It’s the calm before the legislative storm in Austin. With the approaching holiday break followed quickly by our Elected Prosecutor Conference, we thought we’d send you our November wrap-up now, including a brief update on two state agency rulemaking issues we have been following for you.
Reminder: TDCAA Annual Business Meeting
Our Annual Business Meeting will take place on Wednesday, December 4, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. at the Marriott Woodlands Waterway in conjunction with our Elected Prosecutor Conference. Click here for details.
SB 22 rural law enforcement grants
In our October interim update we promised to tell you when the Comptroller of Public Accounts (CPA) proposed new rules for administering SB 22 grants. Those proposals came out in last Friday’s Texas Register and can now be viewed in HTML format here. The only change that applies specifically to prosecutors’ offices is a newly proposed definition of “investigator,” so be sure to review that if you currently direct SB 22 grant funds to one or more of your investigators. Our members’ acceptance and use of SB 22 funds varies, so you must read the full text of these revisions for yourself to determine whether they will impact your specific grants—we cannot do that for you. But that being said, we are happy to discuss any questions or concerns you may have after reading them, so reach out to Shannon as needed. And for those wishing to provide feedback to the CPA on these proposed rules, comments can be submitted to Russell Gallahan, Manager, Local Government and Transparency, Comptroller of Public Accounts, P.O. Box 13186, Austin, Texas 78701-3186, or (preferably) by email to [email protected]. T0 ensure the comptroller receives any comments in time to act on them, be sure to submit them no later than Friday, December 13.
OAG reporting requirements for urban offices
As required by the Texas Administrative Procedures Act, the Office of Attorney General (OAG) held a public hearing on Monday of this week for its proposed reporting rules for prosecutor’s offices in certain larger jurisdictions. (Click here for a previous summary.) The hearing lasted about 30 minutes, during which the agency received oral comments from 10 or so witnesses who were opposed to the rules, all of whom appeared to be associated with one or more of the Austin-area progressive groups and organizations who requested the hearing. No witnesses appeared in person to provide comments in favor of the proposed rules.
Now that the agency has complied with the legal mandate to hold a public dog-and-pony show upon request, there are no further statutory hurdles for OAG to clear, and the final version of its reporting rules could drop at any time between now and mid-March 2025. If/when that happens, the effective date of the new reporting mandates will be delayed a few weeks, giving anyone who objects to the new mandates time to seek legal recourse. Meanwhile, if you have any questions about this process or these proposals, feel free to contact Shannon.
And they’re off!
Legislators began prefiling bills for the 89th regular session (89RS) on Tuesday, November 12. A record number of more than 1,500 bills and resolutions were filed in the House and Senate on the first day, which was 40 percent higher than the previous record (set on the first day of prefiling last session). We are tracking hundreds of 89RS bills for you already using dozens of different tracks. Three of those tracks that are accessible to you online, right now, are our Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, and Bills to Watch tracks that you can find in the “Bill Tracks” blue box on our Legislative webpage. These tracking lists are only going to get longer as the session picks up speed, but we’ll do our best to keep up with the avalanche of impending legislation in a timely manner.
The Round-Up rides on
For the past six months, we have been sending weekly “Round-Up” emails with links to interesting news stories on topics that may impact your work. The list of Round-Up recipients now exceeds 720 subscribers. If you want to benefit from those emails, sign up here to start receiving those weekly updates in your inbox every Thursday morning. (But not next Thursday–gobble gobble!)
Quotes of the month
“There’s no question he’s the leader of our party. So now he’s got a mission statement, and his mission, goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it—all of it. Every single word. … If Donald Trump says, ‘Jump three feet high and scratch your head,’ we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads. That’s it.”
—Texas Congressman Troy Nehls (R-Richmond), expressing his opinion on how Congress should react to President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming agenda.
“The day of the small town is probably gone.”
—Sandy Fortenberry, chair of the Lubbock County Historical Commission, as quoted in a recent Texas Tribune article on the modern challenges facing many rural population centers.
“[Speaker Phelan] has the votes to be elected speaker, I’m not concerned about that. … I’m not sure I could pick Rep. [David] Cook out of a line-up. I’m sure he’s a fine young man and wish him well, but he’s not going to be speaker when the gavel comes down.”
—Former Gov. Rick Perry, now a senior advisor to Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont), in a TV interview given earlier this month concerning the current competition for that role next session, which includes the candidacy of 53-year-old Cook (R-Mansfield).
“We have, in so many of our cities, DAs that don’t prosecute crime, and the people of those cities suffer. … America PAC is going to aim to weigh in heavily on the midterms and intermediate elections, as well as just doing common sense stuff like having DAs who prosecute repeat violent criminals.”
—Elon Musk, on future plans for the PAC he funded for the recent presidential election (Houston Chronicle, November 6, 2024).
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