Davis, Laubendberg and Truitt Miss Cutest Committee Hearing Ever

Anchia with some of the kids from the hearing (photo from Equality Texas)

HB 415 by Rafael Anchia (D-Dallas) was heard in the House Public Health Committee last Wednesday. Under current law parents in opposite-sex relationships who adopt are routinely issued updated birth certificates which reflect the children's new legal parents. However the Health and Safety Code specifically prohibits two men or two women from being listed as parents on a birth certificate. Anchia's bill would change that by simply removing the prohibition, allowing the legal document most often used to prove a parent's relationship with their children to accurately reflect the child's legal parents.

Anchia filed this legislation last session (81st HB 2080), it received a hearing but was never voted out of committee. As I mentioned in my weekly Lege Update for the Dallas Voice's Instant Tea Blog Anchia brought a secret weapon to the hearing this session: what might be the world's most adorable children.

Missing out on the cuteness of witnesses literally dripping with children where three of the committee's Republican members: Sarah Davis (Houston), Jodie Laubenberg (Rockwall) and Vicki Truitt (Southlake) - although Laubenberg did manage to come in just in time to hear the last witness (and her baby who tried to eat the microphone). Representative's have very busy schedules, and sometimes they have to miss meetings, particularly if the meeting is at 8 am and the House has had a late night. But I am particularly disappointed that Davis choose to skip this hearing.

Davis' district covers about half of Houston's historic "gayborhood" of Montrose and she was elected with the considerable support of the Log Cabin Republicans of Houston. I know that her office has heard from many constituents about the importance of HB 415, so it frankly shocks me that she would choose to miss a hearing so vital to her constituency. Unfortunately it's in keeping with her voting record this session which includes supporting the notorious "family and traditional values" amendment to the budget and refusing to support anti-bullying legislation that included an enumerated reporting requirement. Davis seems perfectly willing to use the gay community (and yes, I did use gay, not LGBT or queer, to describe the Log Cabin Republicans), but will not stand up for the best interests of her queer constituents when push comes to shove.

If you're a constituent of Davis' and would like to express your displeasure at her absence you can call her capitol office at (512) 463-0389.

Day 119: RIP Bills, We Hardly Knew Ye

Today is the 119th day of the 82nd regular session of the Texas Legislature. The House reconvenes at 10 am, the Senate at 11 am.

The deadline for House bills to be voted out of committee is midnight tonight. Any bill that hasn't received a committee vote by then is officially dead, including:

• HB 130 by Carol Alvarado (D - Houston), which would create a statewide anti-bullying hotline.
• HB 170 by Richard Pena Raymond (D - Laredo) which would create a 300 foot anti-bullying "safe zone" around schools.
• HB 172 by Mark Veasey (D - Fort Worth) which would conduct a study on the effectiveness of the Texas Hate Crimes Statute
• HB 208 by Roberto Alonzo (D - Dallas) which would prohibit insurance discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.
  
• HB 224 by Mark Strama (D - Austin), a comprehensive anti-bullying bill, major elements of HB 224 are included in HB 1942, the compromise anti-bullying "super" bill that passed the House last week.
• HB 604 by Jessica Farrar (D - Houston) and HB 2156 by Garnet Coleman (D - Houston) which would repeal the unconstitutional prohibition against "homosexual conduct."
• HB 665 by Mike Villareal (D - San Antonio) which would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression.
  
• HB 944 by Dawnna Dukes (D - Austin), which would require School Health Advisory Councils to make recommendations on school district's anti-bullying curriculum (HB 944's Senate Companion SB 736 has made it through the Senate and is now waiting for consideration, so the concept's alive even if the bill isn't).
• HB 1909 by Coleman, the "Juliet and Juliet" bill, currently there is a protection against the charge of "indecency with a child" if the people involved are of the opposite sex, with-in three years of each others age and the conduct is consensual. HB 1909 would equalize that protection to include same-sex couples.
• HB 2227 by Coleman which would add "gender identity and expression" to the Texas' hate crimes statute.
  

Fortunately, with the death of the good comes the death of the bad:

• HB 2638 by Warren Chisum (R - Pampa) which would expand the powers of the Attorney General to interfere in same-sex divorce cases.
• HB 3098 by Lois Kolkhorst (R - Brenham) which would effectively ban opposite-sex marriage for people who have had their legally recognized sex changed.

Committee's may still vote on these bills before midnight tonight, but the next hurdle is on Thursday at midnight, the deadline for House bills to receive the first of two required votes by the whole House. There are literally hundreds of bills in line, waiting for their House vote, so even if any of these bills were voted out today it is unlikely they would make it to the floor on time.

