Clock ticking on moving bills

By Editor | May 11, 2023

CAPITAL HIGHLIGHTS

Gary Borders

The clock is ticking on getting bills out of the House and to the Texas Senate, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick warned last week in a story in the Austin American-Statesman. Patrick presides over the Senate and is worried many bills that have made it out of House committees but have not gone before the full chamber will not be considered before the session ends.
“I previously expressed concern the House was far behind in the passage of bills and a train wreck was coming,” Patrick tweeted. At that time, more than 1,100 bills had made it out of committee but still had not been set on the House calendar. All bills must meet a May 11 deadline for a second reading to be further considered for final passage.
Poll: Raise minimum age for gun purchases
A new poll released by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin indicates three-fourths of Texans polled said they support raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21, the Texas Standard reported.
“That included 91% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans,” Joshua Blank, director of research, said. “This is a consistent finding, to be quite honest. We’ve asked this question before. We’ve asked similar questions. So, there’s an appetite in some ways for stricter gun laws in Texas. It’s just not something that is politically palatable in the process that we have.”
Attempts by some Democratic legislators to push a similar measure in this legislative session have not gained traction and appear unlikely to pass.
PUC chair warns of possible summer outages
The chairman of the Public Utility Commission warned last week that the state’s main power grid is at risk if wind turbines don’t produce enough power when needed, the Texas Tribune reported. Peter Lake reiterated that more on-demand power sources, such as power plants fueled by natural gas or batteries, need to be built to increase the electric grid’s reliability.
“The Texas grid faces a new reality,” Lake said last week. “Data shows for the first time that the peak demand for electricity this summer will exceed the amount we can generate from on-demand, dispatchable power, so we will be relying on renewables to keep the lights on.”
Pablo Vegas, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said at the news conference that wind and solar energy production results have increased considerably more than plants powered by coal or gas.
Supporters of renewable energy scoffed at the view that the grid’s reliability rests on renewable energy alone.
Luke Metzger, director of Environment Texas, said in a statement that renewable energy’s growth in Texas “should be heralded and welcomed — not blamed, contrary to evidence, for grid problems.”
The PUC is proposing the use of performance credits, funded by an estimated 2% increase in customer electric bills. The funds would go to companies that operate on-demand power sources in hopes of incentivizing them to build more power plants or keep existing plants operating longer, the Tribune reported.