Lege Ticker: From Voter Suppression to Salamanders

First day of early voting in Travis County in the Nov. 3 election last year (Photo by David Brendan Hall)

Briscoe Cain Walks Into a Committee Hearing ...

Gov. Greg Abbott's pledge to ostensibly improve what GOP lawmakers are calling "election integrity" this legislative session got off to a bumpy ride last week, as committee hearings on two restrictive voting bills sputtered in the Texas House and Senate.

Senate Bill 7 by Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Min­eola, and its companion legislation House Bill 6 by Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, are "priority" bills this year seeking to further restrict voting access in a state that already has the strictest voting rules in the country. Together, the bills include a number of provisions to address the authors' unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, including expanding the role of poll watchers, requiring proof of disability for residents seeking to vote by mail, limiting voting hours, and prohibiting officials from proactively sending mail-in ballot applications to voters, as Harris County attempted to do in 2020. (Cain was among the most vocal Texas lawmakers to stand behind former President Donald Trump's baseless claims of voting fraud, making a PR-stunt trip to Pennsylvania to provide his volunteer legal aid to Trump's team.)

In a procedural move last week, Senate Democrats pushed back a hearing before the State Affairs Committee, which Hughes chairs; the panel ultimately approved the bill Friday night (March 26) to send to the Senate floor. An even more dramatic clash came during the House Elections Com­mit­tee's hearing on Thursday, March 25. Cain chairs the committee but, as is customary, had passed the gavel to his vice chair, Rep. Jessica González, D-Dallas, to lay out HB 6. But when González recognized Rep. Nicole Col­lier, D-Ft. Worth, chair of the Leg­is­lat­ive Black Caucus, to ask questions, Cain intervened, saying, "It's understood that anyone not on the dais or members of this committee may take the witness stand but not ask questions from this dais." This is not true; non-committee members are often given the opportunity to ask questions in hearings in both chambers.

Cain recessed the hearing following the tense exchange, but failed to specify a time for the committee to reconvene; he later apologized for this "error" that, according to House rules, derailed the remainder of the hearing. That meant that nearly 100 witnesses – including voting rights advocates challenging the GOP's attempts at voter suppression – who had traveled from across the state to testify in person had to instead make plans to attend the reopened new public hearing today, Thursday, April 1. – Benton Graham

Keep Barton Regulated

Barton Springs Pool (Photo by David Brendan Hall)

In its attempt to help oil and gas producers in the Permian Basin, Odessa Republican state Rep. Brooks Landgraf's HB 1683 has stirred up some local commotion about the future of Barton Springs Pool. The bill aims to prevent state and local authorities from enforcing federal statutes to regulate oil and gas operations if the rule "does not exist under the laws of this state." If a city doesn't comply, it would lose state grant funding.

During a March 22 hearing before the House Energy Resources Committee, Aus­tin Environmental Officer Chris Herring­ton suggested an unintended consequence of HB 1683 that could close the pool: Because Barton Springs is habitat to endangered species (primarily salamanders), the city needs a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to operate the springs as a public pool, as long as it "offsets that harm with mitigating activities," explains Kelly Davis, a staff attorney for Save Our Springs Alliance. Under HB 1683, actions such as the endangered species lawsuit over Kinder Morgan's Permian Highway Pipeline – where the plaintiffs include the city, Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, Hays County, and Travis County, among other parties – could be challenged and, as Herrington interpreted before the committee, could force Austin "to choose between meeting our federal permit obligations at the cost of unrelated state grant funding, or closing our internationally famous springs."

It's unclear whether local environmental regulators like the BSEACD, which also holds a permit from Fish and Wildlife, could be impacted by such legislation, though "that doesn't appear to be the author's primary intent," said the conservation district's general manager, Vanessa Escobar. "From a practical standpoint," said Davis, "this bill is unlikely to pass" in its current iteration, as cities across Texas rely on state grant funding and existing federal permits. Landgraf himself told KUT, "I'm absolutely open to working with the city of Austin. ... [It's] not nearly as broad as [they] indicated." – Lina Fisher