The Texan Podcast - Weekly Roundup - April 2, 2021

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

On this week’s “Weekly Roundup,” the reporters cover committee hearings in the Texas legislature relating to constitutional carry, George Floyd, police defunding, homeless camping bans, church opening protections, election integrity, and taxpayer funded lobbying. The team also discusses a visit to McAllen to cover a border visit by U.S. senators, the one year anniversary of “15 days to slow the spread” of COVID-19, utility regulator reforms, and the state budget.

Howdy, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here. Welcome back to the Weekly Roundup podcast. This week, we cover committee hearings in the Texas legislature relating to constitutional carry, George Floyd, police defunding, homeless camping bans, church opening protections, election integrity, and taxpayer-funded lobbying, a myriad of important issues. Hayden Sparks recounts his visit to McAllen to cover a border visit by U.S. Senators. Isaiah Mitchell details bills relating to the Alamo and Cenotaph. Daniel Friend discusses the one-year anniversary of 15 days to slow the spread of COVID. And Brad Johnson gives an update on utility regulator reforms and the state budget. Now, folks, it's springtime in Texas, and there's nothing quite like it.

This spring, celebrate our state with a new wine tumbler featuring the first official flag of the Republic of Texas. Claim your wine tumbler at the texan.news forward slash tumbler today. Thanks for listening, folks, and enjoy the rundown. Howdy, folks. Mackenzie Taylor here with Daniel Friend, Hayden Sparks, Isaiah Mitchell, and Brad Johnson at the Texan offices here in Austin. Things really have heated up here at the legislative session, so we have a lot to cover this week. We're going to start with Brad and Daniel. Y'all specifically covered some very big-time committee hearings at the end of last week that were not covered on the podcast, and these topics have carried into this following week, so we figured we'd go ahead and give those just some coverage. Daniel,

we'll start with you. Homeland Security and Public Safety, that committee chaired by Chairman James White, had some crazy just movement in terms of legislation last week. And we'll continue to have movement throughout this next week. Walk us through what happened and how the timeline shook out. So there were several rather big bills heard in the committee. And this wasn't just a big bill. There was the constitutional carry, which lots of conservatives came out for. But before they got to the hearing testimony on the constitutional carry bills, which there were four of those being heard,

before they got to that, earlier in the day, they heard several other bills, including the other big notable one was the George Floyd Act, which was introduced by Representative Symphonia Thompson. And then also, Senator Royce West is introducing his counterpart in the Senate. But that was heard in the House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee by Representative Chairman White. And testimony just went on and on and on and on. You know, when I came here and hearing about the legislative session, I didn't realize that there was an unlimited number of people who could testify on a bill.

I thought, oh, maybe they'd just like invite people and cap it. But alas, they do not do that most of the time. I suppose there might be some unusual circumstances where they do, but that was not the case here. So there were hundreds of people who came out to testify both on constitutional carry and on the George Floyd Act and several of the other bills that were being heard as well on that day. So, you know, the hearing started at 11 a.m., went until later that night, I think, is when they finally got to constitutional carry, and then it kept going until they gaveled out at 539 the next morning. So quite a while. To be truthful, I did not stay up the whole night. Come on, Daniel, slacken on the job.

Well, I think it's notable, too, that all four constitutional carry bills actually got a hearing, right? That's an interesting method, especially considering in previous sessions there's kind of been one con carry bill that is almost knighted, dubbed the bill that would get the hearing. Maybe only one was filed, whereas this session we're seeing a lot of representatives file this legislation in hopes that theirs is the one that would get the hearing maybe only one was filed whereas this session we're seeing a lot of representatives you know file this legislation in hopes that theirs is the one that's passed or even just brought attention i want to say that there was one other uh constitutional carry bill that did not appear on the hearing um i'd have to go back and check which one that is or who filed that it might have been one of the same ones now lots of these these there's four different ones there was the one filed by Representative Biederman. You had one filed by Representative Hefner, one filed by

Chairman White himself. And then you also had one filed by Representative Schaefer, if I didn't say two names twice. And, you know, there's some small differences in each of those, but essentially what all of them would do would be to expand permitless carry in Texas. So most people who currently can carry a gun, who can currently own a gun in many cases, would be able to carry in public places without a license to carry. I don't think any of these would completely abolish the license to carry program. In some situations, a license to carry. And so it's also with the chairman on it and all the other people who signed the other bills or who authored the other constitutional carry bills also joined that one. So that's probably what we'll see going forward. I expect it could be voted out of committee this week or sometime in the future. In 2017, Representative

White's constitutional carry bill also passed out of the committee, but was not voted on on the House floor. It got stuck in the calendars committee. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for covering that for us. And I think it was notable too, that there were, you know, the George Floyd Act and Con Carry both brought two very different, you know, types of activists to the Capitol. I heard one, you know, staffer tell me that there were 700 witnesses coming out to testify for against different pieces of legislation in that committee. So a lot of people at the Capitol, definitely a long night for members, for staff, for activists and

citizens. Brad, we're going to pivot to you. In the State Affairs Committee, basically all your main beats were heard in one night. So it was quite an evening for you. Walk us through what happened. Yeah. So obviously, it's well, it started in the morning as all the committee hearings do. They took a brief break to go to the House floor and they reconvened and went the rest of the way. Heard earlier in the afternoon were some of what Isaiah was watching, religious liberty bills. That's obviously something people care about. There was a lot of testimony.

