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Texas Legislature Reaches The Home Stretch After Another Procedural Deadline

Texas Tribune
St. Rep. John Otto, R-Dayton, prepares for HB1, the state budget layout. May 29, 2015.

State lawmakers can go into the final weekend stretch of their legislative session now that they’ve cleared a procedural deadline this week for considering bills.  

Ross Ramsey, executive editor of The Texas Tribune, talks about which bills did and did not make the cut.

Highlights from Ross Ramsey’s interview:

Some of the bills that didn’t make this week’s deadline: “I tell staff nothing’s actually dead until the Legislature goes home. But it looks like there was a ban on insurance policies if they were sold through the Health Exchanges. There was in-state tuition that would have, you know some Republicans wanted to repeal in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants. There was an effort to regulate sanctuary cities that never went anywhere.

What’s left from the Governor’s wish list: For the most part, what the Governor has said he wanted has gotten done. There was a police and sheriff’s department objection to something in the open carry bill that said they couldn’t check people unless they had probable cause. That’s gone now. The last issue (with campus carry) that needed to be resolved is whether to require private campuses like SMU and TCU to follow the same rule on campus carry that public colleges follow.  

Sam Baker is KERA's senior editor and local host for Morning Edition. The native of Beaumont, Texas, also edits and produces radio commentaries and Vital Signs, a series that's part of the station's Breakthroughs initiative. He also was the longtime host of KERA 13’s Emmy Award-winning public affairs program On the Record. He also won an Emmy in 2008 for KERA’s Sharing the Power: A Voter’s Voice Special, and has earned honors from the Associated Press and the Public Radio News Directors Inc.