Abbott Veto Statements

• Veto Statement: House Bill 3135 would levy special assessments on residential properties and allow the City of Austin to subsequently annex the very improvements paid for by these property owners. The effect of this bill would be to impose additional costs on property owners for specific improvements, only to see the City annex the improved area without bearing any of the cost. I signed property-tax reform two years ago to keep local governments from spending outside their means. House Bill 3135 evades the intent of those reforms and is unacceptable.

HB 3207 (Herrero) Relating to preventing the loss of benefits by certain retirees of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas who resume service during a declared disaster.

• Veto Statement: The Teacher Retirement System of Texas relies on a sophisticated set of rules to ensure that current and former teachers’ pension funds are protected, and a key component of that is an “Employment After Retirement” policy that triggers penalties if a retired school employee returns to service in violation of the rules. House Bill 3207 would dismantle that careful architecture, eliminating penalties for violations in any area subject to any disaster declaration. The desire to help both retirees and school children is laudable, but the bill lacks the necessary safeguards. Not every disaster merits the same response, and disaster declarations often must remain in place for an extended period of time in order to ensure the availability of federal assistance long after immediate personnel needs have been met. In order to protect the pension fund, the exception contemplated by House Bill 3207 needs to be tailored to actual needs.

HB 4218 (Craddick) Relating to a cause of action for the bad faith washout of an overriding royalty interest in an oil and gas lease.

• Veto Statement: Texas prizes the freedom of parties to enter into private contracts and to have their bargains enforced. House Bill 4218 would contravene these principles, representing a remarkable intrusion by the State into the contractual relationship between overriding royalty interest-holders and oil-and-gas lessees. The Legislature sought to address a “wash out” of an interest-holder, where a Jessee allows the lease to terminate-which extinguishes the royalty interest under some contracts-and then acquires a new lease on the same property. But those are contractual rights the parties bargained for, and the interest-holder could have given something up in exchange for protection from a wash out. The answer is not to trample every such contract in Texas and provide an extra-contractual cause of action against the Jessee, paired with an award of fees for the lawyers who will surely seek out these claims. Instead of enriching lawyers through costly litigation on the back end, as House Bill 4218 would do, Texas law should encourage the parties to negotiate wash out protections in advance.

SB 36 (Zaffirini) Relating to creation of a higher education task force focused on mental health services and the offense of hazing.

• Veto Statement: Hazing on campus is a serious problem that deserves serious attention, which is why I signed Senate Bill 38 into law last session. This session’s Senate Bill 36 was a worthy effort to further clarify the anti-hazing statute, until the House sponsor added an unnecessary provision that would simply grow government by creating yet another new task force. It is important to ensure that students receive mental-health services, and Texas’s existing agencies and institutions can already study the issues that would be addressed by this vast new bureaucratic entity. Unfortunately, the Senate author’s good idea to clean up a statute has been undercut by the House sponsor.

SB 237 (Bettencourt) Relating to the issuance of a citation for a criminal trespass offense punishable as a Class B misdemeanor.

• Veto Statement: Senate Bill 237 would add criminal trespass to the list of offenses for which law enforcement can “cite and release” instead of arrest an intruder. I appreciate the good intentions of the bill’s author and supporters, but it would allow (and tempt) agencies to categorically mandate cite-and-release for this crime, taking away an important tool for officers to keep Texans safe. It would have a particularly troubling impact in the City of Austin, where local voters recently condemned the City’s self-inflicted homelessness crisis, because businesses and homeowners count on criminal-trespass arrests to protect themselves and their guests from homeless people who refuse to leave their property. It would also contravene the State’s goal of maintaining law and order in communities along the border.

SB 281 (Hinojosa) Relating to the use of hypnotically induced statements in a criminal trial.

• Veto Statement: The author of Senate Bill 281 is to be commended for aiming to bring accountability to the criminal justice system by addressing the use of investigative hypnosis. But the House sponsor’s late amendment to the bill would dramatically expand its scope in an unacceptable way. The sponsor added language so that for any person who has undergone investigative hypnosis, all statements that person makes “after” the hypnosis–even ones made long “after” the hypnosis session and unrelated to that session-are barred from being admitted into evidence in any criminal trial. The House sponsor’s amendment would grant lifetime immunity, for everyone who undergoes this type of hypnosis, from having any subsequent statements used in a criminal trial.