And that kind of drug out the hearing, you know, quite a lot, much longer than certainly they were planning on. But the three pieces of legislation that I was watching for specifically were kind of it was one of them was recourse for cities that defund their police departments. And another one was a prohibition on homeless camping statewide, obviously. Aiming specifically at the city of Austin. Both of those aiming generally at the city of Austin, yes. And then last of the night

was taxpayer-funded lobbying ban. That's something that Representative M mates middleton has that's has been that's been his baby since uh he got in the legislature last session it it failed on the house floor um because a predatory amendment was attacked on like it would nullify it exempted half the state or more than half the state so that failed last session it's back up this session and um that was the last of of the night and it went until uh 4 a.m i didn't i didn't stay up for that either i fell asleep around 2 30 but um there was a lot of a lot of testimony for each one of those bills, both for and against each of them. One notable exchange was between Collin County Judge Chris Hill and Representative Eddie Lucio.

They went back and forth. If that's something that you're interested in, I recommend go looking at the tape. It was, on both sides, a very interesting exchange, and each person had a lot to say about it. And it was valuable the conversation but that was generally the the state affairs committee hearing and um you know that was also a marathon yeah certainly one bill that we've been watching you know a lot this legislative session uh relates to elections well there there are two bills both one in the house one in the senate hayden i want to talk with you a little bit about what happened last week, because there were some big moments that happened in the Texas House and some drama that went down between the chairman,

his vice chairman, another member, and Beto O'Rourke. So some big names being thrown around the Texas House. Just give us a little bit of an update of where we're at and what happened last week. related to assisting voters illegitimately and trying to tamper with elections or alter information on documents. But what happened last week, last Thursday, is this bill was slated for consideration, and they took it up as the lunch hour got closer. And there were a number of witnesses that appeared to testify, including former Congressman Beto O'Rourke, who is open about the fact that he's considering a run for governor. He widely publicized a trip from El Paso to Austin and recorded a video in the car and made a big deal of this trip. And when he got

here, he ultimately wasn't able to testify. And we'll talk about that in a second. But the vice chair of the committee, Jessica Gonzalez, who is a Democrat from Dallas, was temporarily given control of the committee. representative kane who is the chair of the elections committee could speak on behalf of his bill so that he wouldn't be the chairman of the committee be acting as the chairman and as a speaker on behalf of the bill so really just as a as a logistical as a logistical note gonzalez to control the committee so that they could she could can she could preside over the questioning of kane and that is not uh i can't speak to uh long-standing precedent or anything but in parliamentary procedure that's pretty common for

a chair to hand off the gavel to somebody else. But anyway, Cain is the chairman of the committee. And as HB 6 was being considered, after members of the committee had finished their questioning, a member of the House who is not a member of the committee attempted to ask Kane questions and Brad Johnson. And I discovered that these individuals had actually discussed this beforehand. So the chairman of the committee, Briscoe Kane and vice chair Gonzalez and Representative Collier had all had a discussion

and one other state rep named Eddie Rodriguez had all had a discussion about this via mail, or they had written communications about this before the committee hearing ever took place. When they actually, when they settled it, C Kane indicated that Collier would not be permitted to ask questions from the dais, and she could instead testify or submit written testimony. And Collier later said that she found that to be condescending and disrespectful because it was, committee members or members of the House are allowed to do that already, and that's something they do all the time. So, she took issue with him making it sound like she was being given a privilege

by Cain extending that invitation. So, in the end, Gonzales tried not to, she attempted to retain control and not relinquish the gavel after kane had requested her to return the chair and really he doesn't have to ask for that that's not something he needs permission to it's his committee um so ultimately um he retook the gavel um and then testimony did not proceed on the bill. Yeah, certainly. And it actually ended in kind of a snafu, that particular hearing. And, you know, hundreds of folks had come down to, you know, testify on this bill.

And it was really a procedural mistake. Earlier that same week, the Senate Democrats had tagged the Senate version, which Daniel can talk about. But and similarly, you know, people who came to Austin to testify on for or against that legislation in the Senate did not have the opportunity to do so. And then this time, you know, the chairman of the of the committee in the House with the House counterpart, you know, made a mistake. He did. And it was a it was a parliamentary mistake. So he sent the committee to lunch without setting a time for them to come back. And in doing so, he adjourned the committee for the day. So based on the rules, because of the way he recessed for lunch, they weren't able to come back. He had closed out the day. And because of their requirements for giving notice for committee meetings, this is not part of what Brad was able to find out later, but based on the rules of the House,

there are certain things they can't reverse. And Chairman Kaine was unable to call the committee back. It had to be put off until today, in fact. And they actually did take up HB 6 today, and he continued to take questions and chair Collier from last week was was able to ask questions. But this time, Chairman Kane actually did not give the gavel to Gonzalez. He gave it to Representative Travis Clardy, Republican of Nacogdoches, who is a member of the committee,

but after Gonzalez did not relinquish control last week, Cain this week decided not to give her the gavel back. And so any minute now, they're about to resume, as we're recording, they're about to resume their deliberations. All sorts of spicy stuff. Well, Hayden, thanks for covering that for us. Daniel, let's pivot to the Senate version, SB7. What's new with that bill? Well, that bill is now going over to the House of Representatives. It was just passed by the Texas Senate in a party-line vote on, well, Thursday night or, no, sorry, Wednesday night or Thursday morning, depending on when you count the end of one day and the start of another.

