May 3, 2007

MABWA Government Relations Update from Carol McGarah

Below is an update on where we are with respect to water and small business legislation. With only 25 days left in this legislative session everything is moving very quickly and this report may be out of date by tomorrow…

WATER:

Many pieces of water legislation have been filed:

• HB 3 relating to environmental flows
• HB 4 relating to water conservation
• SB 3 relating to water management throughout the state, including designating 19 sites across Texas as Unique Reservoir Sites.
• Bills changing the pumping limits and management of the Edwards Aquifer
• Several individual bills creating Groundwater Conservation Districts
• Several bills granting Groundwater Conservation Districts additional powers.

To date none of these pieces of legislation have passed both houses and it does not look promising that any will. The Speaker of the House does not want SB 3 – the most comprehensive of the water bills – to be brought up on the House Floor where it is eligible to be amended with basically any type water amendment. He is particularly concerned about amendments dealing with the management of groundwater and giving groundwater districts powers that “trump” municipalities.

Sen. Averitt, Chair of the Senate Natural Resources Committee and author of SB 3, has promised that if the House does not pass SB 3 he will not allow any other water legislation to pass this session. As you recall, another similar version of SB 3 died in the House last session.

TAXES:

What we have NOT seen this session is any kind of bottled water tax.

A bill in the works that is very likely to pass is one that amends the new Franchise Tax law as it was passed last year as part of the school-finance overhaul.

As the bill passed last year the only exemptions were for businesses taking in less than $300,000 or choosing not to enjoy state legal-liability protections. The bill as it was approved by the House this week would raise the allowable gross receipts to $600,000. This change will add 60,000 businesses to the list that will be exempted from paying the tax.

This bill is now in the Senate where few changes are expected.

November, 2005

MABWA Government Relations Update from Lobbyist Carol McGarah!

Neither HB 3 – the revenue generation measure or SB 3 – the omnibus water policy bill passed the legislature this past session. 

Both of these issues will be discussed by various interim committees during the coming non-legislative year.  There is still a chance that a special session will be called some time next year to discuss school finance issues, and we will need to monitor this very closely to ensure that a bottled water fee is not included as a revenue generation measure. 

I have attached the interim charges issued by the Speaker to the House Natural Resources Committee.  This committee will hold various meetings on these issues during the next year and will report back to the full legislature on its findings.

The Lt. Governor has not issued his charges to the Senate committees yet.  He is expected to issues these charges early next year and we do expect water policy to be an issue that will again be studied by the Senate Natural Resources Committee.