Tracking legislative interim hearings between sessions -- committee testimony, interim charges, witness statements, and the groundwork being laid for the next session.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson told a House committee Sept. 30 that the city spends about $100 million a year on outside consultants and nonprofits and is auditing it.
Senators spent more than six hours Sept. 30 asking who should control the cost of Texas' transmission buildout, with witnesses urging competitive bidding, a lower guaranteed return for utilities and relief for ratepayers before the 765-kV Permian Basin lines are built.
A lawyer for the prediction market Kalshi sat before the Senate Committee on State Affairs on Sept. 15 and told Texas senators that betting on the Cowboys is a federally regulated swap, not gambling.
A coalition of North Texas hospitals has handed out more than 22,000 bottles of over-the-counter iron to pregnant women, and the region's blood transfusion rate has fallen.
Texas asked the House Committee on Energy Resources to check the homework it set itself.
Texas oil and gas wells throw off roughly 26 million barrels of salty wastewater a day, and operators pump nearly 30 million barrels a day back underground.
A Texas Senate panel spent most of a nine-hour hearing Sept. 14 on a question with no bill in front of it: whether the state's family courts take too long to end a marriage and decide who raises the children.
The state's most influential conservative think tank told a Senate panel Sept. 14 that parental controls are not enough and Texas should prohibit social media for anyone under 18 — a mandate, from an organization that usually argues against them.
The Texas House Committee on Ways and Means meets at 10 a.m. Sept. 15 to take testimony on how local governments spend and borrow, and on whether the Legislature should cap the growth of both.
The Texas Senate Committee on Economic Development will gavel in at 9 a.m. Sept. 22 in Capitol Extension room E1.016 to take testimony on how Texas cities collect and spend hotel occupancy tax revenue, on the zones that let a handful of big cities route state tax dollars into convention centers, and on what artificial intelligence is doing to the state's labor market.
The Texas Senate Committee on Natural Resources will gavel in at 9 a.m. Sept. 21 in Capitol Extension room E1.012 to take invited and public testimony on who pays to tear down wind and solar farms when they stop producing, and on three 2025 laws written to blunt a wave of oilfield theft.
The Texas House Subcommittee on Maternal Health, Menopause, and Access to Evidence-Based Medicine will gavel in at 10 a.m. Sept. 15 in Capitol Extension room E2.030 for its first hearing, taking invited testimony only on two interim charges: whether iron and other essential supplements should reach more pregnant Texans, and whether the Healthy Texas Women program is working.
Texas lists 795,000 people on its Central Abuse Registry, and the agency that maintains it told a House committee Sept. 9 that it wants to stop issuing one of the findings that decides who goes on it.
The Texas House Committee on State Affairs will gavel in at 10 a.m. Sept. 14 in Room JHR 140 to take invited and public testimony on two interim charges that pick up where the Legislature stopped after the July 2025 Hill Country floods: how the state prepares for, responds to and recovers from disasters, and whether Texas should stand up a formal council to make first responders' radios work with one another.