Now the real work gets started. House Speaker Joe Straus announced committee assignments for the Legislature’s lower chamber on Thursday, ending speculation over key chairmanships and giving lawmakers the go-ahead to start considering bills. Here’s his list. Of the standing committees, 32 are chaired by men, six by women. That’s one more female chair than [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Eric Johnson’
House passes its budget
The Trib has a good writeup of how it went down on Sunday. Mot of the heavy lifting was done before then, in the bills that closed the books on the previous biennium and allocated Rainy Day funds for them and in Friday night’s session, when the articles that deal with public education and health [...]
It’s way past time to regulate payday lenders
From the Observer: As an industry, when you’ve got Tom Craddick, consumer groups, the Midland County District Attorney and Bible-quoting Baptists arrayed against you, most likely you’re facing a serious come-to-Jesus moment. Today, a House committee heard hours of impassioned testimony in favor of legislation that would curb Texas’ Wild West payday and auto-title lending [...]
House Appropriations Committee passes a budget
It’s not much different than what they started out with. House budget-writers were able to sprinkle some extra money into education and health care but otherwise did little to change the bare-bones proposal with which they started. The 2012-13 budget will hit the House floor late next week after the Appropriations Committee approved House Bill [...]
The itty bitty budget deal
It’s not nothing, but not by much. Gov. Rick Perry and House leaders struck a deal Tuesday to spend $3.2 billion from the state’s rainy day fund to fix one piece of the state’s budget shortfall. [...] Perry said at the start of the session that lawmakers should not use any rainy-day fund money, but [...]
Sibley in for SD22 special election
With the official resignation of State Sen. Kip Averitt, his predecessor in SD22, David Sibley, has announced that he will be a candidate for the May special election to fill the remainder of Averitt’s term. The winner of the expected special election isn’t guaranteed a shot at the general election to serve during the 2011 [...]
Hodge pleads guilty, will resign
Well, at least this got resolved before the primary. State Rep. Terri Hodge, D-Dallas, pleaded guilty early this morning to lying on her tax returns in connection with the FBI’s Dallas City Hall public corruption investigation, an act that ends her 14-year political career. Hodge, 69, now a convicted felon, is dropping her re-election plans, [...]
Election tidbits for 9/28
Two weeks till Early Voting begins. Psst! Hey, Peggy! Rep. Kristi Thibaut represents HD133 here in Houston, not Galveston. Just FYI. As for the news that the GOP will be targeting State Rep. Abel Herrero, given the 2008 partisan index of HD34, plus the apparent likelihood that the Dems are once again punting on the [...]
Terri Hodge draws a challenger
State Rep. Terri Hodge, a fixture in HD100 since 1996, has drawn a challenger for next year. Dallas lawyer Eric Johnson announced [Friday] that he is running for the District 100 seat in the Texas House. That’s the seat currently being held by embattled Democrat Terri Hodge. Hodge is currently under federal indictment on bribery [...]