Flooding, redistricting and more as special session starts in Austin

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas (ValleyCentral) — At noon on Monday, Texas lawmakers will be back in Austin for the special legislative session Governor Greg Abbott announced in late June. In a press release announcing the date and initial agenda for the session, Abbott's office stated all the governor's emergency items had been passed and signed into law.

Abbott identified six bills that had landed on his desk, which he chose to veto, that made up the initial agenda.

Perhaps the most noteworthy item that the Governor vetoed was Senate Bill 3. SB3 became one of the agenda items. The bill would have banned hemp products in Texas.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick had named SB3 a priority bill for the 89th regular session.

In a veto proclamation, Governor Abbott wrote, in part, “Senate Bill 3 is well-intentioned. But it would never go into effect because of valid constitutional challenges. Litigation challenging the bill has already been filed, and the legal defects in the bill are undeniable. If I were to allow Senate Bill 3 to become law, its enforcement would be enjoined for years, leaving existing abuses unaddressed. Texas cannot afford to wait.”

Abbott added two items to the special session to address the veto of SB3. The proclamation announcement for the special session stated the governor wanted to protect children from THC and regulate hemp-derived products.

State Representative Janie Lopez, from the 37th District, said she's also concerned about regulating the sale of THC products.

“How do we regulate it so that kids don’t get their hands on it? Because kids were walking into these businesses, and these businesses were selling the THC to the kids. Which was causing for the kids to end up in the hospital. And even the adults because it was not regulated,” Lopez said.

What started as an initial agenda addressing six vetoed bills has expanded to 18 items that the governor wants lawmakers to tackle.

In addition to the issue of THC regulation, legislators will also be asked to eliminate the STAAR test for Texas schoolchildren, reduce property taxes and regulate lobbying efforts among a whole host of other issues.

For some lawmakers, like Representative Erin Gamez from Brownsville, there is only one issue the special session should be debating.

“We shouldn’t be talking about anything else, other than addressing the flood victims in Kerr County, and what can we do as a state and as a legislative body to make sure that disaster relief and emergency planning departments have the funds that they need on the ground to act,” Gamez said.

During the regular session, flood-related legislation failed to pass.

Perhaps the most noteworthy topic up for discussion during the special session, and the one garnering the most attention nationally, is the issue of redistricting.

Rep. Lopez said this idea didn't originate in Austin, but rather in Washington, D.C.

“There was a request from the federal government for us to do the redistricting," Lopez said.

Rep. Gamez added, “President Trump is openly saying the purpose of this redistricting is to pick up no less than 5 congressional seats for the Republican Party.”

Redistricting is done every ten years, following the national census. Every decade, Texas lawmakers meet to decide the geographic boundaries for the state's congressional districts. The last redistricting effort took place in 2021.

The last time Texas opted to redraw its maps outside the census timeline was 2003. At the time, Democrats calculated that they didn't have enough votes to stop the redistricting plan. So many of them left the state, resulting in too few lawmakers to conduct business.

Eventually, one Democratic Senator came back, a quorum was reached and the new maps were put into place.

Gamez said it's still too early in the process to see if a strategy like that is warranted in this session.

“Right now all of our discussion, thankfully, is purely hypothetical. No one has seen a map yet of the proposed redistricting. I know there’s a lot of people that would love to discuss that if and when the time comes. But I know we’re here, planning to stick it out, and fight it out at this point,” Gamez said.

The fight over redistricting could delay other matters the Governor wants to get done. That could depend on scheduling and the order in which they're addressed.

“We know they’re looking at South Texas. We saw this last session, where the RNC flooded South Texas with millions of out of state dollars to influence this election. We know this is something they’re not going to try to stop doing," Gamez said.

As of four days before the session was slated to begin, Gamez said no committee positions had been assigned to usher bills through the legislative process.

Rep. Lopez said, “We just want to give everybody an equal chance, an opportunity to have their voices heard.”

The Governor also took the opportunity in announcing the special session to further codify issues of gender identity and abortion access.

In his proclamation, Abbott directing lawmakers to address legislation "protecting women's privacy in sex-segregated spaces" and "protecting unborn children and their mothers from the harm of abortion."

The special session is scheduled to last 30 days. However, it can end before that time or the Governor can mall multiple sessions following the initial 30-day time frame.