rights contracts, vending machine contracts, and similar matters.

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