TEXAS, USA — Sunday afternoon the Texas House of Representatives passed amended S.B. 3 and passed it on for final reading, which will most likely happen tomorrow.
Why's that so important?
S.B. 3 is the collection of bills, or omnibus bill, designed to fix some of the major flaws in the Texas power grid, and the legislature has 8 days left to get it to the governor before the session ends.
The bill has passed the Texas Senate and should pass the House of representatives tomorrow. If the Senate approves of the changes it will go to the governor. If the Senate does not approve it must go before yet another committee. Texas House Representative Chris Paddie told members of the house Sunday, this is now their one shot to get this right.
"I would argue, and I'm sure most members feel this way, that I don't think it is acceptable leave this session, not passing this bill and these reforms," Paddie said.
The Texas legislature has passed quite a few bills in the House and Senate, but most remained in committee one it reached the other side. S.B. 3, once amended, now represents a lot of the work done by committees in both chambers.
"It seems like an eternity ago that we voted for priority hose bills... 10, 11, 12, all the way up to 16, 17... This is a collection of that work that we did back then with some additional refinements," Paddie said.
The newly amended bill would require power generators to winterize and prepare for extreme weather, improve communication between state agencies before and during an emergency, establish the Texas Energy Disaster Reliability Council, and make sure power plants don't get their power turned off during an emergency, in addition to many other provisions. It just got out of committee last Tuesday, and took the rest of the week to get to the floor.
After 132 days of work, the legislature has just over a week left to get all their solutions into law.