Gavel to Gavel 89th Legislative Session - April 19, 2025

After a marathon 16-hour-long session on the floor beginning on Wednesday and going early into Thursday morning, the Texas House of Representatives passed HB 2, a record amount of funding totaling almost $8 billion for public schools, and SB 2, establishing one of the nation's largest private school voucher programs. Both bills were sponsored by Rep. Brad Buckley (R-Salado), and underwent intense scrutiny by Democratic members, who argued that the former failed to provide enough money to restore Texas public education to 2019 funding levels and that the latter will deck public enrollment. Rep. Buckley provided a perfecting amendment that made last-second changes to HB 2, including:

• Restores existing "hold harmless" provisions for public schools,

• Places charter school funding in stair-stepped tiers,

• Expands eligibility for dyslexia funding for the Department of Juvenile Justice,

• Restores average daily attendance (ADA) enrollment decline provisions to 98% and increases the corresponding funding cap to $300 million,

• Allows emergent bilingual funding to fund salaries,

• Ensures local control/flexibility for longer-term pay raises,

• Makes certain counselors and librarians eligible for pay raises,

• Excludes the school safety allotment and regional insurance provisions from being calculated in teacher pay raises, and

• Phases certain provisions to take effect in the second year of the biennium.

SB 2 attracted hours of debate over dozens of amendments filed by Democratic lawmakers in hopes of making the bill more amenable or effectively filibustering progress. One proposal by Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin) would have taken the school voucher plan to a statewide referendum against the wishes of Gov. Greg Abbott, but it failed 62-86. Eventually, representatives coalesced to support HB 2 by a near-unanimous 144-4 vote, and the more controversial SB 2 had only two Republican defectors, leading to an 86-63 passage. On Thursday afternoon, the House endorsed the final passage for both bills, meaning HB 2 will now be sent to the Senate for the first time and SB 2 returns for the Senate to consider House changes.  Lt. Governor Dan Patrick released a statement encouraging Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe), author of SB 2, to concur with House amendments, which would send the measure to the Governor for signature.
 
The Senate continued to 'fire on all cylinders,' per Lt. Gov. Patrick this week, and passed several more priority bills, including SB 22, establishing the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program and Fund, SB 30, implementing major tort reforms, SB 33, prohibiting taxpayer-funded out-of-state abortion travel, SB 34, creating a statewide wildfire response plan, and SB 37, shrinking the role of higher education faculty senates. Following the conclusion of Wednesday's Senate session, Lt. Gov. Patrick proudly announced that the Senate has passed over 500 bills this session.
 
Now that both the House and Senate have passed their respective versions of SB 1, this session’s appropriations bill that sets the budget for the next biennium, lawmakers will now go into private conference to reconcile differences between chambers and agree on a final draft for passage. Small groups of conferees from each chamber’s appropriations committee were selected this week to meet and deliberate. For the Senate, those conferees are Sen. Joan Huffman, Sen. Creighton, Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, Sen. Robert Nichols, and Sen. Charles Schwertner. For the House, those conferees are Rep. Greg Bonnen, Rep. Mary Gonzalez, Rep. Angelia Orr, Rep. Stan Kitzman, and Rep. Armando Walle.
 
On Thursday, during what was supposed to be a routine passage of uncontroversial bills and memorial resolutions on the House Local and Consent Calendar and Memorial Calendar, a small band of House Republicans ignited debate by refusing to allow passage of the entire Memorial calendar over a resolution honoring Cecile Richards, daughter of former Gov. Ann Richards and former president of Planned Parenthood. Subsequently, because only five member signatures are required to remove a bill from the Local and Consent Calendar (indicating a bill does not have the bipartisan backing of the full House), the conservative flank of the GOP was able to prevent passage of all scheduled bills on the Local calendar -  forcing all bills back to committee to be rescheduled for floor debate.  It is unclear at this point if this was an isolated occurrence or a harbinger of things to come.
 
Following the campaign announcements by the Lt. Gov. for reelection and Attorney General Ken Paxton for U.S. Senator, Sen. Mayes Middleton (R-Galveston) entered the fray in 2026 by announcing his campaign to replace AG Paxton. While not having been officially endorsed just yet, Sen. Middleton’s campaign is centered on ‘standing with President Trump.’ He will face off against current Elon Musk lawyer John Bash next year, and perhaps other unannounced candidates.

In celebration of Easter, both the House and Senate have adjourned until 11:00 AM on Tuesday.