Travis County Commissioners Court
July 7, 2009,
Item 29
Number 29 is to consider and take appropriate action on legislative matters, including status update on Travis County and the 81st Texas legislature regular session and b, status report on the 81st Texas legislature, first called session.
morning.
>> good morning, judge acknowledged Commissioners.
item item will be very brief.
i just wanted to give the court a head's up that as legislation of course was passed and signed by the governor and has become law, some of it is already taking effect.
a lot of it will take effect on September 1st.
i believe next week you will have an item on the agenda about a district court technology fee that was authorized by the legislature and that has already taken effect and which I believe the district clerk is going to bring to the court next week.
so that's an example of the fact that some of this stuff is moving forward now.
what we want to do in igr is we're going to do a two-step process to try to compile information for the court about all the different legislative enactments that will affect Travis County.
we'll first put out a call on any information that will have a fiscal impact on the county, that will raise money or cost the county money so that we can get the information to the court as quickly as possible during the budgeting process.
then the second call will be for information about changes in statute, changes in law that will affect how the county does its business, but may not have a direct fiscal impact on the county.
so what we hope to have is a report to the court pretty quickly on the first item and certainly we're going to encourage executive managers and key staffers to make sure that if they're aware of changes in law that do have a fiscal impact that they're making that already part of the budget conversation, whether or not they've told us about it or whether or not the court has already been formally informed of that.
so that's on item a, that's really just a report I wanted to give to the court.
item b, judge, has to do with the special session.
when the court met last week I predicted that the special session -- or I expressed the widely held hope that the special session would end quickly.
i think they surprised everybody by getting their business done in two days and going home.
i've given the court a report that summarizes what happened.
there were three items on the call.
the legislature addressed two of those three items and did not address the third.
but I do not think that there's going to be -- my current understanding is that there's not going to be any attempt to address that third item, which is comprehensive development agreements.
you also have in your backup materials a spreadsheet that was put together by veronica that shows how they moved things around on the sunset dates of the various agencies that were done.
nothing directly relevant to the county.
what they did was they moved up some of the environmental and health professions agencies and then they moved back the big group of health and human services agencies, the hhs, the department of state health services, that they were going to review next time they moved all that back to 2013.
unless the court has any questions, that is my report.
>> questions?
so do we get a comprehensive report at some point?
maybe during a work session?
>> on, judge?
>> any and all.
>> what my hope would be, judge, is to come back to the court probably in mid August with a comprehensive list of all the bills that passed this session that will have some affect on the county.
you know, obviously some of those were bills that the county worked very hard on, like the storm water bill, but there are of course many other pieces of legislation that could affect how the county does its business.
i'm hoping to have that for the court by mid August.
what I would hope to have even more quickly than that is some kind of summary for the court of all the bills that affect county revenues one way or the other.
>> okay.
the other thing would help us to have, I think, is bills that we were interested in or other counties because of their impact on counties.
>> and we did provide some of that during the work session a couple of weeks ago, but we can do a follow-up report on that.
>> I think a comprehensive report would help, including highlights from cuc and the Texas association of counties and any other governmental association that sort of pulled the best from their reports.
i have seen e-mails, but to be honest, some of them have been so long that they're kind of hard to read.
>> it is a comprehensive report.
they're pretty long.
but we'll put something together for the members of the court.
>> and during our work session where we're not pressed for time.
>> did you -- I asked you a question last time you came before us, and the question was to provide to me the persons that represented -- that opposed the land use bill, even though it got the calendar and this is one by representative bolton, linda, and of course, it didn't get out of calendar.
i wanted to know who those persons were that I need to talk to, those that were opposing it because I asked you to give me those names because I wanted to talk to them and see, you know, what the deal is on that because I think that land use bill was very critical to Travis County.
and so I'm concerned about that because it's not going to go away.
the incidents that are continually happening throughout our county, whether it's in precinct 1 or any other precinct, is real and alive and well.
so we're going to have to have some kind of mechanism in place to deal with the buffers and to mitigate as much as possible any of the things that affect -- that kind of growth is not comfortable to each other.
so I need those names.
>> yes, sir.
>> and did you provide those names or have you started looking into it?
>> there were a couple of landowners who testified against the buffer zone bill, house bill 4175.
and I provided those names, but I'll provide them again to you.
>> no, no.
i was talking about the persons that actually end up opposing it.
i'm talking about elected officials.
i'm not referring to landowners.
maybe you misunderstood me.
>> well, hears the dilemma, Commissioner.
because there was no vote taken on the bill, there's no vote where anybody voted against it.
what happened during the session was that the committee chairs failed to be able to get those votes vote odd by their committees.
>> but we know there were certain things that held it up.
>> yes, sir.
>> all right.
>> let me put it to you like this, those things that held it up from being where it needed to go.
there was some opposition, otherwise something else would have happened.
>> I'll be happy to provide a very detailed analysis of what happened.
>> I'll talk with you.
>> you bet, Commissioner.
>> so I can get right down to the specific of who I'm talking about.
>> yes, sir.
>> thank you very much.
>> thanks.
>> thank you.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 1:31 PM