Texas lawmakers have already filed 2,000 bills ahead of next session

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- A month out from the next legislative session, lawmakers have already filed some 2,000 bills. That's just the start of the filing process, and it will continue until the end of the session in June.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt has already filed 16 bills ahead of next month's session opening.

"I've already filed a group of bills about voter integrity issues that we need to take care of in the State of Texas," the Republican from Houston said. "Just recently, I filed a series of bills about education reforms that we need to make. There are casualties on the way. Not every bill that gets filed actually makes it into law."

State Rep. Ron Reynolds has filed 21 bills, including measures to raise the minimum wage, the age to buy a semi-automatic rifle, and strengthen the grid.

"Bills are easy to get filed because any legislator can file a bill, and the bill gets referred to a committee," Reynolds said. "The real hard thing is to get consensus."

State Rep. Jolanda Jones agrees the process is hard. She's filed 14 bills with two more ready-to-go bills, many of which are focused on healthcare and criminal justice.

"There are timelines," the Houston Democrat told ABC13. "You need bills with low numbers. You need things to come out right. You need your bills to be assigned to committees. You need the committees to have hearings on your bills. Then you need your bills to go to the house floor. Then you need to find 76 votes, and then, if you're lucky enough to get bills out of the House, then they go through this whole process in the senate."

The House committees with the most bills so far are State Affairs, Public Education, and Ways & Means. The top sponsors have all submitted more than 50 bills apiece.

In the senate, the committees with large numbers of bills include State Affairs, Health & Human Services, and Local Government. The top sponsors file dozens of bills each.

But which ones will get priority? It is hard to know in the House, given that the chamber does not yet have a speaker who guides the legislation through the process.

"We don't even know who the leadership is," James Henson, director of the UT-Austin Texas Politics Project, said. "So, we can't figure out what the leadership wants when we don't know who the Leader of the House will be."

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