Inside the Texas Legislature -- bills, votes, and committee action from the Texas House and Senate.
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.
The Texas House Committee on Pensions, Investments & Financial Services will gavel in at 10 a.m. Aug. 18 to hear invited testimony only on four interim charges: the rollout of two laws passed last session and reviews of the actuarial soundness of the state's two largest pension systems.
The Texas House Subcommittee on Telecommunications & Broadband will gavel in at 11 a.m. Aug. 18 to take invited and public testimony on three interim charges: monitoring the state's Broadband Development Office and its multibillion-dollar grant programs, studying pole attachment fees as a barrier to broadband deployment, and exploring public-private partnerships for wireless first responder networks.
The Texas House Committee on Higher Education will gavel in at 9 a.m. Aug. 18 to take invited and public testimony on four interim charges covering college affordability, credential completion, protections against foreign adversarial influence and the ability of Texas universities to compete for federal research dollars.
State Representative Drew Darby asked the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Monday to hold a public meeting in Tom Green County before the agency acts on four air quality permit applications tied to a proposed data center campus near Dove Creek.
The Texas House Committee on State Affairs will take public testimony Wednesday, Aug. 19, on the two biggest fights on the state’s grid — data centers and the proposed 765,000-volt transmission lines — according to the hearing notice posted on the Legislature’s schedule.
The Texas House Committee on Transportation will gavel in at 9:30 a.m. Aug. 17 to work through one of the fullest interim agendas of the month: eight charges that range from the federal crackdown on commercial driver licenses held by foreign drivers to the economic weight of Texas seaports and broad oversight of the state's transportation agencies.