Covering Texas state agencies, regulatory commissions, and governmental bodies shaping policy across the Lone Star State.
Three Texas counties may leave fire sprinklers out of the cells where they lock people up — including a 500-bed jail Liberty County has not built yet — under votes the state’s jail regulator took Nov. 5.
The Texas Legislature has not overridden a governor's veto since 1979.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas meets Friday on five applications to build the first 765-kilovolt power lines in Texas history, and its chairman has already said the commission will decide none of them.
The Texas Medical Board meets Friday with a rule on its desk that would regulate ketamine clinics for the first time.
The Texas Water Development Board meets Friday for a single piece of business: approving the budget request it sends the Legislature for 2028 and 2029.
The seven-member board that borrows money on behalf of the rest of Texas state government meets Friday morning in a work session, and the only substantive item is its own budget request for 2028 and 2029.
The board that oversees Texas's civil commitment program for sex offenders meets Friday on medical care at its West Texas lockup, a 2027 budget and an audit plan — while state reviewers decide whether the agency should exist at all.
The Texas Funeral Service Commission votes Friday on a wholesale rewrite of the rules governing donated human bodies — a signed chain-of-custody form at every handoff, permission required before a body leaves the state, and a flat ban on selling tickets to watch remains dissected.
The board that governs the Texas School for the Deaf meets Friday morning with 22 items in front of it, including two that come straight out of last year's culture-war legislation: approving a list of library books, and certifying that the school follows a new law banning diversity work in public schools.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to tighten oversight of imported meat after nearly 30,000 pounds of raw beef from Argentina was recalled for entering U.S. commerce without the required federal import reinspection, according to an Aug. 12 news release from the Texas Department of Agriculture.
Texas oil and gas wells surface roughly 24 million barrels of salty water every day — more than a billion gallons — and the state's plan to turn that waste stream into a water supply now hinges on rules still being written and a jurisdictional boundary two agencies admit they cannot locate.
The Texas Workforce Commission sets, once a year, a number that decides how many Texas children the state will subsidize in child care on an average day.
The Texas Department of Transportation has launched a new DriveTexas mobile app for Apple and Google devices, expanding access to a tool that helps drivers plan routes during emergencies and everyday travel, the agency announced in an Aug. 11 news release.
The Texas House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency will gavel in at 9 a.m. Aug. 19 to hear invited and public testimony on the rollout of three laws it shepherded through the 89th Legislature — including the one that created the Texas Cyber Command — plus interim charges on using artificial intelligence to catch fraud, the effectiveness of the state's data privacy law and oversight of three agencies under its jurisdiction.