So they brought the legislation to the floor on Wednesday afternoon. They had a long, very robust debate, I suppose you could say, on the legislation. Obviously, this has been a very controversial, probably the most controversial partisan topic that we've seen in the legislature this session as far as Democrats and Republicans butting heads. And so we continue to see that throughout the Senate floor procedure on Senate Bill 7, which is essentially the sentence version of HB 6. There's some significant differences, but I'm sure the end result, there will be a lot of overlap with whatever both chambers finally vote on.

And so when this was brought to the Senate floor, obviously there were lots of Democrats standing up and speaking out against the legislation, essentially saying that this is voter suppression. It's going to intimidate voters and dissuade people from voting. Whereas Republicans are saying, no, this is some steps that we need to take to secure elections, make sure that we tighten down any possible way for people to commit voter fraud. And so you just have those two different views on elections kind of clashing and right along party lines. So they had this whole process, but they did introduce quite a few amendments. I think there were 29 in total that were voted on, or 28, with three of those being modified with other amendments.

And that was done all throughout Wednesday night and Thursday morning. All sorts of interesting timelines there to keep track of. So the amendment process, how convoluted did that end up being? So it went on, dragged on for a little bit. As far as the amendments that actually passed, there were, I believe, a dozen that went through that finally got put into the bill. Now, the most notable one of those was from Senator Hughes, who is the author of the bill. He's the chairman of the Senate State Affairs Committee, which is what the bill went through.

And he put forward an amendment, a perfecting amendment, that had some different changes that were like, this is the final version that they want. So that one was obviously passed. And then there were about 11 other amendments that passed. A few of those came from Democrats. Senator Menendez had an amendment that would continue to allow people who are in line to vote when polls close to remain in line so that they continue to vote. If they're there at 730 or 659, they get in line and the polls close at 7, they can continue waiting in line until they vote and they cast their ballot.

Senator West had an amendment that was originally, it would have required some more additional training for poll watchers as well as for them to take an oath saying that they would not disrupt the election process. Because one of the things that the bill does is kind of expand the protections and rights of poll watchers. One of the things that Texas poll watchers cannot currently do is have any sort of recording at the poll to prove if they see something kind of unlawful. They don't have any proof of that.

They can just have their word. And so to kind of help them in that, Senator Hughes and the Republicans have put forward this proposal that would allow them to record as long as they don't record any part of the secret voting process, not recording people's ballot.

But Democrats have said that's going to intimidate voters if you have poll watchers who are – poll watchers are there from the parties. The parties and candidates are the ones who have the poll watchers. And so since they're partisan, Democrats are arguing that those partisan poll watchers are going to intimidate voters. And so they wanted to have some additional constraints on poll watchers to try and make sure there's no intimidation. So that amendment would have required more

training procedures and also an oath that they wouldn't disrupt it. And Cinder Hughes, the author, said, well, you know, I would, the oath part, I'm totally fine with the training is a little bit burdensome. So like, if you go and take down this, this amendment and bring it back with just the oath, then we'll pass that. So that's what Cinder West did in the wee hours of the morning, uh, go change this amendment. And they came back and voted that in later. Um, so those are some of the big amendments that passed through. There were also several, Senator Bob Hall had, I think, four or five. No, there's more than that. There's like five or six amendments that he had that passed through. Rainey was the other Democrat who had one that would have kind of lessened the restraints on certifications of disabilities for people applying for a mail ballot under that qualification. Got it. So 12 minutes passed late into the night.

Then they finally got to passage to engrossment and then final passage. And those were all party line votes. I like it. Well, Daniel, thanks for covering that for us so thoroughly. Isaiah, we're coming to you. Another big committee hearing in the Texas House last week related to particularly pandemics in relation to church reopenings or just openings in general. There was some contention over that during the coronavirus pandemic that we're still

experiencing now. What were the proposals exactly? Sure. So they're overlapping but distinct. In general, they are meant to keep churches open and other religious organizations open during declarations of disaster like the pandemic. One of them is a constitutional amendment, which works a bit differently than bills do. But that is about the size of it. Got it.

So how did the testimony end up going? Were a lot of folks in favor, opposed? What was the overall flavor? They were mostly in favor of the religious groups being able to stay open, in favor of these bills. I saw two citizens and one governmental official testify against the proposals. And that one guy was Councilman Lee Kleinman of Dallas, representing Dallas, actually. He made that clear officially. And so he spoke against the bills.

