HOUSTON — As 2023 begins, some laws that passed during the 2021 legislative session went into effect.
Senate Bill 12 is a new property tax that limits how much public school districts can tax elderly or disabled people. The bill includes a rule that funds will be given to schools that face a budget shortfall due to the change.
How will it affect schools?
“I think particularly in rural school districts where many, many of the people in those communities that you're losing population are elderly people because they're not moving away. They're staying there, they own their homes. And now they're getting a great tax relief, who is here left to tax to educate those children in those school districts?” KHOU 11 political expert Bob Stein said
House Bill 3774 is an omnibus bill that, among other things, restructured state courts and allows access to state court documents with Texas Supreme Court authorization.
“I think the justification here was mostly workload. And the other was, just to be blunt, fairly political in order to take away the influence of some of the bigger urban areas which tended to vote Democratic,” Stein said.
Read this Texas Tribune article for more information about the laws that went into effect on Jan. 1.
Upcoming session
With the next legislative session starting next week, Stein said there's a debate forming on how to spend since the budget has about $27 billion in surplus funds.
Abortion will also be discussed.
“In the Texas polls, we see the voters in Texas, they favor sometimes some type of exceptions and even wider access in the legislature. So this is going to be an issue that I think may not necessarily get settled, but it will be debated and will probably become an issue in the 2024 election," Stein said.
Lawmakers are also expected to talk about border control.
“It's the overwhelming number one most important issue in the minds of voters in Texas,” Stein said.
Other notable items, according to Stein, including legalizing marijuana and expanding Medicaid.
Stein said there are about 800 to 1,000 bills that have been pre-filed and most will not be enacted but there is still a lot to learn from the next session.
“What's important here is it tells you what the sense of the legislature is," he said. “The state in the past two biannual legislative sessions have passed probably more laws to restrict what local and county governments can do."