SB 474 (Lucio) Relating to the unlawful restraint of a dog; creating a criminal offense.

• Veto Statement: Texans love their dogs, so it is no surprise that our statutes already protect them by outlawing true animal cruelty. Yet Senate Bill 474 would compel every dog owner, on pain of criminal penalties, to monitor things like the tailoring of the dog’s collar, the time the dog spends in the bed of a truck, and the ratio of tetherto-dog length, as measured from the tip of the nose to the base of the tail. Texas is no place for this kind of micro-managing and over-criminalization.

SB 813 (Hughes) Relating to the insurance premium tax credit for the certified rehabilitation of certified historic structures.

• Veto Statement: I am vetoing Senate Bill 813 at the request of the author and sponsor based on the Legislature’s passage of House Bill 3777, which would amend the Texas Tax Code to narrow the applicability of the Texas Historic Preservation Tax Credit Program. That program issues franchise tax or insurance premium tax credits worth up to 25 percent of the eligible expenses of rehabilitating a certified historic structure. Senate Bill 813 would have duplicated the authorizing statute for the program in the Texas Insurance Code, but would have created parameters for certified historic structures that differ from House Bill 3777 and thus could cause confusion with respect to the qualification of a project for insurance or franchise tax credits.

HB 1477 (K. Bell) Relating to performance and payment bonds for public work contracts on public property leased to a nongovernmental entity.

• Veto Statement: Whenever a government entity leases public property to a non-governmental entity, and the latter decides to enter into a contract for work performed on the property, House Bill 1477 would make the government entity responsible for the prime contractor obtaining a bond to protect subcontractors. If no bond is obtained and the prime contractor does not pay subcontractors, the government entity would be responsible for payment because the bill waives the government entity’s sovereign immunity in this situation. Because the government entity may not know who the prime contractor is–or even that there is a contract between the non-governmental entity and a prime contractor-House Bill 1477 could leave the government entity, and taxpayers, on the hook for damages not caused by the government entity.

SB 1109 (West) Relating to requiring public schools to provide instruction and materials and adopt policies relating to the prevention of child abuse, family violence, and dating violence.

• Veto Statement: Senate Bill 1109 would require every school district to provide instruction to middle school and high school students regarding the prevention of child abuse, family violence, and dating violence. These are important subjects and I respect the Senate author’s good intentions, but the bill fails to recognize the right of parents to opt their children out of the instruction. I have vetoed similar legislation before on this ground, because we must safeguard parental rights regarding this type of instruction. I look forward to working with the Legislature on a narrower approach.

SB 1458 (Zaffirini) Relating to standardized forms and materials for the issuance of protective orders, magistrate’s orders for emergency protection, and temporary ex parte orders.

• Veto Statement: Senate Bill 1458’s goal of having model forms for protective orders, orders for emergency protection, and temporary ex parte orders is a sound one, but this is already allowed. The Office of Court Administration can, and is encouraged to, create model forms to help achieve the commendable goals behind Senate Bill 1458. But the bill would go further and impose categorical mandates that courts use standardized forms, without addressing what happens if a court deviates from the prescribed form and without allowing flexibility for unique cases. I vetoed similar legislation last session because, without appropriate safeguards, mandating the use of standardized forms in criminal cases sets a trap for courts whose orders may be challenged as void for deviating from the form and creates loopholes for opportunistic litigants to pursue needless challenges. I appreciate the good intentions of the bill author and sponsor in aiming to protect the victims of horrible crimes like family violence and sexual assault, but the mandatory use of standardized forms can inadvertently cause more problems that may detract from the effort to help victims.

SB 1772 (Zaffirini) Relating to the establishment of the Texas Pollinator-Smart program for solar energy sites.

• Veto Statement: Senate Bill 1772 offered a program that was totally voluntary. Voluntary laws are not needed to drive public behavior.