Several big issues - including restoring the state’s windstorm insurance fund - were in final negotiations as the last weekend of the 140-day session turned into a mad scramble of attempts to craft compromises.
The session ends Monday, meaning any bills that aren’t passed have to wait until lawmakers return to Austin in two years - with at least one big exception.
Monday is also the official start of hurricane season, and Republican Gov. Rick Perry has threatened to call the Legislature back into special session if they don’t find a way to replenish the Texas Windstorm Association, the state-backed insurer of last resort for residents of 14 coastal counties.
Saturday wasn’t all about the mad scramble.
Gov. Rick Perry signed into law a bill making it easier for children of transferring military members when enrolling in new schools.
The measure signed by Perry on Saturday, as he was surrounded by military families, allows Texas to join the interstate compact on educational opportunities for military children.
Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, a Democrat from the military city of San Antonio, says it will help with things like getting students’ records moved to a new school in a timely fashion. It also will help student athletes participate in sports right away.
Perry said Texas has 70,000 military dependents of school age who on average will attend six to nine schools between kindergarten and the end of high school.
The governor is letting a children’s booster seat bill become law without his signature.
The measure requires children age 8 or under to be secured in a booster seat when riding as a passenger in a vehicle. The current age limit is 4 years old.
Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle noted Saturday that the governor had some concerns about the bill, but she said those concerns didn’t rise to the level of a veto. So on Friday he decided to let the measure become law without his signature.
The law calls for a warning period of a year, until June 2010. Then penalties could be up to $25. Lawmakers say the emphasis of the law is on education, not punishment.
The Senate approved a change to the state’s top 10 percent law for admissions to state universities. The bill sent to Perry only applies to such admissions to flagship University of Texas at Austin, capping them at 75 percent of a freshman class.
Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, who sponsored a Senate bill that called for a much larger cap, held her nose when she cast her vote in favor of the change.
“I know this is a great disappointment to everybody, but that’s life in the big city,” Shapiro said.
While sessions typically become frenzied affairs in the final days, the maelstrom swirling around the chambers Saturday was unusual in that it followed a week of slowdowns in the House, where business ground to a halt as Democrats blocked a contentious Republican-backed voter ID plan.
Once that bill died, it left lawmakers just a few days to finish other work.
House and Senate lawmakers spent the first part of Saturday in a memorial service for Texas soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, then spent the afternoon assigning negotiators to work out deals on bills.
“You can watch sausage being made,” Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said.
Other issues still awaiting a vote in the final days included a plan to get more universities working toward becoming top research institutions, and another to reign in rising college tuition rates.
In 2003, lawmakers allowed universities to raise tuition, resulting in an 86 percent increase over the next six years. A Senate plan to cap rate increases at 5 percent at most state universities passed the Senate several weeks ago, but stalled in the House.
A renewal of the Texas Transportation Commission - the state’s road-building agency - was another major hangup Saturday. The hurdle between the House and Senate boiled down to whether counties in the state’s largest metro areas should be allowed to ask voters to approve increases in gas taxes and other fees to raise money for road projects.
As of Saturday, the governor’s office said he had signed some 252 bills, allowed three to become law without his signature and vetoed one.
And House members gave final approval to a state settlement with the federal Department of Justice to improve medical care and living conditions at the state’s large institutions for the mentally disabled.
The settlement includes hiring more than 1,000 new care workers and improving investigations into abuse and neglect claims. Dozens of people have died under questionable circumstances and hundreds of employees have been disciplined for mistreating residents.
writers Jay Root and Kelley Shannon contributed to this report.
