The Texas House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency on Saturday voted down a pivotal backup bill that would prevent key agencies from being shut down this year, according to reporting by The Texan.
Under Texas law, the Legislature must review all state agencies and commissions at least once every 12 years and affirmatively vote to renew them. If it fails to do so, those agencies get shut down.
This session, lawmakers are weighing several bills that would renew specific agencies and commissions, including the Texas Lottery Commission and the Texas Ethics Commission. But as a safety net, they also have Senate Bill 2401, which would renew eight arms of the state at once, in the event that individual renewals stall in committee or that the Legislature runs out of time to approve all of the individual bills.
Senate Bill 2401 would renew the following eight state institutions:
• The Texas Lottery Commission
• The Texas Department of Criminal Justice
• The Texas Ethics Commission
• The Department of Information Resources
• The Angelina and Neches River Authority
• The Lower Neches Valley Authority
• The Sabine River Authority of Texas
• The Trinity River Authority of Texas
But after fierce debate and a fight over amendments, the House DOGE committee voted to kill that safety net bill, which could jeopardize the renewal for the lottery and the ethics commission, the only two commissions that have had their individual renewal bills languish in committee.
Some conservatives are aiming to abolish the Texas Lottery and to ban taxpayer-funded lobbying that would be overseen by the ethics commission. But bills that would accomplish that have languished in the House State Affairs Committee.
During Saturday’s DOGE committee meeting, Republican Reps. Briscoe Cain of Deer Park and Tony Tinderholt of Arlington, who are both members of the party’s more conservative flank in the House, brought amendments to exclude the lottery and the ethics commission from the safety net renewal bill. The committee adopted both despite opposition from Chair Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake.
After Capriglione told them that those changes would not be included in the version of the bill brought to the House floor, but presented as committee-approved amendments that would need to be ratified again by the full chamber, both representatives urged the rest of the committee to vote against approving the bill.
SB 2401 failed by a one-vote margin, 5-6, with Capriglione and Rep. Pat Curry, R-Waco, joining the committee’s three Democrats to unsuccessfully pass it.
With fewer than 10 days left in the session, the only way for the ethics commission to be renewed is for its specific sunset bill to get onto the House floor for a full vote, or else be considered during a special session.
