Tracking legislative interim hearings between sessions -- committee testimony, interim charges, witness statements, and the groundwork being laid for the next session.
For nearly five hours Tuesday, the Senate’s budget-writing committee tried to answer a question that grows harder the bigger the state budget gets: how much of it disappears to fraud, waste and abuse, and who is supposed to catch it.
A sales tax break that cost Texas an estimated $14.6 million a decade ago is now on track to cost the state roughly $3.3 billion in a single two-year budget — and on Monday the Senate’s budget-writing committee spent the better part of a nine-hour hearing asking whether taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.
Rep. Matt Shaheen's committee will take invited and public testimony Aug. 3 on emerging election technology and AI in political communications, and on the strained rollout of the state's TEAM voter-registration system.
The Texas Senate Committee on Higher Education will hear invited testimony July 29 on the distribution methods for the Permanent University Fund and the newer Texas University Fund, and whether either needs reform as more campuses seek research dollars.
The Texas House Committee on Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans' Affairs committee will hear invited testimony July 30 on foreign-influenced money transmitters, gaps in foreign-agent disclosure, and remote-access technology embedded in Texas critical infrastructure.
The Texas Senate Committee on Business and Commerce will take invited and public testimony July 29 on ERCOT reliability and Senate Bill 6's large-load rules, and on how a fast-expanding network of 765-kilovolt transmission lines will affect Texas landowners.
Before it spent the afternoon fighting over municipal utility districts, the Texas House land committee opened Tuesday by auditing the state's biggest landlord.
The financing engine behind much of suburban Texas got a daylong defense in the Capitol on Tuesday — and a warning from the people who live inside it.
The longest single stretch of Monday's House committee hearing was not about a law already on the books.
Sen. Paul Bettencourt's committee will hear invited testimony July 28 on curriculum-review and governance changes, campus research security rules and whether the outcomes-based finance formula for junior colleges is holding up.