Tracking legislative interim hearings between sessions -- committee testimony, interim charges, witness statements, and the groundwork being laid for the next session.
Rep. Pat Curry spent much of the House Transportation Committee's Aug. 17 interim hearing asking a question that no state agency wants asked out loud: why does the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles exist?
The Texas House Committee on Natural Resources will gavel in at 10 a.m. Aug. 24 at Weslaco City Hall to hear invited testimony on the state and regional water planning process, the project types eligible for the New Water Supply for Texas Fund, oversight of the Texas Water Development Board and implementation of a 2025 law on jointly operated water and sewer utilities.
The Texas House Committee on Agriculture & Livestock will gavel in at 11 a.m. Aug. 18 to take invited and public testimony on three interim charges: implementation of last year's overhaul of the state's farm-lending authority, the long-term resiliency of Texas agriculture, and oversight of the 14 state agencies under the panel's jurisdiction.
Cartel fuel trafficking generates an estimated $12 billion to $21 billion a year — and some federal investigators now believe it has passed narcotics as the cartels' top revenue stream, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety told the Senate Select Committee on Homeland and Border Security Thursday.
The Texas House Committee on Public Health will gavel in at 9 a.m. Aug. 20 to hear invited testimony on four interim charges that run from social media's effects on young Texans' mental health to infant mortality, artificial intelligence in medicine and the state's readiness for communicable-disease threats.
A drone expert opened the first hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Homeland and Border Security Wednesday with a countdown: "In security terms, today, August 12th is August 12, 2001.
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 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.
Two and a half years after a snapped utility pole ignited the largest wildfire in Texas history, the Senate Committee on Natural Resources spent more than three hours Tuesday auditing every layer of the state's wildfire defenses — and heard that the machinery lawmakers built in 2025 is largely on schedule, but that the hardest questions, from powerline liability to who approves a utility's mitigation plan, are already queued up for the next Legislature.
The Texas House Select Committee on General Aviation will gavel in at 10 a.m. Aug. 18 to take invited and public testimony on five interim charges spanning the condition of the state's general aviation airports, regional air service, workforce shortages, disaster response and airport governance.