His argument in general was that in times of certain disasters, he brought up tornadoes as one example. Cities need to be able to enforce their building codes to keep people out of unsafe areas. And this is where, I mean, he introduced himself to speak against Shaheen's HB 525 and Leach's constitutional amendment, HDR 72. I'll get into the differences between those here in a minute. But the chairman, Chris Paddy, had to correct him and say he can only speak on one at a time. And that ended up kind of mattering. But Kleinman argued on behalf of Dallas that if there's a disaster, you need to be able to enforce health codes and things like that. So if a tornado hits, you've got to be able to tape off the area so that people don't go in and have services. And Shaheen's House Bill 525 would protect all religious activities on the part of religious groups. And Leach's HCR 72 would only extend to services. when churches could have activities like a food bank or some kind of door-to-door thing or what have you,

that doesn't involve going into their building. How would that affect your argument here about building codes? And so that ended up mattering. I mentioned those two specifically because those were the ones that garnered the most debate and discussion. But we've also got Scott Sanford's HB 1239, which would prohibit government agencies or public officials from closing places of worship. That one doesn't mention activities like Shaheen's does. And Tenderholt's HB 1691, which would forbid government officials actually naming the governor and the presiding officers of governing bodies specifically from restricting

the free exercise of religion, banning religious services, or limiting the operating hours of faith groups. Got it. So, you know, how were churches affected during the pandemic? What kind of issues are these bills trying to address? The decentralized nature of the state's response to the pandemic makes that question a bit hard to answer because it was different from place to place. We know that churches were shut down in McKinney, for example, where the courts opened them back up thanks to legal action, and in Fort Worth for a brief time. At the state level, they weren't really touched. Abbott's orders didn't call out churches, and Paxton sided with churches in his legal opinions.

So from statewide officials, churches were pretty well free. It was at the local level with mayors and county officials that from time to time and place to place, they were actually a force to shut down when pandemic panic kind of rose to its peak. Yeah, pandemic panic. I like that. Well, thank you for covering that for us, Isaiah. Hayden, we're coming to you. Last week, you had the opportunity to actually go down and be present for a big border press conference wherein Texas' two senators and 17 others were in Texas touring the border. Walk us through what happened there. Well, I did go down to the McAllen area, and the congressional delegation included Senator Cruz,

Senator Cornyn, and 17 other Republican senators from throughout the country, from as far away as Alaska. Senator Dan Sullivan from Alaska was there, Mike Braun from Indiana, and a host of others. They were there to tour the border, and I was there for the press event that followed their boat tour of the Rio Grande River. Obviously not the whole river, but parts of the river. And it concluded with a press event at Anzaldus Park in Mission, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Not Mission, but Anzaldus. I'm really not sure how to pronounce that. But the press conference was very are occurring, as well as the vulnerabilities

that our southern border currently has, especially in terms of the enforcement capabilities of US Customs and Border Protection right now, not because they aren't doing their jobs and doing their best with what they have, but because they're overwhelmed. And more than one senator highlighted the fact that the cartels are sophisticated in the way that they are sending people to the border to distract, well, not distract, but to take away resources from Customs and Border Protection so that while they're dealing with humanitarian issues, other people with criminal intent are able to get into the U.S. And they also made a pretty grim discovery while they were on their tour. And the one that really highlighted just how serious the crisis is.

Yeah, certainly. Tell us just a little bit more about, you know, one, what it was like down there. We're kind of, I think that one of the interesting factors was, you know, these senators, particularly not from border states, being present for these kinds of excursions and seeing firsthand what it's like on the border. You know, what were their kind of reactions to these kinds of things? And, you know, tell us a little bit, even just about the photos you were able to take while you were there well i was able to get the the event was very much a media event okay it was it was to highlight what is happening on the southern border so they did not go on their tour right away they were able to take the boats kind of to the side so that the media could get some footage.

And, and I was able to get some good pictures of the, of the boats that they were on. And these were Texas highway patrol boats, not a border patrol boats. But if you view the, you can go to the article, Cruz, Cornyn, 17 other U.S. senators to a Rio Grande River and heartbreaking border visit and view a couple of those images.

But this event highlighted the position of these Republican senators in terms of the Biden White House. And they are taking Biden to task for what they view to be irresponsible policy choices that have led to a spike in illegal immigration. While Democrats argue that Trump left the new administration unprepared, and that these trends are mostly being contributed to by violence in Central America, and people fleeing those countries and seeking asylum. So that debate continues. But this particular border visit, you would think, you know, and I kind of expected when I went down there, that there would be, I don't know, a dark energy along the border. But I, they're really, I did not perceive that I think a lot of this stuff happens just out of view. And my limited perception of what has gone on. And

while I was down there is so much of what goes on is out of our view. And McAllen and that area is just another community, people working, living, going to school. And this is really happening in the periphery of our society right now. And it's very jarring. Certainly. Well, Hayden, thanks for following that and heading down there for us. Isaiah, we're going to talk to you about the Alamo. This is a beat you've covered extensively. And this last week, you wrote a story about the different proposals, the different legislative proposals that have been introduced in the Texas legislature, specifically addressing the Alamo. Walk us through exactly what these bills are and what they have in common. What they have in common mainly is distaste for the way the Alamo project is currently being run. So to summarize it, an arm of the General Land Office, the GLO, called Alamo