Two bills important to the queer community squeaked out of committee last week:

• HB 1386 by Garnett Coleman which would create a state-wide system for preventing youth suicide
• HB 910 by Senfronia Thompson (D - Houston) which would allow people recognized by the state as unmarried to enter into gestational agreements with surrogate mothers.

Coleman's bill has little chance of making it to the floor before the Thursday deadline, but Thompson's bill may be able to use a "fast-track" method to pass. The House uses several different "calendars" to divide lists of bills up into groups of similar bills. One of these lists is the "Local and Consent Calendar," which is reserved for noncontroversial bills. In order to be placed on Local and Consent a bill can't have received a "no" votes in committee, which HB 910 did not. The House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence committee therefor decided to send it to Local and Consent. The deadline for Local and Consent bills to receive the first of their two required House floor votes is Friday, May 20th. What's more, Thompson is chairwoman of the committee that creates the Local and Consent Calendar, so she has the power to place HB 910 up at the top of this list.

The downside of Local and Consent is that debate on any bill on the calendar is limited to 10 minutes. If a House member, any member, asks questions about a bill on Local and Consent for more than 10 minutes then the bill is knocked off this fast-track calendar and must be sent back to pass the long way. That means that if any one member of the House decides they don't want HB 910 to pass they can kill it, making Local and Consent a bit of a gamble.

"Family and Traditional Values" Amendment Removed from Budget, For Now

As I mentioned this morning in my column on the Dallas Voice's Instant Tea Blog it appears that House budget amendment 143 has been removed from the Senate's version of the Budget:

"The infamous anti-gay amendment to the Texas budget — which would require universities to fund “family and traditional values centers” if they have LGBT resource centers — appears to have been removed by the Senate. While the state’s media focused on whether the Senate would actually vote on the budget, the Finance Committee seems to have quietly removed the provision, added by amendment in the House by Rep. Wayne Christian, R-Center. Last week the American Independent reported that the Christian amendment would have little to no impact, but its removal is cause for celebration for LGBT Texans.

Chuck Smith, deputy director of Equality Texas, greeted the news with cautious optimism, explaining that the budget is a massive document, 854 pages long, and although the “family and traditional values” language was removed from Article III Sec. 56, the entire text would have to be carefully searched before the amendment’s removal was certain."

This morning, as expected, the House declined to accept the Senate's version of HB 1, the bill that creates the budget. The next step is for the Speaker of the House to appoint 5 members to a "conference committee," likewise the Lt. Governor will appoint 5 Senators to the committee.

House and Senate Rules require the committee to draft a compromise between the two versions. They can only change the parts of the budget that differ between the version of HB 1 passed by the House and the version passed by the Senate. Since the Christian amendment is in the House version of the Budget it is still in play and could, conceivably, be put back in.

Also important to watch is the funding for Texas' HIV medication assistance program. The House version provides over 19 million less in funding than the Senate; funds advocates say are desperately needed to face the climbing rate of HIV infection. The conference committee can decide to give the program the lower House allotment, the higher Senate allotment, or any amount in between but can not eliminate the program or cut it's funding below the House Budget's level.

The House is currently creating their "instructions" to their five members of the conference committee. Although nonbinding, these instructions are taken very seriously since the compromise proposed by the will have to be approved by both the House and the Senate to pass.

Day 114: The House

Today is the 114th day of the 82nd regular session of the Texas Legislature. The House reconvenes at 10 am, the Senate at 11 am. Here's what's going on in the House:

The House rules require that committees give five days notice before holding a public hearing to consider a bill. However, just like the in Senate, the House can vote to suspend those rules with a 2/3 majority. The five day posting rule was suspended last night for HB 415. The bill, by Rafael Anchia (D-Dallas), would allow the Bureau of Vital Statistics to issue revised birth certificates for children adopted by same-sex parents that include both parents names (read LQ's analysis of the bill). With the posting rules suspended HB 415 will likely be heard today in the House Public Health Committee.

The committee has until midnight this Monday, May 19th, to vote on HB 415. Even if the bill passes out of committee it is unlikely that, this late in the session, it has time to pass. The deadline for bills of this nature to pass their first vote in the House is midnight on May 22nd. There are hundreds of bills that have already passed out of committee waiting to make it to the House floor, HB 415 may simply be too far back in line to pass this late in the game.

HB 1942, the "super" anti-bullying bill crafted by the House Public Education bill and carried by Diane Patrick (R-Arlington) passed on second reading with over whelming bipartisan support last night (read LQ's analysis of the bill). The state constitution requires bills to be "read" on three different days in both the House and Senate (they don't read the entire bill, just the bill number and short description called the "caption"). A vote is taken after the second and third readings. House Bills must pass both votes before being sent to the Senate for consideration. HB 1942 is on the list of bills to be considered on third reading today and will be one of the first orders of business when the House reconvenes.

