Coppell legislative update: liaison outlines Texas session priorities, emergency items and bill activity

Jennifer Rodriguez, providing a legislative update to the Coppell City Council on Feb. 11, said the 2025 Texas Legislature is early in its regular session and that lawmakers face about 110 days remaining of the 140-day session.

Rodriguez told the council the state comptroller delivered the biennial revenue estimate and reported roughly $194,600,000,000 available for general-purpose spending, which Rodriguez described as including a surplus "a little over $23,000,000,000" remaining from the 2023 budget. "That surplus is down, several billion dollars from where they started in '23, but that's obviously still a healthy amount of money," she said.

Why it matters: the revenue estimate and leadership changes shape which bills move and how much the Legislature can appropriate for state priorities. Rodriguez highlighted three areas already seeing action in the Senate: an education savings/school-choice measure, a property-tax relief bill and proposed bail-reform legislation.

Rodriguez briefed the council on House leadership and procedure changes after the Jan. 14 swearing-in. She said Dustin Burrows was elected speaker in a contested race and that House committee assignments were expected soon. "It takes some time for a new speaker to get their staff and pull things together," she said.

On the governor's list of seven emergency items announced in his State of the State address, Rodriguez said the governor named school choice, expansion of career training, teacher pay, water infrastructure investment, property-tax relief, bail reform and creation of a Texas cyber command. She noted the designation of an item as an emergency allows earlier floor action under the Texas Constitution but does not require the Legislature to pass those measures.

On specific bills she named those the Senate had already moved on or was expected to: a school-choice education savings bill (moved by the Senate and now in the House), a Bettencourt-authored property-tax measure described as raising an exemption amount (referred to as "s b 4" in the update) and pending Senate committee action on bail reform. Rodriguez said the school-choice measure passed the Senate largely along party lines and was headed to the House, which had not yet completed committee assignments.

Council members asked about teacher pay and local-control bills. Rodriguez said there was no specific teacher-pay bill filed yet and no governor dollar amount attached; she said some unspent money from prior sessions remains in the surplus and that she would forward bills of interest to council staff. On bills that could affect local authority, she said several proposals were being discussed or listed by Senate leaders (she referenced items the lieutenant governor had prioritized, including a measure described as stopping taxpayer dollars for lobbyists and another described as requiring local law enforcement cooperation with federal deportation efforts).

Rodriguez also summarized bill-filing counts and deadlines: she reported more than 2,500 bills filed across both chambers and reminded the council of the March 14 bill-filing deadline for most measures and the constitutional restriction that the House cannot take up floor business before the 16th day (March 14). She said the Legislature's regular session will run into June, with the governor's veto deadline in late June.

Council members and staff asked follow-ups about sales tax origination and municipal sales-tax code proposals. Rodriguez said staff were monitoring several bills touching chapter 321 of the municipal sales tax code but that nothing had been filed that matched the city’s specific issue at the time of her report.

Rodriguez closed by confirming she would send tracking information to city staff and by inviting council members to the March 5 visit when House committee assignments should be known.