Senators heard more than three hours of testimony and questions on House Bill 150, a proposal to create a Texas Cyber Command that would assume the state's cyber responsibilities now housed in the Department of Information Resources and be administratively attached to the University of Texas System, with an initial operational home at the UT San Antonio downtown cyber campus.

The bill would create a governor-appointed, senate-confirmed chief to run the command and transfer “every cyber related power, rule, form, contract, and full time employee from DIR to the command on a date certain no later than December 30, 2026,” with a memorandum of understanding required by Jan. 1, 2026, to govern the transition, sponsor Senator Parker said. Parker said the command “stands up that force by creating the Texas scribe command” and located it in San Antonio to plug into an existing federal and private cyber ecosystem.

Supporters — including representatives from cybersecurity firms, industry groups and the proposed host institution — argued the command will centralize threat intelligence, provide a 24/7 hotline for local governments, stage incident-response “go kits,” and operate a digital forensics lab to assist law enforcement. David Brown, executive director of the National Security Collaboration Center at UTSA, said the downtown building being considered has stratified security spaces, including a SCIF, and could host an initial wave of personnel. Security industry witnesses described widespread scanning and attacks against Texas networks and urged a unified, mission-focused organization to respond more quickly.

Opponents and cautious members of the committee raised governance and oversight issues. Several senators asked why the command would be administratively attached to UTSA rather than created as an independent state agency or kept inside DIR. Senator King said she was “very uncomfortable with turning it over to a university system” given recent state concern about university governance. Others pressed how the command would report to the legislature, how appropriations would be organized, and whether placing the entity within the UT system would create an extra layer of separation between elected officials and operational control.

Lawmakers also questioned the bill's procurement and emergency powers. The draft grants the command broad emergency purchasing authorities and exemptions from certain procurement statutes; senators asked whether those authorities could be used to purchase services or equipment outside standard competitive processes and whether ransom payments could be covered. Parker told the committee he did not intend for the command to pay ransoms and said he would support guardrails in an amendment, but offered that incident response requires operational flexibility.

Several members pressed the bill's provisions on accepting gifts, grants and donations from private entities. Senator Johnson said the language “smells grift and corruption” and Parker agreed to work on an amendment to tighten or remove that authority. The sponsor also proposed limiting private funding to clearly defined and transparent forms of support and agreed to amendments removing problematic boilerplate.

Security, access and campus integration drew repeated questions. Senators asked how students, faculty and private-sector partners would be screened for access to the secure floors and SCIF space; David Brown and UTSA witnesses said classified facilities would be accredited and that students would not have unescorted access to classified areas. Parker and witnesses emphasized the building is downtown and not part of a typical campus quad; Dean and resource witnesses described the surrounding federal presence and existing security posture as reasons to locate there.

On operational details, Parker said the command would perform three core missions: a cyber threat intelligence center to distribute alerts; an incident response unit modeled on emergency-response “go kits” to deploy equipment and personnel; and a digital forensics lab to support attribution and law enforcement prosecutions. Local governments would be able to “opt in” to services; mandatory baseline threat intelligence and an annual training course would be free, while premium services would be offered on a cost-recovery basis, Parker said.

The committee recorded no final vote on the bill. After resource witnesses and a broad public-comment record that included firm leaders, trade groups, and national-security practitioners, the chair closed testimony and left House Bill 150 pending.

The committee's debate highlighted competing priorities: speed and operational capability versus long-term governance, procurement safeguards and university affiliation. Several senators asked for follow-up briefings and amendments to tighten procurement and gift language, clarify reporting and sunset triggers, and specify the bill's bill pattern and budget placement before advancing the proposal.