Trust, runs the site, day-to-day stuff and things like that. And the project itself, the renovation, is a collaboration between the city of San Antonio and the GLO. All of these bills seek to get the legislature more involved in this process. I like it. So, you know, what are the proposals exactly? The Republican bills obviously focus on making sure that the story of the Alamo that we all heard as kids continues to be told, emphasizing the heroism of the defenders in the famous siege. A couple of them also focus on securing the safety of the cenotaph and lately that has become kind of irrelevant since the texas historical commission has voted to keep the cenotaph in place that was you know months ago and more recently george p bush of the glo and you know ron nierenberg of mayor of san

antonio have acknowledged that it's not moving and they've adjusted their renovation plans to adapt to that. But before those developments took place, a couple of Republican state reps filed bills to ensure the Cenotaph's safety in its place. One of them is, we've probably discussed it on a podcast before, it's from Brian Slayton, Republican out of Royce City. He filed a bill that would effectively keep the Alamo Cenotaph safe from removal pretty much permanently, although it had to do with monuments in general, like place names and other statues and things like that. And it stipulates that if one of those monuments, including the name of a park or whatever, has stood on state property for more than 40 years, it would be totally safe from removal or change. There's another bill by Starup Kalbiederman out of Fredericksburg,

which aims more directly at the Cenotaph. It wouldn't affect other historical monuments, but it would wrest the Cenotaph from the city of San Antonio and place it wholly under the control of the General Land Office, so the state of Texas. The GLO would maintain full responsibility for preserving the monument, and any major projects relating to it have to be approved unanimously by the governor lieutenant governor speaker the speaker of the state house and a majority of the members of the thc and like i said those two have kind of lost

relevance as the senate's position has been secured um a few that are a little bit more relevant come out of state senator jose menendez uh san antonio's democrat state senator he has shown a lot of sympathy to the top Palomquoaltecans. We talked about their plight before on this podcast. They're involved in a federal legal battle against the city of San Antonio right now. And they are a tribe whose forefathers lived in the missions, including the Alamo. And they want to seat at the table on the Archaeological Advisor Committee, which includes a number of tribes that they claim don't bear any historical connection to the Alamo, and they have some other complaints about their ability to worship

at the site. So Menendez has filed some bills to, one, recognize them at the state level because they lack federal recognition, which has kind of hamstrung them and their legal process. He has also filed a bill to require consultation with them and any other tribe that claims a historic link to the Alamo before embarking on any major projects on the complex. And so those are a couple from Menendez that focus more on the Topolam tribe. I like it. Well, Isaiah, thanks for covering that for us.

Daniel, we're going to come to you. This week we saw a one-year anniversary of a big date here in Texas. Walk us through that and give us, you know, a 30,000-foot overview of what COVID numbers have looked like here in Texas. It was not just a big date for Texas, but for the whole country.

It was the one-year anniversary of the end of the 15 days to slow the spread. Wow. Oh, my goodness. It was also the one-year anniversary of when Governor Abbott signed his executive order that extended his initial lockdown policy. Now, if you remember back at the time, he was saying it was definitely not a lockdown. It was definitely not a stay-at-home home order but that's basically what it was and that's what we've called it since um well you say that was a year ago that was a year ago no that

was at least six years ago uh this is a good point i think like on on paper it's kind of like how the the senate this morning actually they gaveled out on Tuesday morning, even though it was Thursday morning. It's this weird legislative day, actual day thing. Yeah, I feel like that's what's going on here. So it's like the real year and then the year of what it felt like. All that to say, it's been one heck of a year with a roller coaster of coronavirus numbers and also policies responses to that um so just a broad 30,000 foot view of how the coronavirus numbers have changed since a year ago now if you remember back a year ago testing was just getting started

they were kind of struggling to to get the reporting out in a consistent manner. But all in all, numbers were really low. We didn't see massive hospitalizations, despite the models saying that that's what we were going to see in like two days, and then it never happened, and then it just kept on never happening. And that continued throughout much of the spring up up until june uh was when we started seeing the numbers rise again they reached a peak in mid to late july started coming back down again they continued going down uh throughout the fall in september and october and then in october it kind of took a turn and the numbers started going back up, but at a much slower rate than they did back in June. It was a little bit more steady of a climb. And then that continued climbing throughout most of the winter, reaching a high in pretty early January was when we saw the

next peak. And since then, the numbers really then plummeted, probably likely due to, you know, in part to the vaccinations, in part to just the natural fluctuation of virus. But that is where we're at right now. It is back down to numbers that we had seen back last fall, if not now, kind of going into the point where it was during a year ago when there was really little, a lot fewer numbers. And at that point there was a lot less testing. So numerically we might be lower now than we were then. I like it. So in terms of Abbott's policies, walk us through a little bit of where those line up with these different trends.

