Sunset Advisory Commission adopts recommendations for river authorities and Texas Ethics Commission; forwards package to 89th Legislature

The Sunset Advisory Commission voted on its final decisions for the biennium, approving staff recommendations and member modifications for several river authorities and a package of changes and new recommendations for the Texas Ethics Commission (TEC). The commission then took a recorded vote to forward all previously adopted recommendations to the 89th Texas Legislature.

The vote matters because the commission’s final, biennial forwarding vote is the only statutorily required action and sends the commission’s recommendations — including statutory changes and management directives — to the Legislature for consideration. Commission members adopted modifications and new recommendations intended to clarify reporting thresholds, change penalty accrual rules, improve TEC customer service, and increase transparency of delinquent penalties.

Commission action and highlights

- The commission adopted all staff recommendations and issues for the Angelina and Neches River Authority and the Lower Neches Valley Authority; no member modifications or new recommendations were offered for those agencies.

- The commission adopted all staff recommendations and issues for the Trinity River Authority of Texas; no member modifications or new recommendations were offered for that agency.

- For the Texas Ethics Commission, members adopted multiple modifications to staff recommendations and approved a set of eight new recommendations. Among the adopted changes and directions were: - A modification addressing lobbyist compensation thresholds under Government Code section 305.005: the commission adopted a recommendation to exempt those thresholds from automatic inflation adjustment and revert thresholds to the statutory amounts (as presented in the decision materials). - A modification to rounding of inflation adjustments: Representative Hall said, “This modification would ensure that the inflation adjustments would be rounded either to the 10, 100, or 1,000 to make those numbers more practical to remember and report.” The commission adopted that modification as presented. - A new recommendation asking the House Appropriations and Senate Finance Committees to consider appropriating additional funds for TEC staffing to improve customer service, including a dedicated legal helpline and better phone-line support. Vice Chair Parker said, “We’ve heard concerns about filers who have questions but cannot get through it to a live person on TEC’s phones. This new recommendation would recommend that the House Appropriations and Senate Finance Committees should consider appropriating additional TEC additional funding for FTEs to support the agency’s ability to provide timely customer service through its dedicated legal helpline and main phone line, assisting filers effectively across the entire state.” - An amendment to Texas Election Code section 254.042 to limit the accrual of late filing penalties for 8-day reports so penalties accrue only through the date of the election (as described by the chair during debate). - A management recommendation that would require TEC to waive late penalties when the commission cannot produce a report showing a filer received notice of the delinquency. - A direction for TEC to review its definition of “substantial compliance” for corrected reports so that good-faith corrections are not unduly penalized. - A direction for TEC to review rules defining “principal purpose” so churches, charities and community organizations with primarily nonpolitical purposes are not subjected to unnecessary campaign-finance reporting requirements (Senator Sparks described stakeholder feedback and the intended protection for such organizations). - A transparency recommendation directing TEC to prominently display a publicly available list of delinquent penalties on its website with additional details from publicly available sworn complaint orders (filers’ names, filer status at time of violation, date and penalty amount, referral status to the Attorney General, and whether the AG accepted the referral, where known), subject to confidentiality rules. - A recommendation directing TEC to provide in-person trainings, online webinars, plain-language guides, and an electronic filing help guide to clarify thresholds and filing requirements.

Votes and procedural steps

The chair described the adopted modifications and new recommendations in sequence and the commission approved modifications and staff recommendations for each agency in blanket motions, then approved new recommendations in a blanket motion. The commission also adopted, by motion, Recommendation 6.56.6 related to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which had been left out of the December 11 vote and was taken up at this hearing.

Finally, the commission took a recorded roll call vote to forward all previously adopted recommendations from this biennium to the 89th Legislature. The clerk called the roll and members present recorded assent; the chair noted this is the statutorily required record vote to transmit the commission’s package to the Legislature.

Implementation status report

Sunset staff presented a status report on implementation of recommendations adopted during the 2023 legislative cycle. Will Bucknole of Sunset staff said the compliance review covered 24 entities and assessed 159 statutory changes, 2 appropriation recommendations, and 2 management actions (163 total items requiring implementation). The report found that 68% of the 163 changes had been fully implemented; 48 changes were reported in progress and 5 were partially implemented. Agencies estimated most uncompleted recommendations would be fully implemented by the end of the calendar year. The State Auditor’s Office (SAO) published a complementary report finding that some directives were fully implemented while approximately 11% had ongoing or incomplete implementation, the staff presenter said.

What happens next

With the commission’s recorded vote, the Sunset Commission’s recommendations and modifications will be transmitted to the 89th Texas Legislature for consideration. The commission’s decisions include statutory-change recommendations that would require legislative action to take effect and management actions directed to agencies for administrative implementation.

The commission adjourned after the votes and the implementation update; members thanked staff and stakeholders for their work during the biennial review cycle.