Agencies
Screwworm Response Sets Up $29.4M Budget Ask as Lawmakers Question Feral Hog Spending
A $29.4 million request to staff a permanent defense against screwworm and fever ticks now tops the Texas Animal Health Commission's budget wish list.
Latest in Interim Hearings
Government Transparency
Austin Mayor Defends Outside Contracts as Lawmakers Weigh Statewide Disclosure of City Grants
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.
Interim Hearings
House State Affairs to Weigh Disaster Response Overhaul and a Statewide Interoperability Council
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.
Interim Hearings
House State Affairs to Weigh Gaming Platform Safety and Prediction Market Oversight
The Texas House Committee on State Affairs will gavel in at 10 a.m. Sept. 15 in Room JHR 140 to take invited and public testimony on whether online gaming platforms expose children to violent and sexually explicit content and to adult strangers, and what the state can do about it that a federal court will let stand.
Energy
House Energy Resources to Weigh Carbon Storage, Produced-Water Reuse and Quake-Linked Injection Wells
The Texas House Committee on Energy Resources will gavel in at 8:30 a.m. Sept. 14 in Capitol Extension room E2.026 to take public and invited testimony on three interim charges that between them cover almost everything the oil patch puts back underground: carbon dioxide, produced water and the disposal wells blamed for West Texas earthquakes.
Interim Hearings
Senate State Affairs to Examine Gaming Platforms, Family Courts and the Lottery Handover
The Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs will gavel in at 9 a.m. Sept. 14 in Capitol Extension room E1.012 to take public and invited testimony on three interim charges: whether online gaming platforms do enough to keep adult strangers and explicit content away from children, whether Texas family courts drag divorce and custody cases out longer than they should, and how the state lottery is faring a year after lawmakers abolished the agency that ran it.
Energy
House Energy Resources to Question Railroad Commission on Public Comment, Severed Wells and P-13 Hazards
The Texas House Committee on Energy Resources will gavel in at 11:30 a.m. Sept. 15 in Capitol Extension room E2.026 for the second of two consecutive interim hearings, opening with an oversight review of the Railroad Commission of Texas that the committee's chairman has already told one commissioner he expects him to answer for on the record.
Agencies
House Environmental Regulation to Check Concrete and LNG Permit Laws, Weigh Streamlining TCEQ Reviews
The Texas House Committee on Environmental Regulation will gavel in at 10 a.m. Sept. 15 in Capitol Extension room E2.016 to review four environmental laws the 89th Legislature passed through this committee and to open a broader inquiry into whether Texas permitting can be made faster without being made weaker.
Economy
House Ways and Means to Weigh Deeper Property Tax Cuts and Curbs on Local Debt
The Texas House Committee on Ways and Means will gavel in at 10 a.m. Sept. 15 to take invited and public testimony on whether Texas can cut property taxes further and on how local governments borrow and spend the money those taxes secure.
Business
Senate State Affairs to Examine Prediction Markets, Debanking and Judicial Training Seminars
The Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs will gavel in at 9 a.m. Sept. 15 in Capitol Extension room E1.012 for a second consecutive day of interim hearings, this time on four charges that share a common shape: an industry doing something Texas law did not anticipate.
Health Care
House Human Services Panel to Track New Psychiatric Beds, Rural Foster Pilot and CPS Due Process
The Texas House Committee on Human Services will gavel in at 10 a.m. Sept. 9 in Capitol Extension room E2.012 to take invited testimony on six interim charges spanning the state's foster care system: how three 2025 laws are being carried out, whether families under investigation by child welfare authorities are getting the services and the due process they are owed, and what happens to children after a private adoption closes.
Housing
Bettencourt Names West to Lead Probe of Cities Skirting Texas Housing Laws
One year after three state housing laws took effect, senators heard that the laws are producing homes and that some North Texas cities have written ordinances to blunt them.
Interim Hearings
Pecos Landowners Split Over Oilfield Wastewater as Rancher Says the Springs Have Gone Dry
A spring on Ryan White's ranch in the Pecos River basin flowed 1,200 gallons a minute until 2014.
Interim Hearings
Perry Vows to Ban Evaporative Cooling After 70 Percent of Data Centers Ignore State Water Survey
Texas sent water-use surveys to 341 data centers this year.