Posts Tagged ‘Chad Hasty’

Abbott: Two Special Sessions Coming

Monday, June 7th, 2021

Evidently the exploding clown show that was this year’s Texas regular legislative session, and the House’s failure to pass many conservative priorities (including election reform) has governor Greg Abbott planning on calling an extra special session this summer in addition to the redistricting session that will happen sometime this fall:

Thursday morning, while being interviewed on the radio by Chad Hasty, Gov. Greg Abbott all but confirmed there will be at least two special called legislative sessions.

While he stopped short of giving a specific time for the first special session, he indicated that it would address election integrity, bail reform, and potentially other issues. The other special called session, which will be held around September or October, will be specific to redistricting and the use of federal COVID-19 funding.

Abbott said, “I’m not going to engage in Monday morning quarterbacking, but I’ll treat this as halftime. We didn’t get this done in the first half, but we’ll get there in the second half.”

On May 30, a majority of Texas House Democrats walked out while they were considering the omnibus election integrity bill, or Senate Bill 7. This brought the total of legislators present under 100, therefore “busting quorum” and rendering the bill dead. It also meant that several other bills or conference committee reports that were waiting to be called up died as a result. One of those included the conference committee reports related to bail reform, like House Bill 20 or House Joint Resolution 4, which were also emergency legislative priorities of Abbott.

The following day, Abbott tweeted his intent to potentially defund the Legislature as a result.

Election integrity is a must, and I’d also like to the taxpayer-funded lobbying ban and banning gender modification of children. But we don’t know what topics Abbott will limit the special session to. There are ways for legislators to offer bills on other topics during a special session, but there are many ways for the Governor and chamber leadership to kill bills that are “outside the call.”

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Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 3 Comments »

Gov. Abbott Does Not Sound Pleased With Joe Straus

Tuesday, June 13th, 2017

Gov. Gregg Abbott has a tendency to hold opinions close to his chest. But in this Chad Hasty Show interview, he sounds genuinely irritated when talking about the need for the special session he’s been forced to call because so many of his priorities died in the Joe Straus-led house:

Gov. Abbott: If you guys are not going to take care of business during the regular session, if you’re going to use this must-past bill about ensuring the Texas Medical Board is going to continue on as political fodder, then I’m going to make sure we have a special session that counts, that focuses on the issues that I know are very important to our fellow Texans. Such as reducing property taxes. Such as addressing something that has turned out to be a very substantial issue all the way from Dallas, Texas to the Rio Grande Valley, which is to crack down on fraud that has taken place in the mail ballot process.

Chad Hasty: Governor, you said that the Speaker of the House [prioritized] his priorities, you prioritized the issues for the state of Texas. Are you saying that maybe the House Speaker didn’t have the priorities of all Texans in mind?

Gov. Abbott: In my conversations, and also in my perceptions, it seems like his priorities differed from, for example, these priorities I have on the special session call. His priorities differed from the deals that we were trying to broker at the end of the session. Some easy examples: I called, in my state of the state address, that I gave at the very beginning of the session, for meaningful property tax reform. Several weeks before the end of the session, I said publicly, in the press, there were a couple of items that were must press items in order for this session to be concluded successfully, ine of those was property tax reform. I know that I articulated, both in my state-of-the-state address as well as during the course of the session, to have at least some form of ability, especially for parents of special needs children, to have the opportunity to pick the school that’s right for them. And none of these have an opportunity of being addressed in the Texas House of Representatives.

Chad Hasty: Now, I’m looking at 20 items here, one that is much-pass before we get to everything else, which is the sunset legislation. I’m going to be honest with you, Governor: I watched this past session. How do you expect all these lawmakers to get all 20 of these done in 30 days?

Gov. Abbott: It’s pretty easy, because for almost all of them, nothing new needs to be created. I am resurrecting bills that were already proposed, that were largely debated on, many of them already passed out of the senate. I know, in my conversations with the Lt. Governor, that these are all items that can be passed out of the Texas senate in short order. It’s just a matter of of getting them to the house floor, getting a vote on them. The issue is not one of timing, because these are not difficult issues to grapple with, because they’ve already grappled with most of them. It’s just a matter of are they going to stand for them and vote for them, or evade them and not vote for them?

Here’s the interview, which goes into more detail on the special needs education bill, which is a bigger issue than most people realize:

Governor Abbott is essentially saying what conservative activists have: These are popular bills, and the only reason they haven’t passed is the obstruction of Speaker Joe Straus and his lieutenants

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Posted in Texas, video | No Comments »