Government Efficiency & Transparency
Governmental transparency and efficiency are crucial to maintaining Texans’ trust in government. To that end, several reforms passed this session provide sunlight and streamline many government processes, including the creation of a specific business court system and expanding health care fraud investigations across all relevant government programs.
House Bill 19 (Murr, et al. | SP: Hughes, et al.) would create a specialized business trial court or “Business Court,” which would have jurisdiction over every county in Texas over a variety of business-related matters.
House Bill 796 (Button, et al. | SP: Bettencourt) increases transparency by requiring appraisal districts to create and maintain a publicly accessible database of information relating to property tax protest hearings.
House Bill 1038 (Cain, et al. | SP: Sparks) will increase transparency by requiring the Bond Review Board (BRB) to create and provide a biennial report concerning state lending and credit support programs.
Senate Bill 471 (Springer | SP: Harris, Cody) permits the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to have greater discretion when investigating potentially frivolous and repetitive complaints.
Senate Bill 1045 (Huffman, et al. | SP: Murr, et al.) establishes Texas 15th court of appeals that will have exclusive jurisdiction over cases brought by or against the state of Texas, its agencies, departments, boards, universities, other executive branch agencies, and any officer of the aforementioned entities.
Senate Bill 1340 (Zaffirini | SP: Meyer) improves upon previous efforts to increase transparency within tax abatement programs across the state. SB 1340 renames the Chapter 380 and 381 Agreement Database to the Local Development Agreement Database and widens its scope of information to include additional agreements, contact information for the entities involved in the agreements, agreement expiration dates, and more.
House Bill 1598 (Darby | SP: Perry) exempts municipal solid waste facilities from local permitting as a prerequisite to obtaining a permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
Senate Bill 745 (Kolkhorst, et al. | SP: Noble) ensures that medical fraud prevention is targeted not just in Medicaid, but also in the child health plan program (CHIP) and the Healthy Texas Women program.
Senate Bill 1245 (Huffman | SP: Bonnen) amends the Judicial Retirement System of Texas Plan Two by establishing a cash balance retirement for new judges.
