82nd Texas Legislature: Pre-Filing Begins With Flurry Of Right Wing Bills

Just when you thought it was safe to let your children roam the Texas Capitol alone, pre-filing for the 82nd Texas Legislature gets underway and all bets are off.

Hide your illegal immigrants, synthetic marijuana, cell phones, and extraterritorial jurisdictions, folks–it’s going to be a wild ride.

The first day of prefiling this year saw 379 bills filed by members of the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Senate. Bills to regulate cell phone usage and voter identification legislation were among the most popular pre-filed bills, each with multiple incarnations introduced by multiple authors.

Here are a few highlights from the first day of pre-filing:

HB 107 by Rep. Fred Brown (R-Bryan). This bill would require an election before certain municipalities are allowed to annex adjacent territory. If the election fails, the municipality has to wait five years before it annexes the territory, which seems to defeat the whole purpose of the entire bill.

HB 108 by Rep. Fred Brown (R-Bryan). This bill makes illegal s a substance known chemically as JWH-018 –more commonly known as K2 or synthetic marijuana or synthetic cannabis (evidently also known by the very classy names of Hush and Swerve).  It’s already illegal in a number of states, European countries, and local jurisdictions within Texas. This bill classifies K2 as a “Penalty Group 2″ controlled substance under the Texas Controlled Substances Act. This bill is particularly interesting because it takes what is essentially a synthetic version of marijuana and puts it under a penalty group with a stiffer penalty for possession than marijuana–which is actually classified legally as “possession of marijuana.” We assume this is  because it’s a synthetic chemical applied to something else as opposed to something actually grown.

HB 112 by Rep. Patricia Harless (R-Spring). This is one of a handful of Voter Identification measures filed. We covered the voter ID battle extensively in 2007 (80th Session) and 2009 (81st Session). See here and here for examples.

HB 113 by Rep. Patricia Harless (R-Spring). This bill is one of several filed that would require municipal and county governments to enforce federal immigration laws. We saw some similar bills in 2009. Harless herself filed a similar one for last session.

HB 116 by State Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon (D-San Antonio). This is a bill that would abolish the Texas Transportation Commission and make the Transportation Commissioner an elected official. We saw similar legislation filed last session. In this environment, don’t expect this bill to get out of the starting gate.

HB 25 by State Rep. Ryan Guillen (D-Rio Grande City). This bill adds watercraft (both boats and jet skis, for what it’s worth) to the provisions of the Texas Penal Code relating to when it is an offense to be in possession of a gun or illegal weapon. Minor modification to existing statute.

HB 30 By State Rep. Ryan Guillen (D-Rio Grande City). This is a consumer protection bill prohibiting a retail electric provider from disconnecting a customer’s electricity on a Friday, holiday, the day before a holiday, or any day after 3 p.m. This is excellent consumer protection legislation–but legislation I’m quite sure the state’s retail electric providers will line up in droves to defeat–because God forbid they have to do all of their disconnects prior to 3 p.m. and not on Fridays.

HB 34 by State Rep. Dan Branch (R-Dallas). This bill requires that Texas high schools include personal financial literacy including teaching students about how to pay for college in their curriculum. Given the economic outlook with Texas’ service economy, let’s hope that includes how to sling hash at Denny’s and how to fill out a McDonald’s job application–not to mention how many times you have to divide the cost of a course hour of instruction at a college by the minimum wage.

HB 36 by State Rep. Jose Menendez (D-San Antonio). This bill increases the penalties for prostitution–including making it a state jail felony to commit prostitution if you’ve been convicted three or more times already. Has Drew Nixon been spending a lot more time in Austin or something?

HB 38 by State Rep. Jose Menendez (D-San Antonio). This bill substantially increases punishment for graffiti. Among other things this legislation makes it a state jail felony to graffiti a government building, school building, graveyard, etc. Somehow, I thought we went through the “stiffer penalties cost more and aren’t a deterrent” thing with burglary of a vehicle several years ago. While vandalizing a graveyard is pretty low, making vandalizing a school or government building a state jail felony is pretty asinine given the costs of incarceration versus the cost of repair and the revenue received from restitution for someone on probation for this type of offense.

HB 40 by State Rep. Jose Menendez (D-San Antonio). This bill adds county jailers and detention officers to statutory language relating to allowing police and firefighters to organize and bargain collectively. This is a great and much needed bill, but expect the Texas Association of Counties to pull out all of the stops to kill it.