Yeah. So like I mentioned, his extension was one year ago, March 31st. His initial lockdown, he announced that on March 19th. So since then, you had that month and a half all throughout April of a very strict lockdown. There was no dine-in restaurants open. There were no retail stores that were open for shopping in the store. Lots of businesses were closed. You had hair salons closed. And then you started seeing a little bit more pushback from that. People were getting really tired of this by the end of April. And you had Governor Abbott at the end of April

then announced that he was going to be doing a phased reopening. And this phased reopening continued throughout May and into June, a little bit of just different capacity limits that he was expanding certain sectors and businesses that he would open while others remained closed, kind of this staggered reopening. At that point, he also had, under his reopening orders, he had in his executive order a ban on mask mandates for individuals. And then and then in mid-June you started seeing the numbers go up a little bit this was after Memorial Day after all the George Floyd protests this is when we started seeing the numbers go up a few weeks after that and that was in mid-June you started seeing then local county officials pushing back on Abbott's prohibition on the mask mandate.

And they started trying to find ways around that. The Bexar County judge then issued a mandate that was not on individuals, but it was on businesses requiring them to have a mandate on individuals. And after the Bexar County judge did that Abbott came out the next day and he's like yes that was my plan all along for them to be able to do that and have this this way to have businesses require masks instead of requiring it on the individual fast forward a few more weeks and he kind of reels back his reopening policies, not quite to the extent that it was back in April, but still lower capacity limits for businesses. And I want to say

that bars were allowed to open like at some point in June and then they were closed back down, but I could be wrong on that. But then, you know, you had those renewed lockdown orders. And then right before July 4th, you had the mask mandate implemented. Texas was the second state with a Republican governor to issue a statewide mask mandate. And then you saw the numbers peak in mid to late July. And then they started going down. And then Abbott didn't issue any more orders until September when he started expanding the opening capacity again. Now in this order, he did something different than all of his previous orders,

and that was to put a trigger in it that allowed certain capacity limits to be had depending on the level of virus. So if a health region in Texas, the trauma service area, I believe that's run by the Department of State Health Services, if those reached over 15% capacity with coronavirus patients in those hospital regions, then they would have stricter lockdowns. So at the time that he did that, there were really not many regions that this applied to. But as the cases continued to grow, and then in January, this was when we saw numbers really high across the state. And that's when all those partial lockdowns kind of went back into effect under his triggered order. There wasn't any new orders that he issued, but there was that existing trigger in his previous order. ended his statewide mask mandate and full reopening and the numbers have been continuing

to go down uh despite cries against his policy and warnings that we're going to see i guess nobody's saying that hospitals are going to overflow again but now they're saying we're going to see more cases but i don't know yeah there we go quite the quite the situation in the in the saga and even in the legislature to pivot to another story of yours, Daniel, we've seen, you know, different members of both chambers, the House and the Senate, come forward with different ideas of what the right response is in terms of having folks enter the Capitol. The House, the Texas House this week talked about, you know, their mask mandate. What happened there? What are the current COVID rules in the legislature? So the current COVID rules in the legislature, if you go to the Capitol, you can go in without a mask. You can go in without a COVID test. If you want to go to anything to do with the Senate, you need both a mask and a COVID test. The COVID tests are being provided at no cost outside of the

Capitol building. They give you a wristband after you test negative, and then you can go into those Senate activities. If you want to go into the House committee hearings, or if you want to go into the House chamber, or the gallery rather, then you have to have a mask. Now, there's been some talk about removing that. There are a couple of proposals put forward, one by Representative Brian Slayton and the other by Representative Tom Oliverson. And these would have kind of ended the mask mandate in the House. They were heard in a committee hearing. But after some testimony from a couple health officials, including a former state representative, blanking on his name right now. John Zerwas.

John Zerwas. His testimony and another testimony from a UT health official, they kind of discouraged the committee from taking up this or striking down the mask mandate and waiting for another six weeks. And so at the end of that hearing, Oliverson asked the committee to just leave the bill pending for the time being. And that's what they've done. Yeah. So in terms of what the future could hold, basically, we're just waiting to see. Yeah. Now, I think, you know, if you're going with that six weeks that one of the witnesses said and recommended, then we could see the rule be reconsidered a few weeks before the session gavels out, or it might just continue on toward

the end of session. Yeah, certainly. Well, Daniel, thank you for covering that for us. Brad, we're going to come to you. ERCOT electricity and utility situations have been in the news for a hot minute now. And this week, the House moved forward with their proposals. Walk us through what proposals were passed in the Texas House. Yeah, so we've written on them previously and spelled them out in pretty good detail.

But among the most notable ones were the weatherization mandate, in-state residency requirement for ERCOT board members, a prohibition on the residential use of wholesale index pricing. That was the gritty type of plan that resulted in thousands of dollar bills and a few others. So I list them out in the piece we write on this. Recommend to check it out. But now they're moving on to the Senate. Good stuff. Now, between the House and the Senate, are there differences between both chambers in

terms of how they're approaching the issue? Yeah. I mean, generally, we're going to see all of the same proposals come through each or come to each uh just question of which ones get passed now there was one passed a related bill passed in the senate uh senate bill three that's a priority bill and it has some of the same things like the weatherization mandate uh the that the prohibition on wholesale index plans um also creation of emergency alert system. But there are a couple other differences, such as setting a cap, a wholesale price cap system-wide, and that would just be essentially lowering it.