Three amendments were added to the bill during the debate last night. The first, by Patrick, was to clarify that the bill applied to activities that take place "in" a vehicle operated by the school district not "on" a vehicle as the bill originally stated. The other two were offered by David Simpson (R-Longview) and dealt with victims of bullying responding by physically confronting their tormenters.

Simpson's first amendment prevents school districts from beginning disciplinary procedures against a student who uses "reasonable self defense" in response to bullying. Several House members pointed out that there were already provisions in the education code permitting self defense but Simpson argued that those protections were only allowed once disciplinary proceedings started and his amendment would prevent schools from beginning the proceedings in the first place. A motion was made to table the amendment which failed, 43 yeas to 86 nays. Simpson and Patrick then briefly spoke away from the microphones, when they returned Patrick said she was agreeable to the amendment and it was added with no further debate.

Simpson's second amendment required school districts, as part of the bill's anti-bullying education requirement, to instruct students in "self-defense in response to [bullying]." The amendment does not specify if this education requirement would be in the form of formal self-defense training, or just a general instruction to punch the other guy in the nose (Simpson was very consistent in in talking about his amendments that the students he had in mind were male, although the text of the amendments themselves are not gender specific). Patrick said she agreed with the amendment and it was added with no debate.

After brief statements by other lawmakers (that really had nothing to do with this bill), a vote was taken and the bill passed, 102 "yeas" to 34 "nays". The record vote is not yet available on the Texas Legislature Online, but Equality Texas Reports via facebook that the no votes were:

Berman(R); Cain(R); Chisum(R); Christian(R); Creighton(R); Crownover(R); Fletcher(R); Flynn(R); Garza(R); Geren(R); Hancock(R); Howard, Charlie(R); Hughes(R); King, Phil(R); Kolkhorst(R); Laubenberg(R); Legler(R); Lyne(R); Miller, Doug(R); Miller, Sid(R); Morrison(R); Paxton(R); Phillips(R); Price(R); Riddle(R); Schwertner(R); Smith, Wayne(R); Solomons(R); Taylor, Larry(R); Taylor, Van(R); Thompson(D); White(R); Workman(R) and Zedler(R)

Anti-Bullying "Super" Bill HB 1942 Gets Tentative Approval in the House

HB 1942, the anti-bullying "super" bill crafted by the House Public Education Committee, passed on a 102 to 34 vote in the Texas House tonight. The bill, by Diane Patrick (R-Arlington), is made up of elements from a number of different anti-bullying bills that were referred to the committee. The record vote is not yet available on the Texas Legislature Online, but Equality Texas Reports via facebook that the no votes were:

Berman(R); Cain(R); Chisum(R); Christian(R); Creighton(R); Crownover(R); Fletcher(R); Flynn(R); Garza(R); Geren(R); Hancock(R); Howard, Charlie(R); Hughes(R); King, Phil(R); Kolkhorst(R); Laubenberg(R); Legler(R); Lyne(R); Miller, Doug(R); Miller, Sid(R); Morrison(R); Paxton(R); Phillips(R); Price(R); Riddle(R); Schwertner(R); Smith, Wayne(R); Solomons(R); Taylor, Larry(R); Taylor, Van(R); Thompson(D); White(R); Workman(R) and Zedler(R)

I'm frankly shocked to see Senfronia Thompson on this list as she is normally a strong ally of the queer community. I hope this is an error or that, at the very least, she has a reasonable explanation for her vote.

One explanation might be an amendment tacked on by Rep. David Simpson (R-Longview) that requires schools, in teaching methods for identifying and preventing bullying, to teach students that physical altercations are a good way to respond to bullying.

More on HB 1942 tomorrow, when the bill will be brought up for it's second House wide vote, the last step before it's sent to the Senate for approval.

Day 113: Anti-Bullying Bill on House Floor, Take 2

Today is the 113th day of the 82nd regular session of the Texas Legislature, except for in the House where it's still technically the 112th day for a little while longer... no really. The House "recessed" just after 7 pm last night and will return today at 10 am, since they did not adjourn at the end of the day yesterday they will still, technically, be on the 112th legislative day and will still be working on the list of bills to be considered that day. The Senate will reconvene at 11 am.