HB 47 by State Rep. Aaron Pena (D-Edinburg). Adds tire deflation devices to the list of items that it is illegal to possess, manufacture, or sell as a prohibited weapon. A good bill, but I strongly suspect we’ll see some amendment to this one. The language seems a bit broad–at least by our reading. I can see an overzealous peace officer going after someone on probation for possession of a large amount of roofing tacks under the current wording. We’re thinking that adding a little language to the definition specifying that the law change would only apply to those devices specifically manufactured to serve as tire deflation devices would cure any potential ills.

HB 50 by State Rep. Eddie Lucio, III (D-Brownsville). A bill to create a law school in the Rio Grande Valley. While we’re wishing for things that we won’t get in this budgetary disaster of a biennium, how about a law school in Tyler or Dallas and rose-scented unicorns on the capitol grounds? In all seriousness, though, a RGV law school is long past its time and should have happened a decade ago. Unfortunately, with the budget such that it is, I’m afraid we won’t see it.

HB 75 by State Rep. Dan Flynn (R-Van). This legislation would allow raw (read: unpasteurized) milk and milk products to be sold directly to the public. While the thought of unpasteurized milk makes us want to vomit repeatedly (it was a family vacation in 1992, on a ship between Maine and Nova Scotia, it’s a long story…), we understand there is quite the demand for unpasteurized milk and milk products these days and look for this one to pass. In fact, we’ll lay odds that this might actually be the first bill to pass this session–just because nobody wants to spend a lot of time talking about unpasteurized milk. It’s gross–but evidently good for you!

HB 79 by State Rep. Dan Flynn (R-Van). This bill relates to the publication of the Ten Commandments (not the Charlton Heston version) in public school classrooms. When we saw the caption of this bill, we automatically assumed that it was going to make the Ten Commandments mandatory in public school classrooms. Not so, however. It just prohibits a school board from prohibiting the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. Really? This is a problem? Is our children learning yet?

HB 85 by State Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview). This bill–get ready–prohibits state funding from being used on abortions, both directly and indirectly. With the newly emboldened GOP majority in the House, this might be in danger of actually passing. Maybe they can hold it off in the Senate. And, what better guy to author an anti-abortion bill than a guy with seven kids. No, seriously, he has a beautiful family. But they make their dog wear hats. Plaid ball caps to be precise.  That is so wrong.

HB 89 by State Rep. Byron Cook (R-Corsicana). This bill lets people donate their unused drugs (the prescription kind) to be used again to help the underinsured and uninsured. Nice bill, but I’m not sure that many people will be donating their gently used Celebrex to help the needy.

HB 97 by State Rep. Ken Paxton (R-McKinney). This bill appears to make it illegal for the state to collect any kind of fine or penalty that might be associated with the federal healthcare legislation. We’re not sure. It’s possibly the most poorly-constructed bill we’ve ever laid eyes on. Either that, or it’s just so batsh*t crazy we’re not loco enough to understand it.

HB 104 by State Rep. Fred Brown (R-Bryan). This bill abolishes the State Higher Education Coordinating Board and gives its responsibilities to…get ready…the State Board of Education. Yeah, we think not so much.

HB 17 by State Rep. Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball). This bill creates the offense of Criminal Trespass by Illegal Alien. Evidently, this is the stop-gap measure just in case every other illegal immigration bill fails. They might as well give the police free reign to stop brown-skinned people on the street.

HB 22 by State Rep. Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball). This one requires schools to establish the legal status of students–evidently because public schools don’t already have enough stuff to do.

SB 139 by State Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio). This one eliminates straight party voting. Good luck with that, Senator.

SB 115 by State Sen. Carlos Uresti (D-San Antonio). This one limits liability for space flight activities. Wait, what? Limits liability for what? Evidently, there is a manned space flight company operating moon rockets out of Texas that I’m unaware of. Oh, and get this–the bill requires that you acknowledge the following if you participate in manned space flight:

I UNDERSTAND AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT A SPACE FLIGHT ENTITY IS NOT

LIABLE FOR ANY INJURY TO OR DEATH OF A SPACE FLIGHT PARTICIPANT

RESULTING FROM SPACE FLIGHT ACTIVITIES. I UNDERSTAND THAT I HAVE

ACCEPTED ALL RISK OF INJURY, DEATH, PROPERTY DAMAGE, AND OTHER LOSS

THAT MAY RESULT FROM SPACE FLIGHT ACTIVITIES.

No, we are not making this up. Who knows. Maybe NASA needed some tort reform protection after all of those diaper-wearing astronauts started chasing jilted lovers cross country. In all serious, we are advised this bill is due to a spaceport planned for Van Horn in Uresti’s district–to be built by the founder of Amazon.com. Whodathunkit?

(Right about here we should plug in several bills by State Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) that would regulate natural gas drilling and disposal wells, but we’re going to take a closer look at those and give them their own post later in the week).

[Editor's Note: We'll go over more of the Senate Bills in a later post]