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Gov. Perry calls special session
Published June 26, 2009
AUSTIN — Only a month after Texas lawmakers adjourned their regular session, they’ll meet again in a special session Gov. Rick Perry announced Thursday to pass legislation to keep the transportation department and other state agencies running.
Perry said the special session will begin Wednesday. It can last up to 30 days, but Perry said it could be done in less than a week.
“After speaking with legislators, I am calling a special session to extend the operation of five critical agencies and help reduce gridlock by continuing to provide options for financing our state’s highways,” Perry said.
Perry predicted the session will be a brief one “to clean up one little bit of legislation that they left hanging.”
“I think they’ll be in and out in three to four days,” he said.
Perry said he spoke with House Speaker Joe Straus and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, both fellow Republicans, and that they are committed to leading legislators to quickly address the issues on the agenda.
The Legislature adjourned its five-month regular session June 1 without passing a safety net measure that would allow agencies such as the transportation and insurance departments to keep operating. The departments would be shuttered by Sept. 1, 2010, without the legal authority to continue.
Lawmakers also failed to approve legislation allowing the issuance of $2 billion in road-building bonds already approved by voters. Perry placed the bond item on the special session agenda and called for lawmakers to address transportation officials’ authority to make agreements with private developers for highway projects.
Legislators only are going to set up a bill that will keep the agencies running until they can be reviewed in a future legislative session, said State Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton.
“What we’re going to do is to allow the agencies to operate,” Bonnen said.
State Rep. Randy Weber, R-Pearland, was in Florida on vacation when the special session was called.
“We were planning on being in Florida until July 15,” he said.
Weber said the sunset bills for those agencies failed to pass during the regular session because of a hotly debated Voter ID bill.
House Democrats waged a filibuster of sorts to talk to death the Republican-pushed voter ID bill in the final days of May. Democrats continually asked questions about other bills to stall debate, killing numerous proposals.
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