On the list of bills to be considered in the House on the 112th day is the "super" anti-bullying bill HB 1942 by Diane Patrick (R-Arlington). The bill is an amalgamation of ideas from several anti-bullying bills heard in the House Public Education Committee. It's the only major House anti-bullying bill to make it out of committee this session. This next Monday, May 9th - the 119th day of session, is the last day for House committees to vote out House bills, and even then bills of this nature must be voted on by the entire House before midnight on May 12th in order to advance. With the clock ticking HB 1942 may be our last, and best, chance of real anti-bullying reform. Please contact your House member and tell them to support HB 1942. Equality Texas has set up an easy-to-use e-mail form that takes less than a minute HERE.

The nifty trick about the House still being on the 112th day this morning is that it will let them take both the 2nd and 3rd reading vote on HB 1942 on the same calendar day. The Texas constitution requires that bills be "read" on three different days in the House. "Read" means that the bill number and a short description, called the bill caption are read aloud and then, depending on whether it's 1st, 2nd or 3rd reading a different action is taken. After 1st reading the bill is referred to a committee which then holds public hearings and makes a recommendation to the entire House of the bill. After second reading the bill can be debated by the entire House, amended by a majority vote, and then voted on. If the bill passes 2nd reading it's then read a 3rd time and can be debated, amended by a 2/3 vote and voted on again (after which it's sent to the Senate for consideration in the case of House bills or the Governor for signing in the case of most Senate bills). Since HB 1942 is to be considered on 2nd reading on the 112th legislative day the House can pass it, adjourn, reconvene and then pass it on 3rd reading on the same day.

As I mentioned last Friday in my weekly column on the Dallas Voice's Instant Tea Blog, the Senate was expected to start debate this week on HB 1, the appropriations bill that will govern the state's budget for the next two years. It's looking, however, like that might not happen. The bill is on the Senate's "intent calendar," a fast-track list of bills that require a 2/3 vote of the Senate to be brought up for debate (more info on how the intent calendar works from LQ's Day 107 post), but the capitol scuttlebutt says that Sen. Steve Ogden (R-Bryan), who is carrying the bill in the Senate, doesn't have the required 21 votes to bring it up.

The budget touches every aspect of state government. Among the host of concerning issues in the current version of the budget are the underfunding of Texas' HIV medication assistance program and an amendment added by Rep. Wayne Christian (R-Center) designed to reduce funding for campus LGBT resource centers and reappropriate those funds for "Family and Traditional Values Centers" (although it seems that the amendment might have been so poorly written that it will not have its intended effect).

If the Senate does not bring up the bill in time for it to pass out of the legislature before the looming end-of-session deadline on May 30th, Governor Perry will be forced to call a "special session." The governor has broad discretion to call all legislators back to Austin to conduct pressing business that arises between the regular sessions held for 140 days in the spring of odd-numbered years. The lack of a state budget, which would precipitate the complete shutdown of state government this fall, definitely qualifies as pressing.

A special session to approve the budget has advantages and disadvantages. If the budget show down comes to this the legislature will be forced to start at square one on the budget, meaning that things like the Christian amendment would be removed, but also meaning that hard-fought funding for the state's HIV medication assistance program (however inadequate to meet the rising rate of infection in Texas) would also be removed. A special session would mean that LGBT activists would have the interim period between the regular and special sessions to further lobby lawmakers, but it also means that the budget would be crafted under the unique rules governing special sessions, which allow the legislature to work much more quickly and make it more difficult to monitor legislation and inform the public of any actions, good or bad, that take place.

The only sure prediction in the legislature is its unpredictability. With only 27 days left in the regular session people on all sides of the political spectrum are carefully watching the Senate in an attempt to discern the next move.

Day 112: Anti-Bullying Bill on House Floor

Today is the 112 day of 82nd regular session of the Texas Legislature. The House reconvenes at 10 am, the Senate at 11 am.

On the House's schedule for today is HB 1942 - the "super" bully bill. Introduced by Diane Patrick (R-Arlington), HB 1942 is an amalgamation of many ideas on how to fight bullying condensed into a single bill by the House Public Education Committee. Although it contains no recognition of queer students it will go a long way towards improving their lives. As the only major anti-bullying bill to make it out of House Committee this session HB 1942 is our best, and perhaps last, chance to create meaningful change this session, a similiar opportunity won't come along for two more years.

It is imperative that House members hear from constituents telling them to support HB 1942. Equality Texas has set up an easy to use e-mail generator HERE. Please contact your reps today and encourage everyone you know who cares about the well being of children to do the same.

Early efforts have already yielded results. HB 1942 picked up two co-authors over the weekend: Long Burnam (D-Fort Worth) and Elliot Naishtat (D-Austin). The bill now has a bipartisan selection of five authors and five co-authors, but we need the support of as many House members as possible so keep those e-mails and phone calls coming.