I didn't see a price point, so I don't know if that would just be a rule set by the PUC later on, but it's a directive to set a different one. And prohibiting ancillary service prices from exceeding 150% beyond the wholesale cap. We saw ancillary service prices go up upwards of $26,000 during the event. And those are essentially generations set aside in case we have a situation where we need where we lose generation or are stressed with high demand so there are some differences mostly similar though we'll see which one which one and which ones get the green light in the other respective house so that's where it is right now i like it well thanks for covering that for us brad let's talk budget one of your

favorite things oh boy i do love your fiscal your fiscal beats here thing is not many other people do so that's you know i'm preaching to a very small choir well brad there's a reason why it's toward the end of the cast just for the record um but it's very important nonetheless the senate approved their budget in committee this week signaling the beginning of a lot of conversation to be had between both chambers and on their respective floors. Walk us through what this proposal entails. So earlier we saw both chambers release very, very similar initial budget plans. And now the Senate has, it's farther along in the House. They've gotten through committee and this budget proposal will come to the floor next week for a vote. And the total fiscal tag is $250.7 billion. Now, that includes discretionary and non-discretionary spending, basically things that the state is mandated to pay for and things that the state can choose to pay for.

Of that discretionary number, though, right now the total is, in this plan, $117.9 billion. Now, that's just about $2 billion less than the initial proposal. They shaved off $1.8 billion. So that's notable. Now, in that context, there is still some numbers, adjustments that they'll have to make because, at least in terms of the comptroller's estimate earlier this year, they will have $112.5 billion available for general revenue spending. And so there's now about a $5 billion gap there. I was told that that will likely be taken care of through federal funding. And so it likely – it turns out maybe it won't be that big of an issue, but that was a significant gap going into this, at least it stuck out to me. But the budget, certainly compared to last session, which increased $15 billion, and that was because of the property tax compression and school finance increase.

This one is 2.6% growth. It's well under population plus inflation. Which is kind of the metric that is used for that. I don't know. In terms of Republican and conservative lawmakers, if it's under that cap, right, it's acceptable. Yeah. Something to look at is the conservative Texas budget that TPPF puts out every year. And they're happy with it, with that fiscal note. Now, I'm sure there's some things in there they wish you could switch or whatnot. But the general total they're OK with.

And that kind of tells you how the budget is certainly compared with last session's. You know, a couple notable parts of this, especially in relation to what the legislature did last session. This budget proposal would provide additional three point one billion dollars in funding for school enrollment growth. And so that's basically their projection of how much more is it going to cost to fund education with more students coming in, which is interesting on the backdrop of a lot of students leaving during the pandemic because schools were shut down. So they went either homeschool or went to online schools and whatnot.

So that's interesting, something to watch for. But also there's an additional $1 billion in continued property tax compression. So we'll see rates, local school district tax rates drop a little bit, at least compared to how they would have been otherwise. Certainly. Well, thank you so much for covering that. Now, the House, we're still waiting on their proposal, right? So where is the House in terms of their budget requests for agencies and various other things. Basically, the subcommittees do the groundwork. That way they're not having however many appropriations committee members all just going at it in one big committee.

They siphon it off, different sections of the budget siphon it off, and they handle it themselves. And they come and they have this, they consolidate the plan, and then they vote on that, and they handle it themselves. And they come and they have this, they consolidate the plan and then they vote on that and they send it to the floor. And of course you have a budget night, which the house members can tack on amendments all over the place. And you know, that's going to be its own marathon. But from the original proposals, since we don't know what the house is going to, the house committee is going to produce, can't really compare it at the moment. But the original proposals between the two chambers, there's about a $60 million difference. And that's various things.

And we'll see if they get ironed out. I'm sure some of them will. Some of them will not. Likely, as it usually does, this will have to go to conference committee. And in there, the two chambers will two chambers chambers will deliberate and, you know, settle on a final budget, which is basically after the Senate passes their budget and the house passes its budget, they'll come together and say, okay, what parts don't match up? Let's figure out where we can cut and slash and add. So it'll be quite the process. And it'll be interesting too, to see,

okay, well, last session, there were big commitments made to property taxes and school finance. You know, how going forward will that spending be able to be addressed um and those kind of commitments continue to be made or or not so um all sorts of good stuff bradley thank you for covering that for us real fast i want to talk about um broadband expansion here in texas just give us a quick overview this is an issue issue that the governor and different state leaders have been very forthright and seen as a priority of theirs. And we're talking about something that a lot of Republicans don't necessarily know much about and has been criticized by some conservatives saying, hey, we have Republican Party priorities that we want to address this session. Broadband is a focus that we don't care as much about. And what's the price

tag going to be on this? So all sorts of different, but, you know, by and large, the legislature has talked about this for many years. This is not a new topic of conversation. So give us a quick update on that. Yeah, this is a, it's a priority in both houses by the respective leaderships there. Like you said, it's not on the GOP priority list, but for many of the legislators this is a priority and um you know the two current plans in there right now is to kind of establish this broadband office that would then facilitate the actions and directives from the federal communications commission at the federal level and uh facilitating it down to the local level, getting these suppliers to, providers to commit to building the infrastructure

for X amount of money, whatever. So it's going to be very costly. Estimates that I had, that I was given, if you were laying fiber rather than sticking solely to 5G, which has its own limitations. There's no good way to get broad internet access out to these incredibly rural sparsed out areas so um the price point that i was given a mile of of uh broadband infrastructure cable would cost

45 000 to 80 000 dollars and just to put in. And then an additional, and that's per year, an additional, sorry, that's an initial cost. But then you have the maintenance and operations, which is per year, and that would cost between $30,000 and $40,000. So this is across the entire state of Texas that doesn't have this, it's a lot of money.

And we don't know how much that'll be. Yeah, we'll continue to keep an eye on it. The fiscal price tag is going to be quite the topic of conversation. A lot of spending. But it's government, so we'll just continue to keep an eye on it. Gentlemen, this week we are very close to the observance of Easter and Good Friday here at the Texan. We observe both and just try to carve out time for folks to be able to observe those holidays. I want to talk about Easter traditions.

Are there things that you and your families did growing up or even that you do now that are fun Easter traditions? I just want to know how the resurrection of Jesus somehow came to be symbolized by a giant rabbit breaking into people's homes and leaving eggs and candy. I've never looked into that, but I imagine it's a weird winding story. I just, I don't know. So, yes, growing up, we did the whole Easter egg hunt basket of candy thing on Sunday morning on Easter,

but it's never made any sense to me. So, I'm still puzzled. I'm sure there is a youth pastor somewhere who has made some kind of a metaphor that somehow connects the two. Yes. Youth pastors tend to do that. Yeah. Maybe some youth pastors can email me and explain this to me.

Something about eggs and new life and rabbits because they hop around just like Jesus hopped out of the grave. I don't know. Oh, my. Well, on that note, fantastic. Servants by Daniel. Oh, Lord in heaven. One of the traditions we had growing up was obviously Easter egg hunt. But as we got older, my parents were like, well, this is not as fun just to hide the eggs in our yard and, you know, set our teenage children out to the, to the craziness.

And we wanted it still, we were like, bring it on. This is a competition now. So what my parents did was hide Easter eggs all over the neighborhood. So like they would get the permission from different people's houses and we would be able to say, okay, we're going to go in your yard. Like they knew we were coming and we had to run all over and it was outside it was it was at night so it was all dark we had headlamps we had you know we got very creative in terms of how we could have bags uh attached to our front so we could just throw the eggs in as we found them it got very intense um we wore tennis shoes headlamps it was quite the quite the situation that was ours i love it and i want to continue did you ever run into the wrong yard where like there's just an old man out there with a shotgun

get off my lawn it was seattle so probably not well they like guns up there surprisingly it depends yeah well that's a whole other thing the laws are actually very lenient but i don't think washingtonians uh who lean left know that very much it's kind of the best kept secret up there brad do you have any traditions i mean obviously easter egg hunting that's classic one trying to find baskets in the morning but my favorite pastime oh dear of easter is trashing peeps they are gross that's very true yes does anybody disagree that? They are gross. Sarah White disagrees wholeheartedly. She's raising her hand. Well, she doesn't have a microphone.

Sarah is both morally and factually incorrect. Sarah, please explain to us. Wow. Hello, everybody. I mean, I have already had two to three packages of Peeps this season. We'll probably buy more this weekend. I just, I don't know. So you're the person who keeps that company afloat.

It's true, yeah. It's probably me, and I'm okay with that. I accept it, I own it, and I run with it. I think they're delicious. They're just sugar and marshmallow, and I love them. Why don't you just eat regular marshmallows? Regular marshmallows are also good, but the difference with Peeps is they're covered in just straight up more sugar.

So it was already great, and then it just made it a fantastic product. Honestly, I like the way they taste. They're so messy to eat, especially the ones with bright colors. You're eating a bright pink or a bright yellow Peep, and by the end of it, you've got yellow sugar all over you they're very messy they're messy and they're huge they're not like bite-sized i mean i'm sure there are bite-sized peeps but they're not even a good size to just yeah i like bite-sized candy like reese's where you can just don't get me started i'm gonna call her out because she doesn't listen to this, I'm sure. But my mom, she does this very odd thing where she lets them out or opens them, the peeps, and lets them get stale and then eats them.

Wow. And it is horrific. That's kind of nasty. Yeah. Wow. One of my closest friends in college is that way. So we'll even to this day send them to her weeks ahead of time. And then like three weeks later, she'll send a thanks.

They were great. Wow. Wow. I don't understand that allure whatsoever. It's disgusting. Well, folks, thanks for that. That was a delight. Sarah, thank you for joining us. Folks, enjoy your Good Friday. Happy Resurrection Day. And we'll talk to you next week. Thank you all so much for listening. If you've been enjoying our podcast, it would be awesome if you would review us on iTunes. And if there's a guest you'd love to hear on our show, give us a shout on Twitter. Tweet at The Texan News. We're so proud to have you standing with us as we seek to provide real journalism in an age of disinformation.

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